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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/30108-0.txt b/30108-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b17d081 --- /dev/null +++ b/30108-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,12779 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30108 *** + + THE QUALITY OF MERCY + + A NOVEL + + BY W. D. HOWELLS + +AUTHOR OF "AN IMPERATIVE DUTY" "ANNIE KILBURN" "A HAZARD OF NEW +FORTUNES" ETC. + +NEW YORK +HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE +1892 + + + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + + + + +PART FIRST. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick's man met him at the station with the cutter. The train was a +little late, and Elbridge was a little early; after a few moments of +formal waiting, he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the +street. As they walked they sent those quivers and thrills over their +thin coats which horses can give at will; they moved their heads up and +down, slowly and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; +the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous pace died back in +showers and falling drops of music. All the time Elbridge swore at them +affectionately, with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee +whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the halts he made at each +return to the station, he let his blasphemies bubble sociably from him +in response to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other +drivers who were waiting for the train; they had apparently no other +parlance. The drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon +were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every +other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the +merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless +maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as +he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the +professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them +with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally +speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and +skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against +counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore +a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold; +its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his +head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had +on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain +coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a +closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have +done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick +in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in +any other quality. + +"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked +the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been +half a mile off instead of half a rod. + +"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you ---- ---- old fool, +you?" asked Elbridge in his turn. + +The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the +sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and +said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any +way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full +readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him. + +No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most +remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same +train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed +to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, +and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While +Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove +away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the +highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line +cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid +crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment, +but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the +accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced +it and shone quivering through. The shortest days were past, but in the +first week of February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to a +finer perception there was the promise of release from the winter dark, +if not from the winter cold. It was not far from six o'clock when +Northwick mounted the southward rise of the street; it was still almost +light enough to read; and the little slender black figure of a man that +started up in the middle of the road, as if it had risen out of the +ground, had an even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in the +snow; the horses crouched back with a sudden recoil, as if he had struck +them back with his arm, and plunged the runners of the cutter into the +deeper snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight pause, long enough +to give Northwick a contemptuous glance, and then continued along the +road at a leisurely pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next +house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as Northwick had in +quieting his horses, and getting underway again. He said nothing, and +Northwick did not speak; Elbridge growled, "He's on one of his tears +again," and the horses dashed forward with a shriek of all their bells. +Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that +led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the +snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts. + +"What's the matter with the colt?" he asked. + +"I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I +guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge. + +"Better look after it." + +Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the cutter at the +flight of granite steps which rose to the ground-floor of his wooden +palace. Broad levels of piazza stretched away from the entrance under a +portico of that carpentry which so often passes with us for +architecture. In spite of the effect of organic flimsiness in every +wooden structure but a log cabin, or a fisherman's cottage shingled to +the ground, the house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There were +double windows on all round the piazzas; a mellow glow from the +incandescent electrics penetrated to the outer dusk from them; when the +door was opened to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together with +the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner. + +"Dinner is just served, sir," said the inside man, disposing of +Northwick's overcoat and hat on the hall table with respectful scruple. + +Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, and vaguely held his +hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes +below. + +"The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn't be home till the next +train," the man suggested, at the sound of voices from the dining-room. + +"They have some one with them?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes, sir. The rector, sir; Mr. Wade, sir." + +"I'll come down by and by," Northwick said, turning to the stairs. "Say +I had a late lunch before I left town." + +"Yes, sir," said the man. + +Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed by the thickly-padded +thick carpet, and turned into the sort of study that opened out of his +bedroom. It had been his wife's parlor during the few years of her life +in the house which he had built for her, and which they had planned to +spend their old age in together. It faced southward, and looked out over +the greenhouses and the gardens, that stretched behind the house to the +bulk of woods, shutting out the stage-picturesqueness of the summer +settlement of South Hatboro'. She had herself put the rocking-chair in +the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not allowed it to be disturbed +there since her death. In an alcove at one side he had made a place for +the safe where he kept his papers; his wife had intended to keep their +silver in it, but she had been scared by the notion of having burglars +so close to them in the night, and had always left the silver in the +safe in the dining-room. + +She was all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had +seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, +hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the +painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and +had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive +of his own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. She was +really one of those hen-minded women, who are so common in all walks of +life, and are made up of only one aim at a time, and of manifold +anxieties at all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the days +of struggle in which she had joined it to Northwick's instinct for +getting; she lived and died in the hope, if not the belief, that she had +contributed to his prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of +valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively happy with her; since +her death, he had allowed her to return much into his thoughts, from +which her troublesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in +important matters had obliged him to push her while she lived. He often +had times when it seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, and +then he found he had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, +he realized that he missed her; but perhaps the wound was to habit +rather than affection. He now sat down in his swivel-chair and turned it +from the writing-desk which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and +looked up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intangible +presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest his soul against hers. +She was the only one who could have seen him in his wish to have not +been what he was; she would have denied it to his face, if he had told +her he was a thief; and as he meant to make himself more and more a +thief, her love would have eased the way by full acceptance of the +theories that ran along with his intentions and covered them with +pretences of necessity. He thought how even his own mother could not +have been so much comfort to him; she would have had the mercy, but she +would not have had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under all +his pretences, Northwick knew that it was not mercy which would help +him; but he wanted it, as we all want what is comfortable and bad for us +at times. With the performance and purpose of a thief in his heart, he +turned to the pictured face of his dead wife as his refuge from the face +of all living. It could not look at him as if he were a thief. + +The word so filled his mind that it seemed always about to slip from his +tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the +fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so +distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal +instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The +other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they +hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not +supplied them with the emotional materials for making one. The +president, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced upon +Northwick. "What does all this mean, sir? I'll tell you what it means. +It means that you're a thief, sir; the same as if you had picked my +pocket, or stolen my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall." + +He shook his clenched fist in Northwick's face, and seemed about to take +him by the throat. Afterwards he inclined more to mercy than the others; +it was he who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three days' +grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the directors the proof +that he had ample means, as he maintained, to meet the shortage in the +accounts. "I wish you well out of it, for your family's sake," he said +at parting; "but all the same, sir, you are a thief." + +He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when some others +meaninglessly shook hands with Northwick, at parting, as Northwick +himself might have shaken hands with another in his place; and he +brushed by him out of the door without looking at him. He came suddenly +back to say, "If it were a question of you alone, I would cheerfully +lose something more than you've robbed me of for the pleasure of seeing +you handcuffed in this room and led to jail through the street by a +constable. No honest man, no man who was not always a rogue at heart, +could have done what you've done; juggled with the books for years, and +bewitched the record so by your infernal craft, that it was never +suspected till now. You've given _mind_ to your scoundrelly work, sir; +all the mind you had; for if you hadn't been so anxious to steal +successfully, you'd have given more mind to the use of your stealings. +You _may_ have some of them left, but it looks as if you'd made ducks +and drakes of them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Employees' +Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe you're of about the intellectual +calibre of that sort of thief. I can't respect you even on your own +ground. But I'm willing to give you the chance you ask, for your +daughter's sake. She's been in and out of my house with my girl like one +of my own children, and I won't send her father to jail if I can help +it. Understand! I haven't any sentiment for _you_, Northwick. You're the +kind of rogue I'd like to see in a convict's jacket, learning to make +shoe-brushes. But you shall have your chance to go home and see if you +can pay up somehow, and you sha'n't be shadowed while you're at it. You +shall keep your outside to the world three days longer, you whited +sepulchre; but if you want to know, I think the best thing that could +happen to you on your way home would be a good railroad accident." + +The man's words and looks were burnt into Northwick's memory, which now +seemed to have the faculty of simultaneously reproducing them all. +Northwick remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, and the +swing of his large stomach, and just how it struck against the jamb as +he whirled a second time out of the door. The other directors, some of +them, stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their hats on, +and a sort of stunned aspect; some held their hats in their hands, and +looked down into them with a decorous absence of expression, as people +do at a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer's private +room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey rugs, leathern +arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors standing one on each side of the +hearth where a fire of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a +subdued and respectful flicker. + + + + +II. + + +If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of the president, +Northwick might have come away from the meeting, after the exposure of +his defalcations, with an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he +felt curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing habit of his +mind enabled him to piece himself together again and resume his former +size and shape. This happened very quickly; he had conceived of himself +so long as a man employing funds in his charge in speculations sometimes +successful and sometimes not, but at all times secured by his personal +probity and reliability. He had in fact more than once restored all that +he had taken, and he had come to trust himself in the course of these +transactions as fully as he was trusted by the men who were ignorant of +his irregularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete confidence +they reposed in him, though he really felt it to be no more than his +due; he had always merited and received the confidence of men associated +with him in business, and he had come to regard the funds of the +corporation as practically his own. In the early days of his connection +with the company, it largely owed its prosperity to his wise and careful +management; one might say that it was not until the last, when he got so +badly caught by that drop in railroads, that he had felt anything wrong +in his convertible use of its money. It was an informality; he would not +have denied that, but it was merely an informality. Then his losses +suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the +first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which +the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he +considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties +which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other +operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he +dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, +especially of late, he easily satisfied them as to the nature of his +motives and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their attention to +these successful deals, and to the probability, the entire probability, +that he could be at any moment in a position to repay all he had +borrowed of the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long habit +of making himself these loans and returning them, he had come to have a +sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was +almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first +intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness +that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose +discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's +paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the +papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some +novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the +presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but +after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He +was like those fools, exactly like them, in what they had done, and in +the way of doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. All of +them had used others' money in speculation, expecting to replace it, and +then had not been able to replace it, and then had skipped, as the +newspapers said. + +Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, too, was a point +which he had not yet acknowledged to himself that he had decided. He +never had believed that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when +the president said he could wish him nothing better on his way home than +a good railroad accident, it flashed upon him that one of the three +alternatives before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill himself, +which was supposed to be the gentlemanly way out of his difficulties, +and would leave his family unstained by his crime; that matter had +sometimes been discussed in his presence, and every one had agreed that +it was the only thing for a gentleman to do after he had pilfered people +of money he could not pay back. There was something else that a man of +other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that was to stand his +trial for embezzlement, and take his punishment. Or a man, if he was +that kind of a man, could skip. The question with Northwick was whether +he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he would be that +kind of man; whether the skipping would make him that kind of man. + +The question was a cruel one for the self-respect which he had so +curiously kept intact. He had been respectable ever since he was born; +if he was born with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, +the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was all the stronger in +him, because his father had never had it; perhaps an hereditary trait +found expression in him after passing over one generation; perhaps an +antenatal influence formed him to that type. His mother was always +striving to keep the man she had married worthy of her choice in the +eyes of her neighbors; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had +been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine; in carrying on the +drug and book business of the village, he cared much more for the +literary than the pharmaceutical side of it; he liked to have a circle +of cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, and discuss +morals and religion with them; and one night, when denying the plenary +inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an +ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his +mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he +lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a +total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his +son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain +sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always +disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he +said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in +Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material +success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few +people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer +of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a +man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. +They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there +a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come +back to the village. But he had not. He had, as they had all heard, that +splendid summer place at Hatboro', where he spent his time when he was +not at his house in Boston; and when they verified the fact of his +immense prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who knew him +or knew about him, they were obscurely flattered by the fact; just as +many of us are proud of belonging to a nation in which we are enriched +by the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. They did not +blame Northwick for never coming to see his father, or for never having +him home on a visit; they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how +little he was fitted for the society of a man whose respectability, even +as it was reflected upon them, was so dazzling. Old Northwick had never +done anything for Milt; he had never even got along with him; the fellow +had left him, and made his own way; and the old man had no right to +talk; if Milt was ever of a mind to cut off his rations, the old man +would soon see. + + + + +III. + + +The local opinion scarcely did justice to old Northwick's imperfect +discharge of a father's duties; his critics could not have realized how +much some capacities, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, +contributed to that very effect of respectability which they revered. +The early range of books, the familiarity with the mere exterior of +literature, restricted as it was, helped Northwick later to pass for a +man of education, if not of reading, with men who were themselves less +read than educated. The people whom his ability threw him with in Boston +were all Harvard men, and they could not well conceive of an +acquaintance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was not college +bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which we carry through life, they knew +he was from the country, and they attributed him to a freshwater +college. They said, "You're a Dartmouth man, Northwick, I believe," or, +"I think you're from Williams," and when Northwick said no, they forgot +it, and thought that he was a Bowdoin man; the impression gradually +fixed itself that he was from one or other of those colleges. It was +believed in like manner, partly on account of his name, that he was from +one of those old ministerial families that you find up in the hills, +where the whole brood study Greek while they are sugaring off in the +spring; and that his own mother had fitted him for college. There was, +in fact, something clerical in Northwick's bearing; and it was felt by +some that he had studied for the ministry, but had gone into business to +help his family. The literary phase of the superstition concerning him +was humored by the library which formed such a striking feature of his +house in Boston, as well as his house in Hatboro'; at Hatboro' it was +really vast, and was so charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea +of a cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and rarely used +the drawing-room, which was much smaller, and was a gold and white +sanctuary on the north side of the house, only opened when there was a +large party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and went without +seeing it, and it remained shut up, as much a conjecture as the memory +of Northwick's wife. She was supposed to have been taken from him early, +to save him and his children from the mortifying consequences of one of +those romantic love-affairs in which a conscientious man had sacrificed +himself to a girl he was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that +his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she brought him, and upon +the stay her belief in him had always been. She was a church-member, as +such women usually are, but Northwick was really her religion; and as +there is nothing that does so much to sanctify a deity as the blind +devotion of its worshippers, Northwick was rendered at times worthy of +her faith by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her love; he +was not the kind of man whose affections are apt to wander, perhaps +because they were few and easily kept together; perhaps because he was +really principled against letting them go astray. He was not merely true +in a passive way, but he was constant in the more positive fashion. When +they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him +into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her +shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to +them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his +experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that +sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and +qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his +knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, +and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his +money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he +began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his +children; for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his wife's +memory, and apparently never imagined such a thing as marrying again. + +He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up into her pictured +face, and went to open the safe near the window. But he stopped in +stooping over to work the combination, and glanced out across his +shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the scene tempted him to +the window for what, all at once, he felt might be his last look, though +the next instant he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his +meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval and honorable +return. He must have been thinking there before the fire a long time, +for now the moon had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the +southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These were in a sort the +mechanism that transacted the life of his house, ministering to all its +necessities and pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long +stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was +the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy +mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a +ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and +dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the +hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; +in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the +coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the +dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's +business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than +half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial +consequence with regard to his place. It was really a farm in extent, +and it was mostly a grazing farm; his cattle were in the herd-books, and +he raised horses, which he would sell now and then to a friend; they +were so distinctly varied from the original stock as to form almost a +breed of themselves; they numbered scores in his stalls and pastures. +The whole group of the buildings was so great that it was like a sort of +communal village. In the silent moonlight Northwick looked at it as if +it were an expansion or extension of himself, so personally did it seem +to represent his tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of +his whole life; he realized that it would be like literally tearing +himself from it, when he should leave it. That would be the real pang; +his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded +himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate +himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he +was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the +meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was +that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the +full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a +perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must +go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,--all but +the furniture and pictures,--were the children's and could not be +touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and +cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he +must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could. + +After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If +he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed +himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else +of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the +forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself +possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to +be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the +very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it +to have gone with. + +Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his +reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a +duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured, +if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means +of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left +providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it +would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope +of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word +again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of +his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane +necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a +sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took +a turn about the room. + +He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised +him to find in himself, he was laboring under some strong inward stress, +and he must have relief from it if he was to carry this business +through. He threw up the window and stood with his hand on the sash, +quivering in the strong in-rush of the freezing air. But it strengthened +him, and when he put down the window after a few moments, his faintness +passed altogether. Still, he thought he would not go through that +business at once; there was time enough; he would see his girls and tell +them that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the morning. + +He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and his house-coat, and +went to the stair-landing outside, and listened to the voices in the +library below. He could hear only women's voices, and he inferred that +the young man who had been dining with his daughters was gone. He went +back into his bedroom, and looked at the face of an unmasked thief in +his glass. It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that he +looked; it was to see if he was pale or would seem ill to his children. + + + + +IV. + + +Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative +in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more +urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the +elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and +remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she +watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him +and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too; +and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin +and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking +frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of +circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her +parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she +preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight, +bony fingers she wore a good many rings. + +Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that +name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow +suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its +suggestion of coquettishness. + +She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he +stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she +seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to +leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her +so. + +"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down +before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where +the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of +the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the +face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, +he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the +morning, and I still have some things to put in shape." + +"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had +resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her +head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary +beauty, as a stranger might have had. + +"Trouble?" he echoed. + +"With the hands." + +"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick, +rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question, +to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an +instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor +trouble. + +"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all +sorts of reports." + +"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said +Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground." + +"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the +girl, "without wearing your own life out about it." + +"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to +acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well, +that--" + +He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter +said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought +to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge +told James that you almost drove over him, coming up." + +"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the +horses' feet." + +"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of +awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women +often feel. + +"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his +family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to +himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as +possible." + +Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the +inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard +him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home +would be a good railroad accident." + +He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't +for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of +others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a +very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest. +He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish +to judge him. He may have"--Northwick sighed again, and ended +vaguely--"his reasons." + +Suzette laughed. "How moderate you always are, papa! And how tolerant!" + +"I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he's got to deal with, and +that he's safe in abusing you all he likes," said Adeline. "But I don't +see how such respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell can +tolerate him. I've no patience with Dr. Morrell, or his wife, either. To +be sure, they tolerate Mrs. Wilmington, too." + +Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. "Well, I'm going to bed, +papa. If you'd wanted more of my society you ought to have come down +sooner. I suppose I sha'n't see you in the morning; so it's good-bye as +well as good-night. When will you be home?" + +"Not for some days, perhaps," said the unhappy man. + +"How doleful! Are you always so homesick when you go away?" + +"Not always; no." + +"Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you have to be gone a +great while, send for me, won't you?" + +"Yes, yes; I will," said Northwick. The girl gave his head a hug, and +then glided out of the room. She stopped to throw him a kiss from the +door. + +"There!" said Adeline. "I didn't mean to let Mrs. Wilmington slip out; +she can't bear the name, and I _know_ it drove her away. But you mustn't +let it worry you, father. I guess it's all going well, now." + +"What's going well?" Northwick asked, vaguely. + +"The Jack Wilmington business. I know she's really given him up at last; +and we can't be too thankful for that much, if it's no more. I don't +believe he's bad, for all the talk about him, but he's been weak, and +that's a thing she couldn't forgive in a man; she's so strong herself." + +Northwick did not think of Wilmington; he thought of himself, and in the +depths of his guilty soul, in those secret places underneath all his +pretences, where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered if his +child's strength would be against her forgiving his weakness. What we +greatly dread we most unquestioningly believe; and it did not occur to +him to ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary inference +from strength. He only knew himself to be miserably weak. + +He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his impassive, handsome +face turned toward his daughter as if he were going to speak to her. He +was a tall man, rather thin; he was clean shaven, except for the grayish +whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line with them; he had a +regular profile, which was more attractive than the expression of his +direct regard. He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and +looked into it as if he were reading his future in its lucid depths, and +then put it down again, with an effect of helplessness. When he spoke, +it was not in connection with what his daughter had been talking about. +He said almost dryly, "I think I will go up and look over some papers I +have to take with me, and then try to get a little sleep before I +start." + +"And when shall we expect you back?" asked his daughter, submissively +accepting his silence concerning her sister's love affairs. She knew +that it meant acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought best. + +"I don't know, exactly; I can't say, now. Good-night." + +To her surprise he came up and kissed her; his caresses were for Sue, +and she expected them no more than she invited them. "Why, father!" she +said in a pleased voice. + +"Let James pack the small bag for me, and send Elbridge to me in about +an hour," he said, as he went out into the hall. + + + + +V. + + +Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this +age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of +the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. +He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which +would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or +would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. +The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the +fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the +reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but +evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This was the doctrine +which framed the man's intention if not his conduct of life, and +continued to shape it years after experience of the world, and +especially of the business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great +many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its +reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad +behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any +discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it +was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still +intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and +improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his +principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong +before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him. + +But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery +of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all +the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had +tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a +dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish +exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made +him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The +people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of +Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it +seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those +things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of +the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been +quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower +than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man. +Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it +was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression; +his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it +most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically +strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the +need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was +forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the +beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, +to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom +his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame +and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant +censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had +become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if +by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, impulses, fantasies, in +which he swiftly dreamed renunciation of escape. Then he knew that it +would not avail anything to remain; it would not avail anything even to +die; nothing could avail anything at once, but in the end, his going +would avail most. He must go; it would break the child's heart to face +his shame, and she must face it. He did not think of his eldest +daughter, except to think that the impending disaster could not affect +her so ruinously. + +"My God, my God!" he groaned, as he went up stairs. Adeline called from +the room he had left, "Did you speak, father?" + +He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience which becomes so active +in times of great moral obliquity, against telling a little lie, and +saying he had not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering +anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, of feeling himself +an old man forced from his home, and he had a blind reasonless +resentment of the behavior of the men who were driving him away, and +whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful of. But he threw +off this mood when he entered his room, and settled himself to business. +There was a good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for his +indefinite absence, and he used the same care in providing for some +minor contingencies in the company's affairs as in leaving instructions +to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. +Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among +those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality +of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general +conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an +interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts +which persisted at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have +been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives. + +The question was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it +appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful +of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it +further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of +money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider +that this money necessarily belonged to the company, any more than his +daughters' house and farm belonged to it. To be sure it was the fruit of +money he had borrowed or taken from the company and had used in an +enormously successful deal; but the company had not earned it, and in +driving him into a corner, in forcing him to make instant restitution of +all its involuntary loans, it was justifying him in withholding this +part of them. Northwick was a man of too much sense to reason explicitly +to this effect, but there was a sophistry, tacitly at work in him to +this effect, which made it possible for him to go on and steal more +where he had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the further +theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to +nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed +his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to +that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He +contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, +with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most +fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his +broker sent him that large check for his winnings in stocks the day +before, but Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the check, and +put the money in his safe instead of banking it. Now he could perceive a +leading in the whole matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant +defiance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. He seemed to +himself like a burglar, when he had locked the doors and pulled down the +curtains, and stood before the safe working the combination. He +trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a +slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the +same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out +in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: +"Hello! Who's there? What is it?" + +"It's me," said Elbridge. + +"Oh, yes! Well! All right! Hold on, a minute! Ah--you can come back in +ten or fifteen minutes. I'm not quite ready for you, yet." Northwick +spoke the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood in a +frenzy of dismay; the more collected words were uttered from his desk, +where he ran to get his pistol. He did not know why he thought Elbridge +might try to force his way in; perhaps it was because any presence on +the outside of the door would have terrified him. He had time to +recognize that he was not afraid for the money, but that he was afraid +for himself in the act of taking it. + +Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, and said with a +little hesitation, "All right," and Northwick heard him tramp away, and +go down stairs. + +He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy door, whose +resistance helped him shake off his nervousness. Then he took the money +from the drawer where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the +inner pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He shut the +safe and locked it. The succession of these habitual acts calmed him +more and more, and after he had struck a match and kindled the fire on +his hearth, which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle again +to his preparations in writing. + + + + +VI. + + +When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went +and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said, +carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?" + +"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got +to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a +strong smell of stable through the hot room. + +"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the +morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick +satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula; +and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the +management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his +pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said, +"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine. +You can drive me up with the black mare." + +"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of +reluctance that did not escape Northwick. + +"Anything the matter?" he asked. + +"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well." + +"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for +him to feel. + +"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the +membranous crou--" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped +it down. + +"Oh, I _hope_ not," said Northwick. + +"He's comin' back again--he had to go off to another place--but I could +see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got +himself in hand again, and spoke clearly. + +Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow +thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the +earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must +telephone Simpson to come for me." + +"All right." Elbridge took himself away. + +Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the +coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the +windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck +a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have +been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought +he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people; +but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the +useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His +thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had +lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash +into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his +family ought to feel in the matter. + +No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found +his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. +The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his +arms thrown wildly about. + +"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the +mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him, +save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him +suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's +hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was +suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What +are you big, strong men good for, any--" She looked down at the child's +face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild +screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment. + +It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless +there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to +go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her +coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he +heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue. + +The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had +been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love +with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since +their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of +exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put +Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the +will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the +little boy who had just died. + +He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full +outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given +him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the +company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses +he must meet at such a time. + +Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out +to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have +liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case +Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this +possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of +Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells +before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his +bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, +but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of +that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out. +He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried +down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on +the threshold, and took his bag from him. + +"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?" + +"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and +gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I +thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for +the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the +broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the +booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin' +to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway." + +The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank +you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted +to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his +house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to +be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with +himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to +Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving +home--at such a time--when you've--" + +"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested. + +"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously +warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly +lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the +door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on +the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been +some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they +did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and +fixed him severely with his eye. + +"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?" + +Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing +look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I +didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses--" + +"It was the LAW you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with +a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! +You can't drive over the Law, _yet_--you haven't quite millions enough +for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of +asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it. + +Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set +off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and +Northwick went out and got aboard. + + + + +VII. + + +The president of the Board, who had called Northwick a thief, and yet +had got him a chance to make himself an honest man, was awake at the +hour the defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a night. +He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to forget Northwick, but he +seemed to be eating and drinking him at every course. When he came home +toward eleven o'clock, he went to his library and sat down before the +fire. His wife had gone to bed, and his son and daughter were at a ball; +and he sat there alone, smoking impatiently. + +He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted anything that he might +go to bed; he need not sit up for the young people. Hilary had that kind +of consideration for servants, and he liked to practise it; he liked to +realize that he was practising it now, in a moment when every habit of +his life might very well yield to the great and varying anxieties which +beset him. + +He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from him to himself, as a +gentleman and a citizen, and he could not conceal from himself that he +had been mainly instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, when +he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. His ideals had not hitherto +stood in the way of his comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more +than they had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a kind far +above those which commercial honor permits a man to be content with. He +held himself bound, as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, +to have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He believed that +he owed it to the community to do nothing to lower its standards of +personal integrity and responsibility; and he distinguished himself by a +gratified consciousness from those people of chromo-morality, who held +all sorts of loose notions on such points. His name stood not merely for +so much money; many names stood for far more; but it meant reliability, +it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He really loved these things, +though, no doubt, he loved them less for their own sake than because +they were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect +everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they +should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value +that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him +not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort +of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even +more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he +once saw it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it. + +The error that he had committed in Northwick's case, if it was an error, +was one that presented peculiar difficulties, as every error in life +does; the errors love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade +as all sorts of things. There were moments when Hilary saw his mistake +so clearly that it seemed to him nothing less than the repayment of +Northwick's thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of +justice to his fellow-losers if Northwick ran away; and then again, it +looked like the act of wise mercy which it had appeared to him when he +was urging the Board to give the man a chance as the only thing which +they could hopefully do in the circumstances, as common sense, as +business. But it was now so obvious that a man like Northwick could and +would do nothing but run away if he were given the chance, that he +seemed to have been his accomplice when he used the force of his +personal character with them in Northwick's behalf. He was in a +ridiculous position, there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to +get out of it without much painful wear and tear of pride, of +self-respect. + +After a long time he looked at the clock, and found it still early for +the return of his young people. He was impatient to see his son, and to +get the situation in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. +He had already told him of the defalcation, and of what the Board had +decided to do with Northwick; but this was while he was still in the +glow of action, and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who came in +just as he was going out to dinner; it was before his cold fit came on. + +He had reached that time of life when a man likes to lay his troubles +before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, +Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, +different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger +and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, +and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, +but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. +The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go +into the mills at Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the +natural course. But one day he came home and told his father that he had +begun to have his doubts of the existing relations of labor and capital; +and until he could see his way clearer he would rather give up his +chance with the company. It was a keen disappointment to Hilary; he made +no concealment of that; but he did not quarrel with his son about it. He +robustly tolerated Matt's queer notions, not only because he was a +father who blindly doted on his children and behaved as if everything +they did was right, no matter if it put him in the wrong, but because he +chose to respect the fellow's principles, if those were his principles. +He had his own principles, and Matt should have his if he liked. He bore +entirely well the purpose of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he +wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry +on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and +published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the +expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale +of the little book as if it had cost him nothing. + +Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone +counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he +came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had +exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good for only a +certain degree of advance in opinion; few men are indefinitely +progressive; and Hilary had not caught on to the movement that was +carrying his son with it. But he understood how his son should be what +he was, and he loved him so much that he almost honored him for what he +called his balderdash about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at +last he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door below, and +he made lumbering haste down stairs to open and let the young people in. +He reached the door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness of +his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay welcome, and took +his daughter, all a fluff of soft silken and furry wraps, into his arms. + +"Oh, don't kiss my nose!" she called out. "It'll freeze you to death, +papa! What in the world are you up, for? Anything the matter with +mamma?" + +"No. She was in bed when I came home; I thought I would sit up and ask +what sort of a time you'd had." + +"Did you ever know me to have a bad one? I had the best time in the +world. I danced every dance, and I enjoyed it just as much as if I had +'shut and been a Bud again.' But don't you know it's very bad for old +gentlemen to be up so late?" + +They were mounting the stairs, and when they reached the library, she +went in and poked her long-gloved hands well in over the fire on the +hearth while she lifted her eyes to the clock. "Oh, it isn't so very +late. Only five." + +"No, it's early," said her father with the security in a feeble joke +which none but fathers can feel with none but their grown-up daughters. +"It's full an hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his +cattle, if he were in Vardley." Hilary had given Matt the old family +place there; and he always liked to make a joke of his getting an honest +living by farming it. + +"Don't speak of that agricultural angel!" said the girl, putting her +draperies back with one hand and confining them with her elbow, so as to +give her other hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet she +dropped on both knees before it. + +"Was he nice?" asked the father, with confidence. + +"Nice! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all the dull girls he +talked with! When I think what a good time I should have with him as a +plain girl, if I were not his sister, I lose all patience." She glanced +up in her father's face, with all the strange charm of features that had +no regular beauty; and then, as she had to do whenever she remembered +them, she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture +in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed +flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with +as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She +was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; +though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery +red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. +She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself +tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect +neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't +have treated us better." + +"Do you hear that, Matt?" asked the father, as his son came in, after a +methodical and deliberate bestowal of his outer garments below; his +method and his deliberation were part of the joke of him in the family. + +"Complaining of me for making her walk home?" he asked in turn, with the +quiet which was another part of the joke. "I didn't suppose you'd give +me away, Louise." + +"I didn't; I knew I only had to wait and you would give yourself away," +said the girl. + +"Did he make you walk home?" said the father. "That's the reason your +hands are so cold." + +"They're not very cold--now; and if they were, I shouldn't mind it in +such a cause." + +"What cause?" + +"Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me. But +it was only three blocks, and I had my arctics." She moved a little away +toward the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where she must +have been scuffling them off under her skirts. "Ugh! But it's cold!" She +now stretched a satin slipper in toward the fire. + +"Yes, it's a cold night; but you seem to have got home alive, and I +don't think you'll be the worse for it now, if you go to bed at once," +said her father. + +"Is that a hint?" she asked, with a dreamy appreciation of the warmth +through the toe of her slipper. + +"Not at all; we should be glad to have you sit up the whole night with +us." + +"Ah, now I know you're hinting. Is it business?" + +"Yes, it's business." + +"Well, I'm just in the humor for business; I've had enough pleasure." + +"I don't see why Louise shouldn't stay and talk business with us, if she +likes. I think it's a pity to keep women out of it, as if it didn't +concern them," said the son. "Nine-tenths of the time it concerns them +more than it does men." He had a bright, friendly, philosophical smile +in saying this, and he stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a +patience which their father did not share. He stood something over six +feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame seemed starting out of the +dress-suit, which it appeared so little related to. His whole face was +handsome and regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a mouth of +singular sweetness. + +"Yes; I think so too, in the abstract," said the father. "If the +business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the +term--" + +"Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?" The girl put her +arms round her father's neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a +little way from her cloak and her arctics. "If you hadn't said it was +business, I should have been in bed long ago." Then, as if feeling her +father's eagerness to have her gone, she said, "Good night," and gave +him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said "Good night, Matt," and got +herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and +stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying +to follow her. + + + + +VIII. + + +Louise's father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt +himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred +itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about +picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the +cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove +on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to +it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that +was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to +get sight of. + +"What in the devil is that?" he roared. + +"Louise's pin," said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place +for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went +and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, "It's about Northwick, I +suppose." + +"Yes," said his father, still furious from the pinprick. "I'm afraid the +miserable scoundrel is going to run away." + +"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly. + +"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might +have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at +the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all +sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him, +but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to +be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a +turnip, even by crushing the turnip." + +"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile. + +"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he +was a thief." + +"Oh!" said Matt. + +"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily. + +"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an +air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more. + +"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it +will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent +things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being +rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him +for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him +the chance he asked for." + +"It was really the only thing you could do." + +"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't +seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought +the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on +his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter +who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him +handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables." + +Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in +criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the +point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature." + +"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his +father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up +abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall, +for the time being." + +"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't +shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on +you." + +"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss +Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I +never quite saw what Louise found to like in her." + +"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently +offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a +person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I +suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like +Louise." + +Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that +affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?" + +"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to +all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get +married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to +be done with it." + +"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?" + +"Yes; but I never believed in it." + +"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem +the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because--" + +"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he +is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the +matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say +what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next +in the matter?" + +"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to +right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the +hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in +Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, +with a smile of sympathy: + +"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't +a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the +apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to +get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money +even when he's made it in large sums as our class do." + +The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with +himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's +rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may +fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself." + +"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you." + +"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his +own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to +me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than +I've done. I know I've made myself responsible, in a way, for +Northwick's getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give +him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won't change that fact +at all; but I can't conceal from myself that I half-expected him to +abuse it." + +He put this tentatively, and his son responded, "I suppose that +naturally inclines you to suppose he'll run away." + +"Yes." + +"But your supposition doesn't establish the fact." + +"No. But the question is whether it doesn't oblige me to act as if it +had; whether I oughtn't, if I've got this suspicion, to take some steps +at once to find out whether Northwick's really gone or not, and to mix +myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I +promised him he shouldn't be shadowed in any way till his three days +were over." + +"It's a nice question," said Matt, "or rather, it's a nasty one. Still, +you've only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your +fears before. I don't think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry +one into the catchpole business." Matt laughed again with that fondness +he had for his father. "Though as for any peculiar disgrace in +catchpoles as catchpoles, I don't see it. They're a necessary part of +the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I +don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as +respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who +puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is +one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in +every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's +all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in +the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board +know that you have your misgivings?" + +"Yes," said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, "I +felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to _him_! And I wanted +to talk with you." + +"It was just as well to let them have their night's rest. There isn't +really anything to be done." Matt rose from the low chair where he had +been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. "If the man was +going he's gone past recall by this time; and if he isn't gone, there's +no immediate cause for anxiety." + +"Then you wouldn't do anything at present?" + +"I certainly shouldn't. What could you do?" + +"Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose." + +"Good night," the son said, suggestively, "I suppose there isn't really +anything more?" + +"No, what could there be? You had better go to bed." + +"And you, too, I hope, father." + +"Oh, I shall go to bed--as a matter of form." + +The son laughed. "I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go +to sleep, too. I shall." + +"I sha'n't sleep," said the father, bitterly. "When things like this +happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them." + +"Well, I dare say Northwick's doing that." + +"I doubt it," said Hilary. "I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing +slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this +time." + +"I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he's only going to a +larger prison if he's going into exile. He may be on the Montreal +express, but I guess he isn't sleeping," said Matt. + +"Yes," his father admitted. "Poor devil! He'd much better be dead." + + + + +IX. + + +The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that +day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister +that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, +but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch +with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o'clock +train. + +She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four +balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had +promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night. + +"I don't see how she lives through it," said Adeline. "And at her age, +it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud." + +"Louise is only twenty-three," said Suzette. "If she were married, she +would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older." + +"But she isn't married, and that makes all the difference." + +"Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of +his being with them." + +"Has he given up his farming? It's about time." + +"No; not at all, I believe. She says he's in Boston merely as a matter +of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to +go with her." + +"Well," said Adeline, "I should think he would want to be of _some_ use +in the world; and if he won't help his father in business, he had better +help his mother in society." + +Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if +she had not heeded, "I think I will give a little dance here, next week. +Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We +made out the list--just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, +and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert +will matronize them; it'll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls +are concerned, but I've asked two or three buds; and some of the young +married people. It will be very pleasant, don't you think?" + +"Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?" + +Suzette smiled. "I dare say he would. I wasn't thinking of him in making +it, but I don't see why he shouldn't look in." + +"He might come to the supper," Adeline mused aloud, "if it isn't one of +his church days. I never can keep the run of them." + +"We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be +perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could +make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have +been certain to object if we had made any mistake." + +"I'm very glad," said Adeline. "I know father will be glad to have Mr. +Wade here. He's taken a great fancy to him." + +"Mr. Wade's very nice," said Suzette, coolly. "I shouldn't have liked to +have it without him." + +They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at +larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her +escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and +from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and +then went on talking. + +"Shall you have any of the South Hatboro' people?" her sister asked. + +"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little +smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; +or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack +Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she +went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he +were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now +to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise +suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a +quarrel." + +Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always +afraid you'll get--" + +"To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly +dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in +the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, +"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put +an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't +believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the +point." + +"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you +needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; +and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him +here." + +Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see +me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him +at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his +explanations." + +"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak." + +"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his +weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and +didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be +explained." + +"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the +world, after the way he's treated you!" + +"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in +love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other +things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?" + +She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the +chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet +nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second +husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a +rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and +returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and +undying thing is a slight. That lasts--with _me_!" + +Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from +the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant +it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced--" + +Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, _you're_ in love with him! +Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at +the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each +rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, +across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said, +with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have +to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb--as +good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, +come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!" + +She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. +"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had +reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little +boy--" + +"Well, that's _like_ you, Adeline! To bring _that_ up! _No_, indeed! +It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he _isn't_ quite one of the +family. What an idea!" + +"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise. + +"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl, +with some relenting. "When is it to be?" + +"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's +selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts +or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them +you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will +understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly +fib like this seemed no harm to her. + + + + +X. + + +In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the +coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead +child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it +wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me; +that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him +back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said, +and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work +to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live." + +The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one +lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's +watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she +can't seem to sense the comfort of it." + +"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon +her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more +care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you +talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and +nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up +against death, but I don't want any _comfort_. You want to see Elbridge, +Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep +about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have +to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such things to each other +as women do, big fools as they be!" + +Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity for Mrs. Newton and +expressed that she was hardly accountable for what she was saying. + +"He used to complain of me for lettin' Arty get out into the stable +among the horses; but I guess he won't be troubled that way _much_ +more," said the mother; and then something in Miss Northwick's face +seemed to stay her in her wild talk; and she asked, "Want I should call +him for you?" + +"No, no," said Adeline, "I'll go right through to him, myself." She knew +the way from the coachman's dwelling into the stable, and she found +Elbridge oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged attention to +the work, which he hardly turned from to look at her. "Elbridge," she +asked, "did you drive father to the depot yesterday morning?" + +"Yes, ma'am, I did." + +"When did he say he would be back?" + +"Well, he said he couldn't say, exactly. But I understood in a day or +two." + +"Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset?" + +"No, ma'am, I didn't hear him say as he did." + +"Then it's a mistake; and of course I knew it was a mistake. There's +more than one Northwick in the world, I presume." She laughed a little +hysterically; she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with the +nervous tremor that passed over her. + +"Why, what is it, Miss Northwick?" said Elbridge with a perception of +the trouble in her voice through the trouble in his own heart. He +stopped pulling the greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned +towards her. + +"Oh, nothing. There's been an accident on the Union and Dominion +Railroad; and of course it's a mistake." + +She handed him the paper, folded to the column which she wished to show, +and he took it between two finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as +possible, and stood reading it. She went on saying, "He wouldn't be on +the train if he was at Ponkwasset; I got the paper when I first came +down stairs, but I didn't happen to read the account till just now; and +then I thought I'd run out and see what father said to you about where +he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, too, and--" Her +voice growing more and more wistful, died away in the fascination of +watching the fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half-column +of scare-heads, and then followed down to the meagre details of the +dispatch eked out with double-leading to cover space. + +It appeared that the Northern express had reached Wellwater Junction, on +the Union and Dominion line, several hours behind time, and after the +usual stop there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the United +States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just after leaving the +Junction, run off the track. "The deadly car stove got in its work" on +the wreck, and many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the +parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list of the killed and +wounded, but several bodies were identified, and among the names of +passengers in the Pullman that of T. W. Northwick was reported, from a +telegram received by the conductor at Wellwater asking to have a seat +reserved from that point to Montreal. + +"It ain't him, I know it ain't, Miss Northwick," said Elbridge. He +offered to give her the paper, but took another look at it before he +finally yielded it. "There's lots of folks of the same name, I don't +care what it is, and the initials ain't the ones." + +"No," she said, doubtfully, "but I didn't like the last name being the +same." + +"Well, you can't help that; and as long as it ain't the initials, and +you know your father is safe and sound at the Mills, you don't want to +worry." + +"No," said Adeline. "You're sure he told you he was going to the Mills?" + +"Why, didn't he tell _you_ he was? I don't recollect just what he said. +But he told me about that note he left for me, and that had the money in +it for the fun'al--" Elbridge stopped for a moment before he added, "He +said he'd telegraph just which train he wanted me to meet him when he +was comin' back.... Why, dumn it! I guess I _must_ be crazy. We can +settle it in half an hour's time--or an hour or two at the outside--and +no need to worry about it. Telegraph to the Mills and find out whether +he's there or not." + +He dropped his harness, and went to the telephone and called up the +Western Union operator at the station. He had the usual telephonic +contention with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but he got her +at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset Falls, asking whether +Northwick was at the Mills. + +"There!" he said, "I don't believe but what that'll fix it all right. +And I'll bring you in the answer myself, when it comes, Miss Northwick." + +"I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, when--" + +"I guess you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it +wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be +a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, +and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for +him, interpreted them aright. + +She stayed to add, "I don't know what he could have been on that train +for, any way, do you?" + +"No, and he wa'n't on it; you'll find that out." + +"It'll be very provoking," she said, forecasting the minor trouble of +the greater trouble's failure. "Everybody will wonder if it isn't +father, and we shall have to tell them it isn't." + +"Well, that won't be so bad as havin' to tell 'em it is," said Elbridge, +getting back for the moment to his native dryness. + +"That's true," Adeline admitted. "Don't speak to anybody about it till +you hear." She knew from his making no answer that he would obey her, +and she hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the +intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world. + +She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her day in Boston and +the excitement of their talk at night, which she suspected had prevented +the girl from sleeping early. Elbridge's sympathetic incredulity had +comforted her, if it had not convinced her, and she possessed herself in +such patience as she could till the answer should come from the mills. +If her father were there, then it would be all right; and in the +meantime she found some excuses for not believing the worst she feared. +There was no reason in the world why he should be on that train; there +was no reason why she should identify him with that T. W. Northwick in +the burnt-up car; that was not his name, and that was not the place +where he would have been. + + + + +XI. + + +There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between +Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an +answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony +and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could +have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether +misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned +down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain +told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended, +she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home +with her. + +"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her +troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her. + +"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning +and began to cry. + +"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and +with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought +it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel +for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow +to her--so sudden, and her only child." + +"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have--have you seen +the--paper this morning?" + +"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I +thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?" + +"No, nothing. Only--only--" Adeline had not been able to separate +herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage +pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly, +but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you +see--see--" She stopped, and handed him the paper. + +He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her +trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of +reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the +train?" + +"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part +about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't +have been on the train at all. Only the name--" + +"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he +would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to +be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of +possibility. + +"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the +Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there +must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before +the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep +round after him when--" + +"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news +is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station, +and find out whether any answer has been--" + +"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will +telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you +haven't something to do, and stay with us till we--" + +"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the +accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the +horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts +with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been +on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability. + +Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby, +which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got +into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once; +"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at +Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some +hosses there--" + +"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply. + +Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well, +no, he hain't been, yet--" + +Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks. + +At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to +the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where +this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the +world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight +of Elbridge lifting something from the floor. + +"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a +little faint, and--" + +"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and +setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll +get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping +over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air +began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, +"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline +answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is. +Let us get her into the library on the lounge." + +She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried +Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly +about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come +back. + +Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When +she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the +clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her." + +"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle +eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and +physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the +morning paper, and among the passengers--the missing--was one of the +name of Northwick--" + +"But father is at the Mills!" + +"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure--and word +has come that he--isn't there." + +"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty +incredulity. + +Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving +it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to +one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while +her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came +from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity. + +"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the +train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at +this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and +came back to the other two. + +"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable--" + +"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at +the Mills?" + +"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette, +scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or--" + +"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought." + +"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there." + +"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a +little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries +there; and--" + +"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going +farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in +the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see +the paper first?" + +"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly. + +"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?" + +Adeline's silence made confession. + +"What I think is, we'd better all have _lunch_," said Suzette, and she +went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't +you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who +answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see +Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when +the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will +drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall +not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be +no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad +guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and +came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe +he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for +the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last +night. The express has to come up from Boston--" She stopped and ran +over the time-table of the route. "Well, he _could_ get a connecting +train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did." + +She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then +suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready +yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and +I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father +was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before +yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph +to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home, +Adeline, till I know something definite." + +The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that +betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste, +and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, +untasted. + +"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till +she comes back!" she entreated. + +Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a +harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said. + +She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they +heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then +came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away. + +Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as +one can in the suspense of a strong emotion. + +"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he +were a little abashed by it. + +"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that +she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every +minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd--I mustn't keep +you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical +strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be +anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!" + +She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really +wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away, +before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and +he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early +winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl +had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be +resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had +now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the +presumptuous rumor and destroy it. + +Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village +from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped +into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their +feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the +side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and +saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and +the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque +sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and +then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron +filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her +to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was +another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon +liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his +astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays +nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if +fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew +it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her +friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her +brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of +it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at +the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and +he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater +now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing +is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills. +Some one was asking for him there yesterday." + +"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested." + +"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet." + +"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very +provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline +know." + +"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of +good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he +suggested to Louise. + +"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you. +Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we +were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous." + +"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep +thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this +fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she +called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add, +"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something +definite?" + +Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a +resolute cheerfulness. + + + + +XII. + + +The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the +suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two +more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade +loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was +such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its +strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the +moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed +roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the +witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to +her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help +bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible. + +He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the +platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two +of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some +wornout rails with new ones. + +"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, +Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his +face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in +position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the +plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, +free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer. + +"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor, +even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association +with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of +the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief +just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: +in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their +work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which +ennobled the scene. + +When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade, +who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the +moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her +father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that +matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it. +"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or--" + +Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height +with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss +Northwick's father?" + +"Very little--nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in +the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just +met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at +the station." + +Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk +from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the +station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of +the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't +follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and +directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the +station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he +met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I +should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our +state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust +can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the +business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that +doesn't belong to him?" + +"What do you mean, Matt?" + +"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick +was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked." + +"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe +that?" + +"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss +Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I +was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that +wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt +that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In +fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut +their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding +defaulter." + +"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These +things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind +of--" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's +revery in which he seemed to have been far absent. + +"Have you seen much of the family this winter?" + +"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've +been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at +their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with +the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I +don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all +kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was +willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that _she_ kept the +family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture." + +"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared +anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her." + +Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean, +Matt? Is there anything besides--" + +"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him +steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary +tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something +that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what +Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their +suspicions." + +"Right?" + +"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter +to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the +directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the +face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make +up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best +thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke +his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the +defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no +question about it." + +"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts +which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible--do you +suppose--imagine--that it was really he who was in that burning car? +What an awful fate!" + +"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe +ground in regard to a thing of that kind--the only ground." + +"The only ground?" + +"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt. + +"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of +the Board--called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names--and told +him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident +on his way home." + +"Ah!" + +"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this +morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he +was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused +his death--I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything +of the kind." + +"Of course," said Wade, compassionately. + +"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the +devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean +anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any +superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a +friend--or a victim--of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way +out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke +from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been +telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his +business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my +coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two +poor women." + +"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst +always seems to do." + +"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to +fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be +when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that +awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was +running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it." + +"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?" + +"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but +sorrow and shame have to come out--I don't know why, but they do. Then, +when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the +cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in +silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in +words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that +bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she +took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating +with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it +was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!" + +"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was +very good of her to come." + +"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head +up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her +friendship with Miss Northwick--she's so much younger than I, and they +came together when I was abroad--but I've fancied she wasn't much liked +among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read +that report, nothing would do but she must come." + +"Of course." + +"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a +sacrifice for him to let us come." + +"I don't understand." + +"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick; +and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to +cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a +rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have +some interest in getting him out of the way." + +"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as +Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even +from the man's son. + +"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach +to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt. + +Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the +case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor +sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so +little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to +make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins +to God!" + +"Ah, I'm with you _there_!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther +through his friend's arm. + +They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for +mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life, +which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had +thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to +verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good +deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points +in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life. +Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard +they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was +not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured +in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them: +Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his +back on manufacturing. + +They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the +calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their +sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the +victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so +much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick +old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of +her doom which Matt tried to put into words. + +"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I +don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when +I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were +taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and +I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with +my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the +most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why, +just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They +will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up +everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the +world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her +head!" + +Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of +course she won't be allowed to come to want." + +"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a +disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve +everything." + +"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade. + +"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that +you--" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed +nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get +Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is." + +They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a +head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet +of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and +then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could. + +"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks +best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. +Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your +sister." + +"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll +see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch." + +The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to +meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it +to Matt and promptly turned his back on him. + +Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car +passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at +Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling. + +"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst." + +Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no. +This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting. +And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go +up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to +send if anything else comes." + +"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left +the station. "I'm going to my study, there." + +They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more +elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow. + +From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous +little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I +beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly +transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to +Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?" + +"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is +impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car." + +"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be +_our_ Mr. Northwick. Er--good-morning, sir." + +He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked +Wade, "Who in the world is that?" + +"He's a Mr. Gerrish--keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant +type." + +Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so +low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business +standing." + +"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar +of material success." + +Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is +simply seething with curiosity." + +Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down +to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was +alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble. + +"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply. + +Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater. + +"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. +"It's perfectly ridiculous! _Why_ should he have been there? I think +there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating +false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the +train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some +horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm +going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's +bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out." + +"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt. + +"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you +back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she +handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell +them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes." + +The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the +paper in his hand. + +"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully +backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing +from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater +Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's +the worst, I want to know the worst." + +Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to +gain time. + +"Of course! At such a time, I would _rather_ be alone." + +At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he +said he would like to speak with her there. + +She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, +"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my +sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this +week. What have you heard?" + +"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?" + +"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? +Must you go back?" + +"No--not exactly." + +"Not exactly? What are you driving at?" + +"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go +up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she +wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose +she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she +do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the +accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was--" + +"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She +mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her +go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this +point. "She must send somebody--some of their men. She mustn't go. It's +too hideous!" + +"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go." + +"You!" + +"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I +can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible +suspense for her." + +"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that +poor, sick old maid." + +"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left +her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for +her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more." + +"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, +Matt. _You_ couldn't do _less_! It's magnificent of you. Have you told +her, yet, that you would go?" + +"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first." + +"Oh, _I_ approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay +here till you come back--" + +"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. +"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for +them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts +with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to +Canada to escape arrest." + +He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her. + +"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope +he's killed." + +Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much +the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way." + +"When must it come out?" + +"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may +come out--some rumor of it--in the morning papers. The question is +whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be +wise, or useful." + +"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a +thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me +get away alive. I must go at once!" + +She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up +a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from. + +"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without +telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would +insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed." + +"Oh, _that_ was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to +get away." + +"I hope you won't let her suspect--" + +"Well, I _think_ you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning +round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as +sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a +warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he +was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and +he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, +fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other +than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from +her friend. + +Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library. + +"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at +Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would +be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the +same farm." + +The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head +in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, +she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe +herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an +apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable." + +"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no +news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to +that." + +"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were +red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears +came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. +Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time +we went to Quebec?" + +Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at +least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?" + +Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. +"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map +of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal +and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the +Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get +to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly +frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of +_course_, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's +usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans--" + +She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and +began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at +the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might +not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the +Springfield train at Wellwater." + +"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the +ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a +man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot +help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time +does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train--if I +don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear." + +A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette +went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing +the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on, +and her jacket over her arm. + +"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you--I had to do that--but we +both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences." +Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite +know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she +spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, +she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell +you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time +for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could +out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about +all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But +remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can +send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm +simply waiting. Will you remember that--_whatever_ happens?" + +Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief. + +"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in +formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of +them than it could to the other. + +"Come, Matt!" said Louise. + +She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they +would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then +Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and +wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette." + +"That is a good idea," said Louise. + +"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston +alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!" + +"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive, +I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him +I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall +be set down at our door in perfect safety." + +They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined +reluctantly in it. + +When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she +will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she +will trust you enough to turn to us?" + +"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall +come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections, +as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is--" + +"Yes, of course," said Matt. + +"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But +I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?" + +"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at +the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country +person." + +"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise. + +Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven +knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation +of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see +him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits +seem ugly." + +They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked +up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father +might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question +whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief +for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided +motive. + +"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said +Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness." + +"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt +answered. + +There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, +released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station +an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming +and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with +envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were +both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their +fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of +good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against +whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help +carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to +help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality +she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the +front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell +plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed +with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls +who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a +young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; +she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated +operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was +no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why +he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second +glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a +studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his +clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however +he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned +from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came +up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, +and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went +to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for +Miss Northwick. + +She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it +up." + +"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's," +said Matt. + +"All right." + +Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting +quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the +station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short +of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as +observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from +the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the +awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of +the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called +from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the +depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?" + +"Yes, I have a telegram." + +"Oh, give it to me!" + +He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But +if isn't what you expected, will you let--will you allow me--" + +As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from +his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been +there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously +in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins. + +Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn't. You--you must let me go." + +"You?" + +"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I +can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn't do. +Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I +solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or +forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish +done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if +you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you've borne +with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust +me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go +in your place on such an errand, but it really isn't so. You ought to +know that I wouldn't offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all +that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!" + +He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without +strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she +answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of +assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping +his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that +day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he +stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the +rise of ground to the southward. + + + + +XIII. + + +The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight +thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to +Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and +shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young +man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of _The +Boston Events_' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far +from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young +man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a +woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual +sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching +the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in +rows on either side of the room. + +She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for +his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself. + +"Well," he said, "let's see. No use asking if you've got coffee?" He +inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a +deep breath. + +"Baked beans?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I don't think there's anything much better than baked beans. Do +you?" + +"Well, not when you git 'em _good_," the woman admitted. "_Ril_ good." + +"And what's the matter with a piece of mince pie?" + +"I don't see's there's any great deal. Hot?" + +"Every time." + +"I _thought_ so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I'd as soon +eat a piece of I don't know what as a piece o' _cold_ mince pie." + +"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I +guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor +round inside of five minutes." + +The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship +established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need +to. Nothin' else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot +plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them +on the table before the young man, "Your pie's warmin' for you; I got +you some rolls; they're just right out the oven; and here's some the +best butter I ever put a knife to, if I _do_ say so. It's just as good +and sweet as butter can be, if it _didn't_ come from the Northwick place +at a dollar a pound." + +"Well, now, I should have thought you'd have used the Northwick butter," +said the young man with friendly irony. + +"You know the Northwick butter?" said the woman, charmed at the +discovery of another tie. + +"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a +fancy brand for the table." + +The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I'll bet you +grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy +which he did not disallow. + +"Well, I'm pretty particular," said the young man. "But I _have_ to be, +to find anything to find fault with in the way _my_ wife manages. I +don't suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick butter, now." + +"Why not?" + +"Why, if he was killed in that accident--" + +"Oh, I guess there ain't anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it +was some other Northwick. Their coachman--Elbridge Newton--was tellin' +my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at +some hosses there. He's always buyin' more hosses. I guess he must have +as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don't place any dependence on +that report." + +"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at +the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?" + +"What fellow?" + +"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and +blazing, as you may say." + +"Oh,--Mr. Putney! That's just one of his jokes. He's always down on Mr. +Northwick." + +"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble +there." + +"Labor trouble?" + +"I guess so." + +The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" +and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor +trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?" + +"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward +inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the _Events_' +young man. + +"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost +so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston +to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles." + +"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?" + +"Well, I'm a reporter--same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps +you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?" + +"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in +Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the +_Events_' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee +caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him. + +"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the +drug store that seemed to be pretty happy." + +"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife." + +"Who _is_ Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the _Events_' man. + +"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for +instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the +old Hatboro' Putneys, here." + +"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?" + +"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much +liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man +perceived that he had struck a false note. + +"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more +bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a +month on a strict prohibition basis." + +The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, +I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is +bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way +you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in +every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as +anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband." + +"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go +ahead of him, well, not in _this_ town," said the husband. + +"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes +him so down on Mr. Northwick?" + +"Well, I dunno," said the host, "_what_ it is. He's always been so. I +presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is +anything else." + +"Why, what kind of a man _is_ Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man +asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had +now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason." + +"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's +only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never +did have much to do with the place, before." + +"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?" + +"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered. + +His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue +Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to." + +"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be +merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more +available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose +slippers require constant attention?" + +"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as +that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the +workin' folks, since Mr. Peck." + +"Who was Mr. Peck?" + +"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here +two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort +of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union." + +"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. +"Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard +history of co-operation." + +"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly. + +"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he +isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on +that big place of his; and give work." + +"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the +neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The +hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been +quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a +man of the reporter's wide observation. "_He_ thinks Hatboro' was better +off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place." + +"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and +he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. +Northwick, personally?" + +The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a +moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had +anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything +against him. I guess he's a pretty good man." + +"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he _was_ going +to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. +With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to +throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?" + +"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, +sarcastically. + +"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on +in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line +of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed. + +"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion +road there. Then it's on a branch." + +"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. +_What_ did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick +family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up +his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. +"Married man myself, you know." + +"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her +husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk +in the corner of the room, and brought back the change. + +"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" +the young man asked, in pocketing his money. + +"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. +"There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the +hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. +Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, +either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't +suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to +talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell." + +"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter. + +"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew." + +"Oh, I see: second wife. Then _he's_ the young man, heigh!" + +The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat +the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en." + +The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, +and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he +had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. +Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband +long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth +crying for. + +The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of +accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so +much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his +own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist +the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended +himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular +belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one +else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if +you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was +what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the +happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, +and on his own exceptional good fortune in it. + +He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat +he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the +pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in. + +The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You +onto it, too?" + +"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion. + +"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him +alone. + +"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." +Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting +Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably +shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, +"some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He +rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and +pressed his fingers against his temples. + +"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one +another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take +something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache." + +The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth +while?" + +"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?" + +"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of +the news with us," he suggested. + +"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney. + +"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, +Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an +object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the +consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away." + +"The what is?" asked Pinney. + +"The consensus." + +"Anything like the United States Census?" + +"It isn't spelt like it." + +Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my +own wherever I find it, as George Washington said." + +"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't +know what the word means." + +"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his +book. + +"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had +revived himself with a sip or two. + +"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?" + +"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do +you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have +you. There are no scoops in it." + +"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly. + +Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a +detective--in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, +like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion. + +"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney. + +"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a +space-man can't do." + +"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and +superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at +trifles." + +"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt +up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their +emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome +to it." + +"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name +and--" + +"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind." + +"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, +anyhow. It's not a personal thing." + +"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, +but it makes the man's face burn." + +"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that +stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay +there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for +a reporter. When are you going to Boston?" + +"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own." + +"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously. + +"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you." + +"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the +cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your +diffidence is infectious, Maxwell." + + + + +XIV. + + +Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it +appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to +pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him +suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They +would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see +him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all +the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family +required him to use every means for making copy. + +He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably +doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly +well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden +palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the +inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of +baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance +gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or +a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring. + +"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney +in, and in his absence, the representative of the _Events_ made note of +the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and +of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The +inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he +returned with his card still in his hand. + +"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at +home." + +"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see +Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home." + +"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. +She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence +of an interviewer. + +"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card +which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. +Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words _Representing the Boston +Events_. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and +business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a +certain shade of authority. + +"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some +conversation with you in regard to this--this rumor--accident. Can you +tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?" + +"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. +She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the +mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to +its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She +wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do +this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not +telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; +and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to +have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this +reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior. + +"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully. + +"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days." + +"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney. + +"Yes, three or four. There _is_ one train, at half-past-twelve, I +think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you +there in three hours." + +"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?" + +"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often +take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the +Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses +from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have +run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any +reliance on that story"--she gasped the rest out--"about--that +accident." + +"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those +flying rumors--they get the names all mixed up, those country +operators." + +"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. +"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs." + +"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are +they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed +questionings. + +"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, +and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the +Falls." + +"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope +you'll find out it's all a mistake about--" + +"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman--a friend of ours--has +just gone up to Wellwater to see about it." + +"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. +I suppose you've telegraphed?" + +"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went." + +It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did +not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, +"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to +see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd +taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, +smiling. + +There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by +seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They +take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; +their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts +warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use +to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about +him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five +minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later. + +When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't +at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the +troubles." + +"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her +relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, +in summer, Miss Northwick." + +"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been +enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long +time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to +their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and +to warrant her father's safety. + +"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my +wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the +country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have +to live there." + +Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the +vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper +from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to +your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth +in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She +thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and +keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to +ask him not to do so. + +"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to--it's very kind of +you--I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely +human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away +from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now +suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home +life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, +he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, +it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him +down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given +him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; +on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and +dropped them into the deep snow. + +His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success +he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an +enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done. + +She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, +you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the _Abstract_ clear out +of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and +the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on +the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the +world." + +Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are +ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big +default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a +chance to make up his shortage--it's the old story. I've got just the +setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the +word to go ahead--" + +"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall +do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute." + +Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her +enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why +he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective +authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. +"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm +going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. +There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, +any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell +you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk. + +His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work +on the table there. It's bigger than this desk." + +"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and +followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their +simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" +He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into +it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!" + +"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a +pathetic little mouth. + +Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he +was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his +dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, +of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter +which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which +enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do +justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's +home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with +a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit +in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when +he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as +plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would +sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his +daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't +quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently +hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to +Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!" + +His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. +"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure +out of it for _me_; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of +his family, I can't help you any more." + +"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I +guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall +handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. +"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it +hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to +Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I +knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so +I didn't go." + +"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes +upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back." + +"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he +asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, +and the love he saw in them. + +Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take +air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife +often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she +saw him. + +This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, +when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the _Events_. She +had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in +a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up +the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main +dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the +clerks. + +At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in +the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready +to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, +and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under +his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more +like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He +wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they +began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the +summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first +meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. +They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social +splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that +they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value +each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the +greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they +were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was +good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great +deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a +virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual +devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great +merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they +prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so +deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of +altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and +content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married +on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been +rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their +happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest. + + + + +XV. + + +Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached +the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house +his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told +her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work. + +"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying +round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. +You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks +it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the +defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't +_do_ that." + +"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to +have you." + +"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young +fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a +business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is +getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an +owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years." + +"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother. + +"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at +this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a +wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and +he's sure to get on." + +"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged +soothingly. + +"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my +own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of +working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first +thing is to earn your bread." + +"Well, you _do_ earn yours, my son--and no one works harder to earn +it." + +"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it." + +"Oh, my son!" + +"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the +rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the +door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar +and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to +leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he +finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on +the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! +He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only +chance for a scoop." + +"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a +gentleman." + +"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the +room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of +business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I +intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to +pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps _he_ isn't +a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to +write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility +with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it." + +"He's very kind to you, Brice." + +"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my +life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every +now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room +in independent journalism?" + +Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning +the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had +not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to +put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call. + +The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, +but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He +tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat +and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather +haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, +and led him in there. + +Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after +dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange +experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and +comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over +the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the +contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', +with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she +remembered. + +The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood +irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father." + +"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very +soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along +unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for +the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes +were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her +nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far +as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of +man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, +and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's +very cold out, isn't it?" + +"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell. + +He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an +illogical sense of acquaintance with him. + +"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the +beginning of February." + +"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than +she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold +weather after the January thaw." + +"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought +of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes +any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the +proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be +a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some +of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a +walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her +father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision +gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, +he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he +found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, +as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking +up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's +library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which +was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare +Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes +without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a +scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say +next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with +no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what +he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the +country." + +"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town." + +"And how dreary," he added. + +"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be +debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this +rate." + +"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, +to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color +and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the +literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to +get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall +below. + +Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that +brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the _Daily +Abstract_, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about +this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick." + +"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about +the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! +Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?" + +"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out. + +"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how _could_ you treat him so?" + +"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! +What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of +my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?" + +"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!" + +"Saw that he was a gentleman?" + +"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not--not a common reporter +at _all_!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, +and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous +experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father +who had not been the gentleman. "You--you might have been a little +kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether +you would say anything. He didn't persist." + +"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw +always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find +himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and +admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the +way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for +you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What +does it all mean?" + +The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: +"Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I +should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I +_could_. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if +you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you +did." + +Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as +you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise +gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a +tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have +been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters +after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this +bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to +Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and +more?" + +"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was +going alone. He couldn't do less." + +"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He +turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a +strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's +this?" + +He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, +"Of course he will come back for it." + +"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll--I'll write him a note," Hilary +groaned. + +Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor +fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? +It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, +and meet all kinds of rebuffs." + +"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, +with some return to his grudge. + +"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, papa," said Louise, sweetly. + +The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came +up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his +note-book, he--" + +Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it +is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell. + + + + +XVI. + + +Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in the little triptych +mirror against one of the shelves. Her hair was not tumbled, and she +completed her toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending the +edge of her skirt over them where she stood. + +Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and she smiled a fresh +greeting to him. "We--I had just picked your note-book up. I--I'm glad +you came back, I--was a little short with you a moment ago. I--I--Mayn't +I offer you a cigar?" + +"No, thanks. I don't smoke," said Maxwell. + +"Then a glass of--It's pretty cold out!" + +"Thank you; I never drink." + +"Well, that's good! That's--sit down; sit down!--that's a very good +thing. I assure you, I don't think it's the least use, though I do both. +My boy doesn't, he's a pattern to his father." + +In spite of Hilary's invitation Maxwell remained on foot, with the +effect of merely hearing him out as he went on. + +"I--I'm sorry I haven't anything to tell about that accident. I've been +telegraphing all day, without finding out anything beyond the fact as +first reported; and now my son's gone up to Wellwater, to look it up on +the ground. It may have been our Mr. Northwick, or it may not. May I ask +how much you know?" + +"I don't know that I'm quite free to say," answered Maxwell. + +"Oh!" + +"And I didn't expect you to say anything unless you wished to make +something known. It's a matter of business." + +"Exactly," said Hilary. "But I think I might been a little civiller in +saying what I did. The rumor's been a great annoyance to me; and I like +to share my annoyances with other people. I suppose your business often +brings you in contact with men of that friendly disposition? Heigh?" +Hilary rolled the cigar he was about to light between his lips. + +"We see the average man," said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his +poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that +from the bore it is to interview." + +"I dare say that's often the worst part of it," said Hilary, lighting +his cigar, and puffing out the first great clouds. "Well, then, I may +congratulate myself on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn't know I +should come off so handsomely." + +There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell did not attempt to make +conversation. Hilary offered him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve +the parting of abruptness, "If you care to look in on me again, later +on, perhaps--" + +"Thank you," said Maxwell, and he turned to go. Then he turned back, and +after a moment's hesitation, bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, +"Good-evening!" and went out. + +Louise fetched a deep breath. "Why didn't you keep him longer, papa, and +find out all about him?" + +"I think we know all that's necessary," said her father, dryly. "At +least he isn't on my conscience any longer; and now I hope you're +satisfied." + +"Yes--yes," she hesitated. "You don't think you were too patronizing in +your reparation, papa?" + +"Patronizing?" Hilary's crest began to rise. + +"Oh, I don't mean that; but I wish you hadn't let him see that you +expected him to leap for joy when you stooped to excuse yourself." + +Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the violence he was about to +permit himself. "The next time, if you don't like my manner with people, +don't stay, Louise." + +"I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how beautifully you could do +it; and you _did_ do it beautifully. It was magnificent--perhaps _too_ +magnificent." She began to laugh and to kiss away the vexation from her +father's face, keeping her hands behind her with her shoes she had +picked up again, in them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat. + +"And did I want you to stay and entertain him here till I came in?" he +demanded, to keep from being mollified too soon. + +"No," she faltered. "_That_ was a work of necessity. He looked so sick +and sad, that he appealed to my sympathy, and besides--Do you think I +could trust you with a secret, papa?" + +"What are you talking about?" + +"Why, you see I thought he was a walking-delegate at first." + +"And was that the reason you stayed?" + +"No. That was what frightened me, and then interested me. I wanted to +find out what they were like. But that isn't the secret." + +"It's probably quite as important," Hilary growled. + +"Well, you see it's such a good lesson to me! I had slipped off my shoes +when I was lying down, and I couldn't get away, he came in so suddenly." + +"And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you were talking to that +reporter all the time in--" + +"How should he know it? You didn't know it yourself, papa. I couldn't +get my shoes on after he came, of course!" She brought them round before +her in evidence. + +"Well, it's scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous! I never come in after +you've been here without finding some part of your gear lying +round--hair-pins, or gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or +something--and I won't have it. I want you to understand that I think +it's disgraceful. I'm ashamed of you." + +"Oh, no! Not _ashamed_, papa!" + +"Yes, I am!" said her father; but he had to relent under her look of +meek imploring, and say, "or I ought to be. I don't see how you could +hold up your head." + +"I held it very _high_ up. When you haven't got your shoes on--in +company--it gives you a sort of--internal majesty; and I behaved very +loftily. But it's been a fearful lesson to me, papa!" She made her +father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, and kissed him for +his amiability. + +She said at the end of this rite, "He didn't seem much impressed even +after you had apologized, do you think, papa?" + +"No, he didn't," Hilary grumbled. "He's as stiff-necked as need be." + +"Yes," said Louise, thoughtfully. "He must be proud. How funny proud +people are, papa! I can't understand them. That was what always +fascinated me with Suzette." + +Hilary's face saddened as it softened. "Ah, poor thing! She'll have need +of all her pride, now." + +"You mean about her father," said Louise, sobered too. "Don't you hope +he's got away?" + +"What do you mean, child? That would be a very rascally wish in me." + +"Well, you'd rather he had got away than been killed?" + +"Why, of course, of course," Hilary ruefully assented. "But if Matt +finds he wasn't--in the accident, it's my business to do all I can to +bring him to justice. The man's a thief." + +"Well, then, _I_ hope he's got away." + +"You mustn't say such things, Louise." + +"Oh, _no_, papa! Only _think_ them." + + + + +XVII. + + +Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look +into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It +was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have +three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have +justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing +to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way. +Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same +errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with +them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in +agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end; +but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith +with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could +have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do, +and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. +The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck. +There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely +swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to +the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent +and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of +derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the +locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that +had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a +wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were +ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing +to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter +and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of +passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the +operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved +in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but +those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his +death. + +This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to +Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it +left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt +struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself +in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind +he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and +whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real +course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide +his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If +the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that +Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all. +But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must +be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In +any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who +must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were +really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other +fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family; +he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only +thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming +a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive; +but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse +when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her +father was dead. + +She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they +were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell +them so. + +Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he +urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was +not in the accident. + +She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no +difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her +father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by +this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was +doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when +they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight +change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to +his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them +know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very +suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else. + +Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he +thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that +he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered +nothing, she did not ask him. + +It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that +she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she +will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a +slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline +jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes; +but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief. +She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and +she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister. + +Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved, +when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel +it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of +hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help +those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it; +these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their +bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude. + +Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to +linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell. +Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was +astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last. + +"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never! +Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I +wonder you could do it!" + +"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as +well as their loss, and were of one mind about it. + +"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it--" + +"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because _you_ would have +done it for any one! But you have done it for _us_; and as long as I +live I shall remember that! Oh"--She broke off; and dropped her face +with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he +was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after +they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of +encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had +accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be +born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make +women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his +heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity +that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from +every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from +that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He +went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned +from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was +respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was +foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for +them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he +had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it +was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair. + +The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away +from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and +followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the +night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all +that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him +to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick +was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his +name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all +the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he +had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his +misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal +justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his +stand. + + + + +XVIII. + + +For forty-eight hours longer the fact of the defalcation was kept back; +but then, in view of the legal action urged by those who did not accept +the theory of Northwick's death, it had to come out, and it broke all +bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity. + +Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and it was weeks before +the editorial homilies ceased. From time to time, fresh details and +unexpected revelations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the +interest of the original fact. There were days when there was nothing +about it in the papers, and then days when it broke out in vivid +paragraphs and whole lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was +singular in its features; these were common to most of the defalcations, +great and small, which were of daily fame in the newspapers. But the +doubt as to the man's fate, and the enduring mystery of his whereabouts, +if he were still alive, were qualities that gave peculiar poignancy to +Northwick's case. Its results in the failure of people not directly +involved, were greater than could have been expected; and the sum of his +peculations mounted under investigation. It was all much worse than had +been imagined, and in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral +gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts stolen and indirectly +lost by it. There was a great deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that +the crime should have been that of a man whom no one would have dreamed +of suspecting, and there was some sufficiently ridiculous consternation +at the presence of such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial +life of Boston. + +In the _Events_, Pinney made his report of the affair the work of art +which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's +masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with +its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to +page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In +the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a +devotion to the interests of the _Events_ and its readers. With every +hour the painful impressions of his interview with Miss Northwick grew +fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no +color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening +the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow +upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the +family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly +on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the +victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the +facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the +capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force +the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase +widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the +library into which "the _Events_' representative was politely ushered," +was furnished with "all the appliances of a cultured taste." The works +of the standard authors in costly bindings graced its shelves; +magnificent paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and +alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously received the _Events_' +reporter, was suitably enriched; her years were discounted, and her +beauty approached to the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about +Pinney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial grandeur upon the +Northwick place, outside as well as inside. He imparted a romantic +consequence to Hatboro' itself: "A thriving New England town, proud of +its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern prosperity, with a +population of some five or six thousand souls, among whose working men +and women modern ideas of the most advanced character had been realized +in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-operative kitchen and +its clientèle of intelligent members and patrons." + +People of all occupations became leading residents in virtue of taking +Pinney into their confidence, and "A Prominent Proletarian" achieved the +distinction of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of J. M. +Northwick's character among the working-classes. "The Consensus of +Public Feeling," in portraying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the +proprietary word he had seized, formed the subject of some dramatic +paragraphs; and the whole formed a rich and fit setting for the main +facts of Northwick's undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures +which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate. + +Pinney's masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could write only at that +moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the _Events_ could publish +only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was +flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by +accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But +it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more +philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle Ages. + +The _Abstract_ addressed a different class of readers, and aimed at a +different effect in its treatment of public affairs. We look upon +newspapers as having a sort of composite temperament, formed from the +temperaments of all the different men employed on them; but, as a matter +of fact, they each express the disposition and reflect the temperament +of one controlling spirit, which all the other dispositions and +temperaments yield to. This is so much the case that it is hard to +efface the influence of a strong mind from the journal it has shaped, +even when it is no longer actively present in it. A good many years +before the time of the Northwick defalcation, the _Events_ had been in +the management of a journalist, once well-known in Boston, a certain +Bartley Hubbard, who had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who +had thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After he left it, the +owner tried several devices for elevating and reforming it, but failed, +partly because he was himself a man of no ideals but those of the +counting-room, and largely because the paper could not recover from the +strong slant given it without self-destruction. So the _Events_ +continued what Bartley Hubbard had made it, and what the readers he had +called about it liked it to be: a journal without principles and without +convictions, but with interests only; a map of busy life, indeed, but +glaringly colored, with crude endeavors at picturesqueness, and with no +more truth to life than those railroad maps where the important centres +converge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, and leave +rival roads wriggling faintly about in uninhabited solitudes. In +Hubbard's time the _Abstract_, then the _Chronicle-Abstract_, was in +charge of the editor who had been his first friend on the Boston press, +and whom he finally quarreled with on a point which this friend +considered dishonorable to Hubbard. Ricker had not since left the paper, +and though he was called a crank by some of the more progressive and +reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal of a conscience in +journalism; he gave the Abstract a fixed character and it could no more +have changed than the _Events_, without self-destruction. The men under +him were not so many as Cæsar's soldiers, and that, perhaps, was the +reason why he knew not only their names but their qualities. When +Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which the detectives had +entrusted to him for provisional use, and asked to be assigned to the +business of working it up, Kicker consented, but he consented +reluctantly. He thought Maxwell was better for better things; he knew he +was a ravenous reader of philosophy and sociology, and he had been early +in the secret of his being a poet; it had since become an open secret +among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both honor and +dishonor. + +"I shouldn't think you'd like to do it, Maxwell," said Ricker, kindly. +"It isn't in your line, is it? Better give it to some of the other +fellows." + +"It's more in my line than you suppose, Mr. Ricker," said the young +fellow. "It's a subject I've looked up a great deal lately. I once +thought"--he looked down bashfully--"of trying to write a play about a +defaulter, and I got together a good many facts about defalcation. +You've no idea how common it is; it's about the commonest fact of our +civilization." + +"Ah! Is that so?" asked Ricker with ironical deference to the bold +generalizer. "Who else is 'onto' this thing?" + +"Pinney, of the _Events_." + +"Well, he's a dangerous rival, in some ways," said Ricker. "When it +comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for +him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker +pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his +forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and +Maxwell knew that he was authorized to do the work. + +He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the +affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had +expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he +worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at +theirs. He waited till the next morning to begin, however, for he was +too fagged after he came home from the Hilarys'; he rose early and got +himself a cup of tea over the gas-burner; before the house was awake he +was well on in his report. By nightfall he had finished it, and then he +carried it to Ricker. The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave +Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two +separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts +which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set +down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone +which the _Abstract_ affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the +facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he +saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, +"Hello, young man! Who invited you to take the floor?" + +"Nobody. I found I couldn't embody my general knowledge of defalcation +in the report without impertinence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my +mind somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don't expect you to take +it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere." + +Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explanation. He went on reading +the manuscript, and when he ended, he took up the report again, and +compared it with the editorial in length. "If we printed these things as +they stand it would look like a case of the tail wagging the dog." + +Maxwell began again, "Oh, I didn't expect--" + +"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report +was at least physically inadequate." + +"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like +padding or faking, and I don't myself." + +Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now +handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do +you think you could weld these two things together?" + +"I don't know." + +"Suppose you try." + +"As editorial, or--" + +"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here." + +He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat +down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of +kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory +sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the +editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in +half an hour he handed the result to Ricker. + +"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil +in his hand. + +Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his +article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his +pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire +paragraphs. + +When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it +now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I _must_ +say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it." + +Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here, +young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying +them?" + +"I don't know--" + +"_I_ know. I know you _didn't_. Every one of them rang false. They were +there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But +by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking +them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you +ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you +didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish; +he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on: +"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have +killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have +suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out +of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique, +and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made +any secret of my belief that you have talent." + +"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The +surgeon's knife hurts though it cures. + +When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the +young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and +we're not going to have any report." + +"I told you it was good!" + +Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said, +"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue +pencil. It's perfectly dead." + +It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it +did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he +was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work, +and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was +not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its +symmetry and force, as he read and read it again. + +He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter, +and had accused the structure of society. There must be something +rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning +brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our +country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their +employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and +corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our +commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that +while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in +business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create +surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of +which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the +_Abstract_ reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home, +and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was +universally believed that he had run away with other people's money +merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting +for his whereabouts. + +At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit +to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a +vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the +historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and +manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a +closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the +first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions +and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and +proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout +so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote +in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical +comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had +been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and +quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young +fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it +when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt +afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere +accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for +his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their +material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and +strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all +off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised +Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or +unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he +admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one +except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane +temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the +play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the +conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred +instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted +perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the +compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the +reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact +that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without +peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for +the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers, +cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the +uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They +were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune; +they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth; +they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not +belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans +they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace +the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to +make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some +shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand +their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada. + +In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than +to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those +cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to +observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon +the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker +employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of +almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black +pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was +adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the +leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the +listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife +and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on +his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and +in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to +come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same +crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this +soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there +nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected +to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to +business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned +that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle +for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had +opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. +The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the +same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape +the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to +consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do +without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a +paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without +such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the +semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank +socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing +sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative +shape. + + + + +XIX. + + +The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as they chose. When Matt +was at home, his mother and he were usually first; then his father came, +and Louise last. They took the _Events_, as many other people did, +because with all its faults it was a thorough newspaper; and they +maintained their self-respect by taking the _Abstract_. The morning that +the defalcation came out, Matt sent and got all the other papers, which +he had glanced through and talked over with his mother before his father +joined them at nine o'clock. + +Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of +his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's +Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it +was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers +were atrocious, but that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing +more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in that of the +directors, who gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of +publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were +fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against +his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had +suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised +the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, +even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these +blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called +him. He got through the various accounts in the various papers, by +broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these +terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he +came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over. + +"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final +effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered +from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort." + +"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily. + +"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to +pick yourself up." + +"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or +rather, at the copy of the _Abstract_ which Matt was hiding behind, and +he said, "What have you got there, Matt?" + +"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most +uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!" + +"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently; +and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as +Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood; +its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly +refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so +enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the +writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading +was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined +Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such +cases. + +"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept +from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added, +"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told +them." + +"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't +be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them +shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers +are so bad--" + +"Not bad!" cried his father. + +"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They +probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about +the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used +to. But I wish I knew who did this _Abstract_ article; I should like to +thank him." + +"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them +there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were +willing to have them come to us, no matter _what_ happened?" + +"Louise and I both tried to do that," said her son, "when we were there +together; and when I reported to them after Wellwater, I told them again +and again what our wish was." + +"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, "I am glad we have done everything we could. +At first I doubted the wisdom of your taking Louise to see them; but now +I'm satisfied that it was right. And I'm satisfied that your father did +right in getting that wretched creature the chance he abused." + +"Oh, yes," said Matt. "That was right. And I'm thoroughly glad he's out +of it. If he's still alive, I'm glad he's out of it." + +Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his various remorses and +misgivings, but now he broke out. "And I think you're talking abominable +nonsense, Matt. I didn't get Northwick given that chance to enable him +to escape the consequences of his rascality. Why shouldn't he be +punished for it?" + +"Because it wouldn't do the least good, to him or to any one else. It +wouldn't reform him, it wouldn't reform anything. Northwick isn't the +disease; he's merely the symptom. You can suppress him; but that won't +cure the disease. It's the whole social body that's sick, as this +article in the _Abstract_ implies." + +"I don't see any such implication in it," his father angrily retorted. +"Your theory would form an excuse for the scoundrelism of every +scoundrel unhung. Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it +doesn't begin at home, with every man in it? I tell you, it would be a +very good thing for Northwick, and every rogue like him, if he could be +made serve his term in State's prison." + +The controversy raged a long time without departing from these lines of +argument on either side. Mrs. Hilary listened with the impatience women +feel at every absence from the personal ground, the only ground of +reality. When Matt had got so far from it as to be saying to his father, +"Then I understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for +his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the +same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in +upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and +wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, +who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw +that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman +always wants some one punished; some woman, first, or then some other +woman's men kindred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and Mrs. +Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk between her son and husband, +because she felt Matt to be doubly wrong. + +But when she spoke, her husband roared at her, "Don't interrupt, Sarah!" +and then he roared at Matt, "I tell you that the individual is not +concerned in the matter! I tell you that it is the interest, the +necessity of the community to punish A for his sins without regard to B, +and for my part, I shall leave no stone unturned till we have found +Northwick, dead or alive; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to +have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment." He shouted these +words out, and thumped the breakfast table so that the spoons clattered +in the cups, and Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was saying +just inside the door. + +"To see Mr. Hilary? A lady? Did she send her card?" + +"She wouldn't give her name, ma'am; she said she didn't wish to, ma'am. +She wished to see Mr. Hilary just a moment in the reception-room." + +Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another bang with his fist, +but his wife succeeded in stopping him, with a repetition of Patrick's +message. + +"I won't see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're +in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are +claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your +sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a +brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other +letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's +little game has landed him in jail." + +"Oh, I admit that the A's had better suffer for their sins; but I doubt +if the punishment which a man gets against his will is the right kind of +suffering. If this man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear +the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would have been a good +thing for himself and for everybody else; it would have been a real +warning. But he ran away." + +"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry +come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of +your company." + +"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, +as I've told you." + +"What _I_ did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I +gave him a chance to make himself an honest man--" + +"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you _must_ go and get rid of that woman, +at least; or let _me_." + +Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look +about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out +of the room. + +His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a +dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed," +before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For +the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the +apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with +the demand: + +"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?" + +"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with +her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could +say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other. + +"Is it true?" she asked. + +He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do +it. "Why, we hope--we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about +his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt--" + +"It isn't _that_. It's worse than that. It's that other thing--that the +papers say--that he was a defaulter--dishonest. Is _that_ true?" + +"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he +felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would +have been possible. "Those newspapers--confound them!--you know how they +get things all--You needn't mind what the papers say." + +"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when +he's--What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and +so I came to you--as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would +tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how +_good_ he is! I--You know that he never wronged any one--that he +_couldn't_!" + +"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to +me--quite right. How--how is your sister? You must stay, now--Louise +isn't down, yet--and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary +at the table. You must join us. She can assure you--Matt is quite +confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to +the--He--" + +Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, +and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she +dropped into a chair, and he had to stay. + +"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest +foundation for what the papers say this morning?" + +"How, foundation? My dear child--" + +"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?" + +"Well--well, there are always questions arising." + +"Is there any question of my father's accounts--his honesty?" + +"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much--want of +confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to +time." + +"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one +suspect him?" + +Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring +to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us--some of +the directors--have had doubts--" + +"Have _you_?" + +"My dear girl--my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly +say, that when this examination--when the subject came up for discussion +at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father +should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed +that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the +girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his +part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing +for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, +and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm +is meant, and none is done--unless--unless the venture turns out +unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was +getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; +but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and +that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole +affair was very well put in the _Abstract_. Have you seen it? You must +see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. +Hilary--we have the paper--" + +Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has +been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?" + +"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point--" + +"Do _you_?" + +"I can't say--I don't think he meant----He expected to restore it, of +course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he +thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the +company's funds in his private enterprises." + +"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the +room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise +coming down the stairs. + +"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms +around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a +woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and +sympathizes utterly with her. + +Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise." + +"No, no! You shan't go. I want you--you must stay with us, now. I know +Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report." + +"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another +report--don't you know it?--in the paper this morning." Louise tried to +look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And +your father has been saying my father is a thief." + +"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out. + +It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave +a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he +could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone. + + + + +XX. + + +The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to +Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any +sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and +accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, +that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to +work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to +establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could +shake. + +Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused +him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. +But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in +business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would +not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed +other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his +own, and could not; that was all. + +With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they +were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they +encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. +But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, +when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly +establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this +servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. +She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she +willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her +husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and +tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not +freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the +Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had +always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind. + +Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in +the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of +their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the +house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the +consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of +mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages +and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that +the next time she hoped to see him. + +One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her +winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, +upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she +failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with +urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second +attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of +Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity +which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. +Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished +himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the +directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband +forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief +in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused +him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the +railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came +upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced +before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick +had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in +seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was +now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', +those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty +leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to +his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and +exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But +Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. +He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing +to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive. + +"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to +the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance +conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, +in Boston, who has shielded and--and protected him from the start, +and--and right along. I don't know _why_; but if I was one of the +Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I _should_. I should make a point of +inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had +plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on." + +The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one +cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, +I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate +belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The +listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother +Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have +done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of +the soldier's monument." + +"I _never_ wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr. +Gerrish retorted angrily. + +Putney's spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the +contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he +was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by +which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects +and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the +worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went +on, now: "Didn't you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl +they've got there in circus-clothes." They all laughed; Putney had a +different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier's monument +every time he spoke of it. "And it would suggest what those poor fellows +really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a +whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don't have to +be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a +necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the +courts if there were no rogues? We must _have_ Northwicks. It's a pity +that the Northwicks should have families; but I don't blame the +Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure +to end in. I'm glad the roof can't be taken from over those women's +heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding +the property to them." + +"It's downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!" Gerrish +shouted. + +"Oh, no, it isn't, Billy. It's law. You must respect the law and the +rights of property. You'll be wanting the strikers to burn down the +shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You're getting awfully +incendiary, Billy." + +Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the +group, and there were many people in Hatboro', including most of the +women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with +Northwick's case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those +girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their +father's crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest +people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where +the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the +houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not +even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro' shops who +said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much +about them, and the noise of Northwick's misdeeds died first amid the +din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the +respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded +envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, +and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and +that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those +daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak +to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset +Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and +perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to +do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they +learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the +Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not +long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in +the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see +the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy +of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of +judging or of meting with the fullest measure. + +In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands +were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but +Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of +sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men +of Hatboro' a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded +as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, +but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be +expected of a man in Northwick's position; it happened every day +somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did +not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were +fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, +reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them +regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot +of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to +gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, +and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the +matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely +believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the +same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were +mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the +railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing +his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue's Rest, as Putney called the +Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick's +survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When +Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something +like, "Well, Joel, how's cremation, this morning?" + +"Just booming, Squire. That stock's coming up, right along. Bound to be +worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin', yet." This, or +something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he +asked, "Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They +say--paper does--that the reason the president hung off from making a +complaint was that he didn't rightly see how he could have the ashes +indicted. _He_ believes in it, any way." + +"Well," said Putney, "the fathers of New England all died in the blessed +hope of infant damnation. But that didn't prove it." + +"That's something so, Squire. Guess you got me there," said Gates. + +"I can understand old Hilary's not wanting to push the thing, under the +circumstances, and I don't blame him. But the law must have its course. +Hilary's got his duty to do. _I_ don't want to do it for him." + + + + +XXI. + + +Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he +was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the +persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was +really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as +any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the +tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But +still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was +all talked over in Hilary's family, where he was pitied and forgiven in +that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks +we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, +and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had +tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed +that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when +he did not talk of it, no one must mention it. + +Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly +because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. +He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business +repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the +defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the +wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed +that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a +public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that +Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice +but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could +not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick's escape. + +He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would +work Northwick's daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette +answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went +away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally +appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever +warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that +they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were +generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a +thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go +to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience. + +It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate +her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She +treated her own father's course as something above suspicion, as +something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have +returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to +her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day +his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home +where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it +from them. + +Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might +have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father's +regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and +she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the +sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression +in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The +sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their +forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like +compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her +will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked +and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve +themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited +wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her +mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; +she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom +the girl saw. + +Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did +not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of +truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the +sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started +to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go +to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take +Louise back to the station. + +It was a clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and +some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out +of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot. + +They talked at arm's length of the weather; and then Suzette said +abruptly, "Of course, Louise, your father will have to do what they want +him to, against--papa. I understand that." + +"Oh, Sue--" + +"Don't! I should wish him to know that I wasn't stupid about it." + +"I'm sure," Louise adventured, "he would do anything to help you!" + +Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good feeling. "We don't +believe papa has done anything wrong, or anything he wouldn't have made +right if he had lived. We shall not let them take his property from us +if we can help it." + +"Of course not! I'm sure papa wouldn't wish you to." + +"It would be confessing that they were right, and we will _never_ do +that. But I don't blame your father, and I want him to know it." + +Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it +seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had +never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a +misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people +would listen to reason. + +Sue released herself, and said, looking away from her friend: "It has +been hard. He is dead; but we haven't even been allowed to see him laid +in the grave." + +"Oh, perhaps," Louise sobbed out, "he _isn't_ dead! So many people think +he isn't--" + +Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. "Do you think that if he +were alive he would leave us without a word--a sign?" + +"No, no! He couldn't be so cruel! I didn't mean that! He is dead, and I +shall always say it." + +They walked on without speaking, but at the gate Suzette offered to +return Louise's embrace. The tears stood in her eyes, as she said, "I +would like to send my love to your mother--if she would care for it." + +"Care for it!" + +"And tell your brother I can never forget what he did for us." + +"He can never forget that you let him do it," said Louise, with eager +gratitude. "He would have liked to come with me, if he hadn't thought it +might seem intrusive." + +"_Intrusive!_ Your _brother_!" Sue spoke the words as if Matt were of +some superior order of beings. + +The intensity of feeling she put into her voice brought another gush of +tears into Louise's eyes. "Matt _is_ good. And I will tell him what you +say. He will like to hear it." They looked down the road, but they could +not see Simpson coming yet. "Don't wait, Sue," she pleaded. "Do go back! +You will be all worn out." + +"No, I will stay till your carriage comes," said Suzette; and they +remained a moment silent together. + +Then Louise said, "Matt has got a new fad: a young man that writes on +the newspapers--" + +"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence. + +"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very +handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, +but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's +awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't +have to interview people any more--he came to interview papa, the first +time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got +some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what +he wrote about--about, your--troubles, Sue." + +"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel." + +"His wasn't cruel. It was in the _Abstract_." + +"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered +unrelentingly. + +"Did he? I thought he only said _if_ he did. I don't believe he said +more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad +health. But he's awfully clever." + +The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving +furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms +round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come +home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have +you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!" + +"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all +the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore +it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We +shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the +lodge here." + +Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would +be beautiful. + +"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can +move back into the house in the winter." + +This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, and she parted from her +friend in more comfort than she could have imagined when they met. She +carried her feeling of elation home with her, and was able to report Sue +in a state of almost smiling prosperity, and of perfect resignation, if +not acquiescence, in whatever the company should make Hilary do. She +figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of ally of the +Northwicks, and she was disappointed that he seemed to derive so little +pleasure from Sue's approval. But he generally approved of all that she +could remember to have said for him to the Northwicks, though he did not +show himself so appreciative of the situation as Matt. She told her +brother what Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to intrude +upon her, and she added that now he must certainly go to see her. + + + + +XXII. + + +A day or two later, when Matt Hilary went to Hatboro', he found Wade in +his study at the church, and he lost no time in asking him, "Wade, what +do you know of the Miss Northwicks? Have you seen them lately?" + +Wade told him how little he had seen Miss Northwick, and how he had not +seen Suzette at all. Then Matt said, "I don't know why I asked you, +because I knew all this from Louise; she was up here the other day, and +they told her. What I am really trying to get at is, whether you know +anything more about how that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you +know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble about her father +came out?" + +Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, as usual, and it really +related so wholly to Suzette in the thoughts of both the young men, that +neither of them found it necessary to limit it explicitly. + +"I feel quite sure he hasn't," said Wade, "though I can't answer +positively." + +"Then that settles it!" Matt walked away to one of Wade's gothic +windows, and looked out. When he turned and came back to his friend, he +said, "If he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he would have +tried to see her at such a time, don't you?" + +"I can't imagine his not doing it. I never thought him a cad." + +"No, nor I." + +"He would have done it unless--unless that woman has some hold that +gives her command of him. He's shown great weakness, to say the least. +But I don't believe there's anything worse. What do the village people +believe?" + +"All sorts of lurid things, some of them; others believe that the affair +is neither more nor less than it appears to be. It's a thing that could +be just what it is in no other country in the world. It's the phase that +our civilization has contributed to the physiognomy of scandal, just as +the exile of the defaulter is the phase we have contributed to the +physiognomy of crime. Public opinion here isn't severe upon Mrs. +Wilmington or Mr. Northwick." + +"I'm not prepared to quarrel with it on that account," said Matt, with +the philosophical serenity which might easily be mistaken for irony in +him. "The book we get our religion from teaches leniency in the judgment +of others." + +"It doesn't teach cynical indifference," Wade suggested. + +"Perhaps that isn't what people feel," said Matt. + +"I don't know. Sometimes I dread to think how deeply our demoralization +goes in certain directions." + +Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and +Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal +ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further +considered in regard to her?" + +"In regard to Miss Sue Northwick? I don't know whether I quite +understand what you mean." + +"I mean, is it anybody's duty--yours or mine--to go to the man and find +him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make +an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's +holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he +could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be +everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely +more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman--What +do you think? He could be reparation, protection, safety, everything!" + +Wade shook his head. "It would be useless. Wilmington knows very well +that such a girl would never let him be anything to her now when he had +slighted her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in love with +her, which I doubt, he couldn't do it." + +"No, I suppose not," said Matt. After a little pause, he added, "Then I +must go myself." + +"Go, yourself? What do you mean?" Wade asked. + +"Some one must try to make them understand just how they are situated. I +don't think Louise did; I don't think she knew herself, how the legal +proceedings would affect them; and I think I'd better go and make it +perfectly clear." + +"I can imagine it won't be pleasant," said Wade. + +"No," said Matt, "I don't expect that. But I inferred, from what she +said to Louise, that she would be willing to see me, and I think I had +better go." + +He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade said heartily, "Why, of +course. It's the only thing," and Matt went away with a face which was +cheerful with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure. + +He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, and coming forward +with the magnificent, haughty movement she had. As she caught sight of +him, she started, and then almost ran toward him. "Oh! _You_!" she said, +and she shrank back a little, and then put her hand impetuously out to +him. + +He took it in his two, and bubbled out, "Are you walking somewhere? Are +you well? Is your sister at home? Don't let me keep you! May I walk with +you?" + +Her smile clouded. "I'm only walking here in the avenue. How is Louise? +Did she get home safely? It was good of her to come here. It isn't the +place for a gay visit." + +"Oh, Miss Northwick! It was good of you to see her. And we were very +happy--relieved--to find that you didn't feel aggrieved with any of _us_ +for what must happen. And I hope you don't feel that I've taken an +advantage of your kindness in coming?" + +"Oh, no!" + +"I've just been to see Wade." Matt reddened consciously. "But it doesn't +seem quite fair to have met you where you had no choice but to receive +me!" + +"I walk here every morning," she returned, evasively. "I have nowhere +else. I never go out of the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, +sometimes. But I can't meet people." + +"I know," said Matt, with caressing sympathy; and his head swam in the +sudden desire to take her in his arms, and shelter her from that shame +and sorrow preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them that made +him ache with pity; he recognized, as he had not before, that they were +the translation in feminine terms, of her father's eyes. "Poor Wade," he +went on, without well knowing what he was saying, "told me that he--he +was very sorry he had not been able to see you--to do anything--" + +"What would have been the use? No one can do anything. We must bear our +burden; but we needn't add to it by seeing people who believe that--that +my father did wrong." + +Matt's breath almost left him. He perceived that the condition on which +she was bearing her sorrow was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it +could not have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, and it +required no effort in her to frame the theory of her father's innocence; +perhaps no other hypothesis was possible to her, and evidence had +nothing to do with the truth as she felt it. + +"The greatest comfort we have is that none of _you_ believe it; and your +father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't +make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did. +It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that +was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I +would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is +going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have +the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I +thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his +kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us." + +Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust +and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her +right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her +through her love, her pride. + +She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her +freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our +father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every +one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be +punished as they deserve." + +She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the +impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it +all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last +an effort to enlighten her. + +"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't +be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his +solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't +allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage." + +She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't +cleared up?" + +"I'm afraid--I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly +understand." + +"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," +the girl returned. + +"But a lawyer--indeed you ought to see a lawyer!--could explain how such +a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case +against your father, but against _you_." + +"Against us? What do they say we have done?" + +Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if +it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take +everything here that belonged to your father--everything on the place, +to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I +can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your +rights in the case." + +"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything +to us!" + +"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his +debts." + +"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have +paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed +of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one." + +Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was +essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure +effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much +was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to +wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred +from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have +been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face +seemed to stay her. + +"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?" + +"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in +every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as +her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the +last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever +wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it." + +"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I _know_ +what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any reassurance. I'm sorry +to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank +you very much for the kind advice you have given me." + +"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to +you--all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see +that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you +couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has +said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, +or--" + +"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we +understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I +think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, +and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained +staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She +suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say +that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you +have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these +words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then +whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again. + + + + +XXIII. + + +That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner +they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving +out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating +their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for +them." + +"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, passively. +Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her +why; each knew why the other cried. + +"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, +that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell +some of the cattle." + +"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over." + +Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which +they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to +speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when +a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, +and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, +they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but +they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning +such matters, and they did not know his name. + +Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept +from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister +went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and +let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had +left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given +her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said +that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely +enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces +were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her +death. + +Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely +village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her +heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her +mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of +his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed +that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time +she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came +to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, +and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her +against the right in her interest than a friendlier person. + +Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he +was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her. +"Can I see--see--see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some--some +law business?" + +"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He +led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and +placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for +her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch. + +"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave +him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know +what it means." + +"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit +against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot +sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares +him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his +debts." + +"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they +will suffer," cried Adeline. + +"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of +the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors." + +"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our +house--mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me +long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill. + +Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endorsement before +he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears +till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the +buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's +creditors can't touch them." + +The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair +and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, +gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?" + +"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers +together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an +anxiety she could not keep out of her voice. + +"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you +showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried +to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for +her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!" + +"Yes. I'm not at all afraid--" + +"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and +plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it. + +Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it +seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without +help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, +early spring night. + +After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice +I _should_ like to give you." + +"Well?" she quavered, meekly. + +"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this +case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply +involved--" + +"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline +hastened to put in, nervously. + +"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could +safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his +creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything +but the real estate." + +"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We +intended just to let it go." + +"That's the best way," Putney said. + +"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place +from us." + +"That was right, and I assure you they can't touch either. If you get +anxious, come to me again--as often as you like." + +"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let +him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the +house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, +with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if +she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested. + +"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better +act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way." + +"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think +just as you do, Mr. Putney." + +"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor. + +When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, +Ralph?" + +"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline +Northwick." + +"Ralph, what _do_ you mean?" + +He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange +phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her +coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!" + +"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, +you know, Ellen." + +"Ralph!" + +"Oh. I may have spent my whole natural life in denouncing him as +demoralization incarnate, and a curse to the community, but I always +_liked_ him, Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely waiting for +him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, to find out just how +_much_ I loved him. I've no doubt but if we could have him among us +again, in the attractive garb of the State's-prison inmates, I should be +hand and glove with brother Northwick." + + + + +XXIV. + + +Adeline's reasons for going to Putney in their trouble had to avail with +Suzette against the prejudice they had always felt towards him. In the +tangible and immediate pressure that now came upon them they were glad +to be guided by his counsel; they both believed it was dictated by a +knowledge of law and a respect for justice, and by no regard for them. +They had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely relied upon +it, as in some sort the advice of an honest and faithful enemy. They +remembered that the last evening he was with them, their father had +spoken leniently of Putney's infirmity, and admiringly of his wasted +ability. Now each step they took was at his suggestion. They left the +great house before the creditors were put in possession of the personal +property, and went to live in the porter's lodge at the gate of the +avenue, which they furnished with the few things they could claim for +their own out of their former belongings, and from the ready money +Suzette had remaining in her name at the bank. They abandoned everything +of value in the house they had left, even to their richer dresses and +their jewels: they preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw +that it saved them more than it cost them in their helpless pride. + +The Newtons continued in their quarters unmolested; the furniture was +theirs and the building belonged to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons +called them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to get going in +their new place, and Elbridge and she lived there for a few weeks with +them, till they said they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood +guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain them in the +spoliation that had to come. He locked the avenue gate against the +approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter +and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways +he rendered himself obstructive and inconvenient. + +His deference to the law was paid entirely through Putney, whose +smartness inspired Elbridge with a respect he felt for no other virtue +in man. Putney arranged with him to take the Northwick place and manage +it on shares for the Northwick girls; he got for him two of the old +horses which Elbridge wanted for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. +The rest of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round about, who had +fancies for costly cattle: the horses, good, bad and indifferent, were +sent to a sale-stable in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all +that was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the place, of its +former equipment, except the few farm implements, a cart or two, and an +ancient carryall that Putney bid off for Newton's use. + +Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house to let for a term +of years, and failing a permanent tenant before the season opened, he +rented it to an adventurous landlady, who proposed to fill it with +summer boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it monthly, in +advance, that would enable the Northwick girls to live on, in the +porter's lodge, without fear of want. For the future, Putney imagined a +scheme for selling off some of the land next the villas of South +Hatboro', in lots to suit purchasers. That summer sojourn had languished +several years in uncertainty of its own fortunes; but now, by a caprice +of the fashion which is sending people more and more to the country for +the spring and fall months, it was looking up decidedly. Property had so +rapidly appreciated there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot +for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the acre. + +In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of his clients, he had +to reconcile his practice with theories he had held concerning unearned +land-values; and he justified himself to his crony, Dr. Morrell, on the +ground that these might be justly taken from such rich and idle people +as wanted to spend the spring and fall at South Hatboro'. The more land +at a high price you could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro' +was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the town tax, the +better for the land that working men wanted to get a living on. In +helping the Northwick girls to keep all they could out of the clutches +of their father's creditors, he held that he was only defending their +rights; and any fight against a corporation was a kind of holy war. He +professed to be getting on very comfortably with his conscience, and he +promised that he would not let it worry other people. To Mr. Gerrish he +made excuses for taking charge of the affairs of two friendless women, +when he ought to have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their +father's sins, as any respectable man would. He asked Gerrish to +consider the sort of fellow he had always been, drinking up his own +substance, while Gerrish was thriftily devouring other people's houses, +and begged him to make allowance for him. + +The anomalous relation he held to the Northwicks afforded him so much +excitement and enjoyment, that he passed his devil's dividend, as he +called his quarterly spree. He kept straight longer than his fellow +citizens had known him to do for many years. But Putney was one of those +men who could not be credited by people generally with the highest +motives. He too often made a mock of what people generally regarded as +the highest motives; he puzzled and affronted them; and as none of his +most intimate friends could claim that he was respectable in the +ordinary sense of the word, people generally attributed interested +motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. Adeline Northwick profited +by a call she made upon Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to +sound him in regard to Putney's management of her affairs; and if the +doctor's powders had not so distinctly done her good, she might not have +been able to rely upon the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting +wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her sister. + +"He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes," she said. + +But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in everything, not so much +because she implicitly trusted him, as because she knew no one else to +trust. The kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the first of +their trouble, had, of course, become impossible to both the sisters. He +had, in fact, necessarily ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had +steadily rejected all the overtures Louise made her since they last met. +Louise wanted to come again to see her; but Sue evaded her proposals; at +last she would not answer her letters; and their friendship outwardly +ceased. Louise did not blame her; she accounted for her, and pitied and +forgave her; she said it was what she herself would do in Sue's place, +but probably if she had continued herself, she would not have done what +Sue did, even in Sue's place. She remembered Sue with a tender constancy +when she could no longer openly approach her without hurting more than +she helped; and before the day of the assignee's sale came, she thought +out a scheme which Wade carried into effect with Putney's help. Those +things of their own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bidden +off, and restored to them in such a way that it was not possible for +them to refuse to take back the dresses, the jewels, the particular +pieces of furniture which Louise associated with them. + +Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort; Adeline simply +exulted in getting her things again; Sue gave all hers into Adeline's +keeping, and bade her never let her see them. + + + + +PART SECOND. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick kept up the mental juggle he had used in getting himself away +from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he +was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. +He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his +destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he +let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset +Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in +the pretence that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, to look +after some business of his quarries. He verified his pretence by +speaking of it to the conductor who knew him; he was not a person to +take conductors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account to +the man for his apparent change of mind. He was at some trouble to make +it seem casual and insignificant, and he wondered if the conductor meant +to insinuate anything by saying in return that it was a pretty brisk day +to be knocking round much in a stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, +"It was, rather;" he watched the conductor to see if he should betray +any particular interest in the matter when he left him. But the +conductor went on punching the passengers' tickets, and seemed to forget +Northwick as soon as he left him. At the next station, Northwick +followed him out on the platform to find if he sent any telegram off. +When he had once given way to this anxiety, which he knew to be +perfectly stupid and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He +took his bag with him each time he left the car, and he meant not to go +back if he saw the conductor telegraphing. It was intensely cold, and in +spite of the fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost +gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, when it stopped and +started, as if it were crunching along on a bed of dry snow; the noises +of the wheels seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and then +Northwick held his breath for fear one of them might be broken. He had a +dread of accident such as he had never felt before; his life had never +seemed so valuable to him as now; he reflected that it was so because it +was to be devoted now to retrieving the past in a new field under new +conditions. His life, in this view, was not his own; it was a precious +trust which he held for others, first for his children, and then for +those whom he was finally to save from loss by the miscarriage of his +enterprises. He justified himself anew in what he was intending; it +presented itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he +was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was a defaulter who +had used the money in his charge, and tampered with the record so as to +cover up the fact, and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off +a large sum of money that was not morally his. At one of the stations +where he got out to see whether the conductor was telegraphing, he +noticed the conductor eyeing his bag curiously; and he knew that he +believed there was money in it. Northwick felt a thrill of gratified +cunning in realizing how mistaken the conductor was; but he was willing +the fellow should think he was carrying up money to pay off his quarry +hands. + +He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this conductor would leave +the train, and it would continue northward in the charge of another man; +he seldom went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new conductor +would hardly know him. He meant to go on to Blackbrook Junction, and +take the New England Central there for Montreal; but he saw the +conductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junction, and it +suddenly occurred to him that he must not go to Montreal by a route so +direct that any absconding defaulter would be expected to take it. He +had not the least proof that the conductor's dispatch had anything to do +with him; but he could not help acting as if it had. He said good-day to +the conductor as he passed him, and he went out of the station, with his +bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched till he saw the +conductor go off in another direction, and then he came back, and got +aboard the train just as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that +he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness of stealth was +such that he felt as if he were followed, and that he must act so as to +baffle and mislead pursuit. + +At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no +one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, +and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He +perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could +not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there +was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely +anywhere, by any road. + +But he had now let the New England Central train leave without him, and +it only remained for him to push on to Wellwater, where he hoped to +connect with the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Dominion +road. He remembered that this train divided at Wellwater, and certain +cars ran direct to Quebec, up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He +meant to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned whether he +had better not go straight on from Wellwater; when he recalled the long, +all-night ride without a sleeper, which he had once made on that route +many summers before, he said to himself that in his shaken condition, he +must not run the risk of such a hardship. If he were to get sick from +it, or die, it would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now made +him think of what Hilary had said; Hilary who had called him a thief. He +would show Hilary whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he would +make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary retracting and apologizing +in the presence of the whole Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and +Northwick forgave him, while it was also passing through his mind that +he must reduce the risks of railroad accident to a minimum, by +shortening the time. They reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, +by reducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the safest. If +he could get to Montreal from Wellwater in four or five hours, when it +would take him twelve hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty +to go to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of danger of +every kind. He must not even fatigue himself too much; and he decided to +telegraph on to Wellwater, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to +Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the ordinary car, and he had +found it very rough. + +It suddenly occurred to him that he must now assume a false name; and he +reflected that he must take one that sounded like his own, or else he +would not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose Warwick, and he +kept saying it over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the +station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the +Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his +own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he +congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of +something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did +not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like +something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. +The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if +Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the +other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his +love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, +and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the +demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his +children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint +of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight +of himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face betrayed +nothing; it looked, as it always did, like the face of a kindly, +respectable man, a financially reliable face, the face of a leading +citizen. He gathered courage and strength from it to put away the +remorse that was devouring him. If that was the way he looked that was +the way he must be; and he could only be leaving those so dear to him +for some good purpose. He recalled that his purpose was to clear the +name they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it; to rehabilitate +himself; to secure his creditors from final loss. This was a good +purpose, the best purpose that a man in his place could have; he +recollected that he was to be careful of his life and health, because he +had dedicated himself to this purpose. + +He determined to keep this purpose steadily in mind, not to lose thought +of it for an instant; it was his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized +him; a doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew that he had +signed that dispatch Northwick and not Warwick; he saw just how his +signature looked on the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now +he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending any dispatch. He +cursed himself under his breath, and in the same breath he humbly prayed +to God for some way of escape. His terror made it certain to him that he +would be arrested as soon as he reached Wellwater. That would be the +next stop, the conductor told him, when he halted him with the question +on his way through the cars. The conductor said they were behind time, +and Northwick knew by the frantic pull of the train that they were +running to make up the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the +car; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In his prayer he +bargained with God that if He would let him escape, he would give every +thought, every breath to making up the loss of his creditors; he half +promised to return the money he was carrying away, and trust to his own +powers, his business talent in a new field, to retrieve himself. He +resolved to hide himself as soon as he reached Wellwater; it would be +dark, and he hoped that by this understanding with Providence he could +elude the officer in getting out of the car. But if there were two, one +at each end of the car? + +There was none, and Northwick walked away from the station with the +other passengers, who were going to the hotel near the station for +supper. In the dim light of the failing day and the village lamps, he +saw with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the strong, still +cold of the winterland he had been journeying into. The white drifts +were everywhere; the vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from +the hotel like a sea of snow; on its edge lay the excursion steamer in +which Northwick had one summer made the tour of the lake with his +family, long ago. + +He was only a few miles from the Canadian frontier; with a rebound from +his anxiety, he now exulted in the safety he had already experienced. He +remained tranquilly eating after the departure of the Montreal train was +cried; and when he was left almost alone, the head-waiter came to him +and said, "Your train's just going, sir." + +"Thank you," he answered, "I'm going out on the Quebec line." He wanted +to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were +made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at +the next station, which was still within the American border, on that +line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half +an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch +asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in +starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and +waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long +all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to +Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his +journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal +with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any +possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had +prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, +with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every +faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that +perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he +was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed +his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer +agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him; +and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but +should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent +of others in the effort to retrieve his losses. + + + + +II. + + +At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their +talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an +interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying +personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made +themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers. +They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends +were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked +freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and +they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of +them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the +Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in +Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter shocked +Northwick; it seemed immoral; he remembered that though he might seem a +defaulter, he was a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But he +listened eagerly; if their enterprise were one that approved itself to +his judgment, the chance of their discussing it before him might be a +leading of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence +had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier +safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the +agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to +study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed +first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was +the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. Gold had always +been found there, but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine it +than it was worth; but with the application of his new process of +working up the tailings, there was no doubt of the result. It was simply +wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. + +Northwick had heard that song before; and he fell back in his seat, with +a smile which was perhaps too cynical for a partner of Providence, but +which was natural in a man of his experience. He knew something about +processes to utilize the tailings of gold mines which would not +otherwise pay for working; he had paid enough for his knowledge: so much +that if he still had the purchase-money he need not be going into exile +now, and beginning life under a false name, in a strange land. + +By and by he found himself listening again, and he heard the Canadian +saying, "And there's timber enough on the tract to pay twice over what +it will cost, even if the mine wasn't worth a penny." + +"Well, we might go down and see the timber, any way," said one of the +party who had not yet spoken much. "And then we could take a look at +Markham's soap-mine, too. Unless," he added, "you had to tunnel under a +hundred feet of snow to get at it. A good deal like diggin' the north +pole up by the roots, wouldn't it be?" + +"Oh, no! Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of +an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties +that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the +autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you +could in the early part of January, when I was down there." + +"The hole hadn't run away?" + +"No. It was just where we left it." + +"Well, that's encouragin'. But I say, Markham, how do you get down there +in the winter?" + +"Oh! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. Lots of fellows in the +lumber trade do it all winter long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne's, +about twenty miles below Quebec--from Quebec you have your choice of +train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a clean thing of it, and do it all +by sleigh. I take it by easy stages, and so I take the long route: there +is a short cut, but the stops are far between. You make your twenty +miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day; eighteen to St. Joachim, the +next; thirty-nine to Baie St. Paul, the next; twenty to Malbaie, the +next; then forty to Tadoussac; then eighteen to Rivière Marguerite. You +can do something every day at that rate, even in the new snow; but on +the ice of the Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there's a pull of sixty miles; +you're at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you know it. Good +feed, and good beds, all along. You wrap up, and you don't mind. Of +course," Markham concluded, "it isn't the climate of Stanstead," as if +the climate of Stanstead were something like that of St. Augustine. + +"Well, it sounds a mere bagatelle," said the more talkative of the other +two, "but it takes a week of steady travel." + +"What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Golconda's yours when you get +there?" said Markham. "Why, Watkins, the young spruce and poplar alone +on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the whole. A +pulp-mill, which you could knock together for a few shillings, on one of +those magnificent water-powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a +single summer." + +"And what would it do in the winter when your magnificent water-power +was restin'?" + +"Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set an example of industry to +all the lazy _habitans_ in the country. You could get your fuel for the +cost of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar in under your +furnace, and have it come out paper pulp at the other end of the mill." + +Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud haw-haws at Markham's +drolling, and Watkins said, "I say, Markham, weren't you born on the +other side of the line?" + +"No. But my father was; and I wish he'd stayed there till I came. Then +I'd be going round with all the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for +a chance to put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out the +knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging you not to slap your +everlasting fortune in the face." + +They now all roared together again, and at Sherbrooke they changed cars. + +Northwick had to change too, but he did not try to get into the same car +with them. He wanted to think, to elaborate in his own mind the +suggestion for his immediate and remoter future which he had got from +their talk; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly he dreaded the +misgiving, that might come from hearing more of their talk. He thought +he knew, now, just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be +swerved from it. + +He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. He bore very well the +long waits that he had to make both at Sherbrooke and Richmond; but when +the train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled himself in +his seat with a solider content than he had felt before, and gave +himself up to the pleasure of shaping the future, that was so obediently +plastic in his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at the end of +the car with fuel, and Northwick did not suffer from the cold that +strengthened and deepened with the passing night outside, though he was +not overcoated and booted for any such temperature as his +fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were all Canadians, and they +talked now and then in their broad-vowelled French, but their voices +were low, and they came and went quietly at the country stations. The +car was old and worn, and badly hung; but in spite of all, Northwick +drowsed in the fervor of the glowing stove, and towards morning he fell +into a long and dreamless sleep. + +He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that surprised him, and found +the train pulling into the station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like +a soft lamp through the thick frost on the car-window; when he emerged, +he found it a cloudless splendor on a world of snow. The vast landscape, +which he had seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty rivers +to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue distance, showed rounded +and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid +the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the +currents below. The villages of the _habitans_ sparkled from tinned roof +and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a +thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping +swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and +speckled the expanse of glistening white with single figures and groups +of men and horses. + +It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a thrill of boyish +delight. He wondered for a moment why he had never come to Quebec in +winter before, and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut-faced +driver of one of the carrioles which waited outside the station to take +the passengers across the river, and tossed his bag into the bottom of +the little sledge. He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and +the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over the space of ice +which was kept clear of snow by diligent sweeping with fir-tree tops, +and then up the steep incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were +roadways from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels of +thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow; and the foot passengers, muffled to +the eyes against the morning cold, came and went among the vehicles in +the middle of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, to +keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight snow that slipped here +and there from the steep tin roofs. + +Northwick's unreasoned gladness grew with each impression of the beauty +and novelty. It quickened associations of his earliest days, and of the +winter among his native hills. He felt that life could be very pleasant +in this latitude; he relinquished the notion he had cherished at times +of going to South America with his family in case he should finally fail +to arrange with the company for his safe return home; he forecast a +future in Quebec where he could build a new home for his children, among +scenes that need not be all so alien. This did not move him from his +fixed intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the courage of +indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was bent upon the scheme he had +in mind, and as soon as he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare +for it. + + + + +III. + + +The inn he had chosen was one which he remembered, from former visits to +Quebec, as having seemed a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. +He got a room, and went to it long enough to count the money he had with +him, and find it safe. Then he took one of the notes from the others, +and went to a broker's to get it changed. + +The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but he concerned himself +only with the genuineness of the greenback, and after a keen glance at +Northwick's unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars in +Canadian bills. "We used to make your countrymen give us something +over," he said with a smile in recognition of Northwick's nationality. + +"Yes; that's all changed, now," returned Northwick. "Do I look so very +American?" he asked. + +"Oh, I don't know that," said the broker, with an airy English +inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all +wear fur caps in such weather." + +"Ah, that's a good idea," said Northwick. He spoke easily, but with a +nether torment of longing to look at the newspaper lying open on the +counter. He could see that it was the morning paper; there might be +something about him in it. The thought turned him faint; but he knew +that if the paper happened to have anything about him in it, any rumor +of his offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear it. He +could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to the self he had put behind +him, but he could not bear anything less. The papers seemed to thrust +themselves upon him; newsboys followed him up in the street with them; +he saw them in all the shops, where he went for the fur cap and fur +overcoat he bought, for the underclothing and changes of garments that +he had to provide; for the belt he got to put his money in. This great +sum, which he dared not bank, must be carried about with him; it must +not leave him night or day; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and +worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt was really for gold, +but the forty-two thousand-dollar notes, which were not a great bulk, +would easily go into it. + +He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, and put the belt on. +Then he felt easier, and he looked up the landlord to ask about the +route he wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it was one very +commonly travelled by lumber merchants going down into the woods to look +after their logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; but the +landlord said it was just as well to go by train to St. Anne, and save +that much sleighing; you would get enough of it then. Northwick thought +so too, and after the early dinner they gave him he took the cars for +St. Anne. + +He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and strong. He thought he +might get a nap on the way; but he remained vividly awake; and even that +night he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of his mind, as +if it were something separate from him, and were struggling to get +beyond the control of his will. The hotel in the little native village +was very good in its way; he had an excellent supper and an easy bed; +but he slept brokenly, and he was awake long before the early breakfast +which he had ordered for his start next day. The landlord wished to +persuade him that there was no need of such great haste; it was only +eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he was to make his first stop, and +the road was so good that he would get there in a few hours. He had +better stop and visit the church, and see the sick people's offerings, +which they left there every year, in gratitude to the saint for healing +them of their maladies. The landlord said it was a pity he could not +come some time at the season of the pilgrimage; his countrymen often +came then. Northwick perceived that in spite of his fur cap and +overcoat, and his great Canadian boots, he was easily recognizable for +an American to this man, though he could not definitely decide whether +his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell whether it was in +earnest or in irony that he invited him to try St. Anne for any trouble +he happened to be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, while +his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of hanging that money-belt at +her altar, and so easing himself of all his pains. He grotesquely +imagined the American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage to St. +Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral disease to her: forged notes, +bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part +of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the +gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for +himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his +own way and at his own time. + +In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in some ways, Northwick +found him a kindly young fellow. He treated Northwick with a young +fellow's comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped him forget +the hurts to his respectability which rankled so when he remembered +them. He explained the difference between the two routes from Malbaie +on, and advised him to take the longer, which lay through a more settled +district, where he would be safer in case of any mischance. But if he +liked to take the shorter, he told him there were good _campes_, or +log-house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he would find +excellent meals and beds, and be well cared for by people who kept them +in the winter for travellers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that +route, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were +carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers. + +This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in +government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he +would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a +tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to +Chicoutimi with him. + +After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on +runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and +back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air +which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole, +sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light +shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at +noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after +dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow +to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the +name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was +silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man +might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his +belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within +his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began, +except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin' +freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and +which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally +shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at +regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of +a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He +wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not +let him stop; he had to keep tolling. + +Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was +drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the +death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched +himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go +again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric +lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn +Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like +barking, and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of the +habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled +with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in +a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion. + +Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate +and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength +away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the +greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue +stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but +it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from +the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two +rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he +had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand +much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them +speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his +being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild +and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and +children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it. + +The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he +went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the +younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the +guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his +host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down +before the fire with the carriole driver. + + + + +IV. + + +In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself; +and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, +but he got through without much interruption. The following day, +however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the +twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the +journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that +first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt +well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed +to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm +stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first +his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of +a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not +tell where he was going, or why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact +that he had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond pursuit, +but beyond the temptation to return voluntarily and give himself up. He +knew, in those days before the treaty, that he was safe from +extradition; but he feared that if a detective approached he would yield +to him, and go back, especially as he could not always keep before +himself the reasons for not going back. When from time to time these +reasons escaped him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in +case he went home and restored to the company the money he had brought +away. It needed a voluntary operation of logic to prove that this +partial restitution would not avail; that he would be arrested, and +convicted. He would not be allowed to go on living with his children in +his own house. He would be taken from them, and put in prison. + +He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wakeful night. His driver +wished to break the forty mile journey midway, but Northwick would not +consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got +through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because +it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the +river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, +and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was +twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been +nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its +summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier now than it seemed in the +summer. The lamps shone from the windows where he had seen them then, +when he walked about a little just after supper; the village store had a +group of _habitans_ and half-breeds about its stove, and there was as +much show of life in the streets as there used to be at the same hour +and season in the little White Mountain village where his boyhood was +passed. It did not seem so bad; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live +there well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He imagined +bringing his family there after his mills had got successfully going; +then probably other people from the outside world would be living there. + +He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep well, and in the +night he was feverish. He thought how horrible it would be if he were to +fall sick there; he might die before he could get word to his children +and they reach him. He thought of going back to Quebec, and sailing for +Europe, and having his children join him there. They could sell the +place at Hatboro', and with what it brought, and with what he had, they +could live comfortably in some cheap country which had no extradition +treaty with the United States. He remembered reading of a defaulter who +went to a little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, and was +safe there; he found the President treading his own grape vats; and it +cost nothing to live there, though it was dull, and the exile became so +homesick that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered that he had +not thought of that place before; then he reflected that no ships could +make their way from Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He +would be arrested if he left any American port, or arrested as soon as +he reached England. He remembered the advertisement of a line of +steamships between Quebec and Brazil; he must wait for the St. Lawrence +to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morning must go back to Quebec. + +But in the morning he felt so much better that he decided to keep on to +Chicoutimi. He could not bear the thought of being found out by +detectives at Quebec, and by reporters who would fill the press with +paragraphs about him. He must die to the world, to his family, before he +could hope to revisit either. + +The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the glare of the snow hurt +his eyes. He went to the store to get some glasses to protect them, and +he bought some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he should be +wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha Bay, but the road on the +frozen river was good, and he could do a long stretch of it. From +Rivière Marguerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, and the +going would be smooth and easy. + +All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it in that far-off summer. +The tops of the interminable solitudes that walled the river in on both +sides appeared lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, but +doubtless they had grown beyond their real height in his memory. They +had lost the mystery of the summer aspect when they were dimmed with +rain or swathed in mist; all their outlines were in plain sight, and the +forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that +unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their +stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of +white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a +fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the +photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, +and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white +between the ranges of extinct volcanoes. + +At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for the snow to lodge +on; then their rocky faces shone harsh and stern; and sometimes the +springs that gushed from them in summer were frozen in long streams of +ice, like the tears bursting from the source of some Titanic grief. +These monstrous icicles, blearing the visage of the rock, which he +figured as nothing but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he +nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole in front of the +great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and silently pointed at them with his +whip. He had no need to name them, the fugitive would have known them in +another planet. It was growing late; the lonely day was waning to the +lonely night. While they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from +the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and repeated itself in the +echo that wandered from depth to depth of the frozen wilderness, and +seemed to die wailing away at the point where it first tore the silence. + +Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point or a recess where +a saw-mill stood, with a few log houses about it, and with signs of +human life in the smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their +chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the doorways as the +carriole passed. At the next of these beyond the capes, the driver +proposed to stop and pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt +worn out by his day's journey; his nerves were spent as if by a lateral +pressure of the lifeless desert he had been travelling through, and by +the stress of his thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran +back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By this time, long +before this time, they must be wild with anxiety about him; by this time +their shame must have come to poison their grief. He realized it all, +and he realized that he could not, must not help them. He must not go +back to them if ever he was to live for them again. But at last he asked +why he should live, why he should not die. There was laudanum enough in +that bottle to kill him. + +As he walked up from the carriole at the river's edge to the door of the +saw-miller's cabin, he drew the cork of the vial, and poured out the +poison; it followed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on the +snow, that the miller's dog smelt at and turned from in offence. That +night he could not sleep again; toward morning, when all the house was +snoring, he gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. He heard +the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in their dreams; then they +were still, and he fell into a deep sleep. + +They let him sleep late; and he had a dream of himself, which must have +been caused by the nascent consciousness of the going and coming around +him. People were talking of him, and one said how old he was; and +another looked at his long, white beard which flowed down over the +blanket as far as his waist. He told them that he wore it so that they +should not know him when he got home; and he showed them how he could +take it off and put it on at pleasure. He started awake, and found his +carriole driver standing over him. + +"You got you' sleep hout, no?" + +"What time is it?" said Northwick, stupidly, scanning the man to make +sure that it was he, and waiting for a full sense of the situation to +reach him. + +"Nine o'clock," said the man, and he turned away. + +Northwick got up, and found the place empty of the men and dogs. A +woman, who looked like a half-breed, brought him his breakfast of fried +venison and bean-coffee; her little one held by her skirt, and stared at +him. He thought of Elbridge's baby that he had seen die. It seemed ages +ago. He offered the child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its +mother's dress. The driver said, "'E do'n' know what money is, yet," but +the mother seemed to know; she showed her teeth, and took it for the +child. Northwick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it was not +to know what money was; it had never occurred to him before; he asked +himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to +pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have +no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of +childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for +his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You +could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and +supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went +out to see Elbridge's sick boy; when Elbridge left the dead child to +drive him to the station. It was something else that came in there; but +that thing and money were the same, after all: he had proved his love +for his children by making money for them; if he had not loved them so +much he would not have tried to get so much money, and he would not have +been where he was. + +His mind fought away from his control, as the sledge slipped along over +the frozen river again. It was very cold, but the full sun on his head +afflicted him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up from the +snow, too. His head felt imponderable; and yet he could not hold it up. +It was always sinking forward; and he woke from naps without being sure +that he had been asleep. + +He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi; but his start was so +late that it seemed to him as if they would never get to Haha Bay. When +they arrived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress thither faded +away; it was as if the starting and stopping were one, or contained in +the same impulse. It might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to +Chicoutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the beginning; the +wish could involve its accomplishment only at the end. He said to +himself that this was unreasonable; it was a poor rule that would not +work both ways. + +This ran through his mind in the presence of the old man who bustled out +of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger +than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered +curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in +birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which +branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his +left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face +was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition +went through Northwick. He knew the man for the talkative Canadian who +had taken him and his wife a drive over the hills around the bay, in the +morning, when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with them at +this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass of milk. Northwick's wife +liked the man, and said she would like to live in such a house in such a +place, and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her was so +terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were there; but Northwick said +to himself that he must not let the man know that he had ever seen him +before. The resolution cost him something, for he felt so broken and +weak that he would have liked to claim his kindness as an old +acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals +for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha +Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former +meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently +knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there +before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting. + +"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me +'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English +with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but +it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They +are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live. +No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for +you, sir." + +Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked. + +"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But +hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two +rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always +ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick +in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' +'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to +his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right." + +"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the +same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to +Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would +like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird--_Oiseau_? +You have been here before?" + +"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and +gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed +that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There +was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden, +with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was +the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the +frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now. + +He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there, +and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak; +and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the +sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his grave, and be done with +it. + + + + +V. + + +Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the +chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I +wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff +and on. I am born at Quebec"--in his tremulous inattention, Northwick +was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years +before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon +him--"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the +Americans know me. I used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots +of bear in the bush when I first came; now they get pretty scarce. I +have the best moose-dog. But I don't care much for the hunting now; I am +too hold. That's a fact. I am sixty; and forty winters I 'ave pass at +Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I +don't hear much ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here in +the summer; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chicoutimi; and more gold in +the 'ills." + +He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he +knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at +once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real +motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, +and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart +from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose +he was there to look into the question of the mines; but there was +something else that seemed to go with that intention; something like a +wish to get away from the past so remotely and so completely that no +rumor of it should reach him till he was willing to let it; to be absent +from all who had known him so long that no one of them would know him if +he saw him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but to grow a +beard that should effectually disguise him. He recalled how he had +looked with that long beard in his dream; he put his hand to his chin +and felt the eight days' stubble there, and he wondered how much time it +would take to grow such a beard. + +Bird went on talking. "I know that Chicoutimi Company. I told Markham +about the gold when he was here for bear. He is smart; but he don't know +heverything. You think he can make it pay with that invention? I doubt, +me. There is one place in those 'ills," and Bird came closer to +Northwick, and dropped his voice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with +the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you +want capital." + +He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which +he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove +hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny +thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?" + +Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you +can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the +ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it +had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe. +Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. +But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is +to be 'omesick." + +The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his +consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with +self-pity. + +"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more. +I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down +those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep +the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead! +Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some +capital--ten, fifteen thousand dollars--I would hopen that mine, and +take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by, +Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want +nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough +there to pay, and I can hire those _habitans_ cheap, like dirt. What is +their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is +the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time." + +Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed +aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps, +and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?" + +Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He +knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and +then he would not have to go. + +"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted." + +"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe +and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed. + +"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. He +was very gentle and light-handed, like a woman; but Northwick felt one +touch on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help. + +He let his host carry his two bags into the next room for him; the bag +that he had brought with the few things from home, when he pretended +that he was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that he had got in +Quebec to hold the things he had to buy there. When Bird set them down +beside his bed he could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed +it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the bed, and pulled +the bearskin robe that he found on it up over him, and fell into a thin +sleep, that was not so different from his dim waking that he was sure it +had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp. + +"Been 'aving a little nap?" he asked, looking gayly down on Northwick's +bewildered face. "Well, that is all right! We have supper, now, pretty +soon. You hungry? Well, in a 'alf-hour." + +He went out again, and Northwick, after some efforts, made out to rise. +His skull felt sore, and his arms as if they had been beaten with hard +blows. But after he had bathed his face and hands in the warm water Bird +had brought with the lamp, he found himself better, though he was still +wrapped in that cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or +waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, white walls: the Seven +Stations of the Cross, in colored prints; a lithograph of Indians +burning a Jesuit priest. Over the bed's head hung a chromo of Our Lady, +with seven swords piercing her heart; beside the bed was a Parian +crucifix, with the figure of Christ writhing on it. + +These things made Northwick feel very far and strange. His simple and +unimaginative nature could in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, +this alien language. He heard soft voices of women in the next room, the +first that he had heard since he last heard his daughters'. A girl's +voice singing was severed by a door that closed and then opened to let +it be heard a few notes more, and again closed. + +But he found Bird still alone in the next room when he returned to it. +"Well, now, we go to supper as soon as Father Étienne comes. He is our +curate--our minister--here. And he eats with me when he heat anywhere. I +tell 'im 'e hought to have my appetite, if he wants to keep up his +spiritual strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, no? Well, +you let that foundation tumble hin, and then where you got you' soul, +heigh? But Father Étienne speaks very good English. Heducate at Rome. I +am the only other educated man at Haha Bay. You don't 'appen to have +some papers in you' bag? French? English? It is the same!" + +"Papers? No!" said Northwick, with horror and suspicion. "What is in the +papers?" + +"That is what I like to find hout," said Bird, spreading his hands with +a shrug. + +The outer door opened, and a young man in a priest's long robe came in. +Bird introduced his guest, and Northwick shook hands with the priest, +who had a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, like a +girl's. He might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine; he had the spare +figure of a man under thirty who leads an active life; his features were +refined by study and the thought of others. When he smiled the innocence +of his face was more than girlish, it was childlike. Points of light +danced in his large, soft, dark eyes; an effect of trusting, alluring +kindness came from his whole radiant visage. + +Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He shrank away from the +priest, and at the table he left the talk to him and his host. They +supped in a room opening into a sort of wing; beyond it was a small +kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the dishes, and where that +girl whom he heard singing kept trilling away as if she were excited, +like a canary, by the sound of the frying meat. + +Bird said, by way of introduction, that the woman was his niece; but he +did not waste time on her. He began to talk up his conjecture as to +Northwick's business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained fact. +Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him to it. They discussed the +question of gold in the hills, which the young father treated as an old +story of faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor of fresh +excitement. The priest spoke of the poor return from the mines at +Chaudière, but Bird claimed that it was different here. Northwick did +not say anything: he listened and watched them, as if they were a pair +of confidence-men trying to work him. The priest seemed to be anxious to +get the question off the personal ground into the region of the +abstract, and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, a ruse +to throw him from his guard, and commit him to something. He made up his +mind to get away as early as he could in the morning; he did not think +it was a safe place. + +"Very well!" the priest cried, at one point. "Suppose you had the +capital you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is +there, and you were rich. What would you do?" + +"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay +to-morrow morning!" + +"And where would you go?" + +"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!" + +The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned +with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men +in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In +what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?" + +"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into +himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed. + +"Where do they live?" + +Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as +if to restrain a burst of information from him. + +"I suppose most of them live in New York." + +"All the time?" + +"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar +Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and +they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their +yachts." + +"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea. +My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the +advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again +in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him +lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen +it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a +moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those +rich people in Europe, by inheritance?" + +"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used +to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They +made it." + +"How? Excuse me!" + +"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the +rise in land-values." + +"What causes the land to rise in value?" + +"The demand for it. The necessity." + +"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man +loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are +the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are +miserable. Is it so?" + +Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these +questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion +of Bird than as an expression of his own opinions; but in his dazed +intelligence he could not find the answers. + +Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other +world--an angel--a mere imbecile--about business!" The priest threw +himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful +teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few +thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish +work to every man in Haha Bay--to hundreds. Are the miners more +miserable than those _habitans_, eh?" + +"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At +least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out. +What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile. + +"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Père +Étienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to +Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal--" + +"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling +very well--I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of +what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at +Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a +third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both. + +It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped +to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made +shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with +lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a +little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. +Afterwards he appeared to have come back. + + + + +VI. + + +The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two +Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really +leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into +that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he +could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to +decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he +pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the +reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness; +but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him. + +Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in +his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he +would like to have some breakfast; perhaps he would like a cup of tea +and some toast. + +Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in a few minutes the tea +was brought him by a young girl, whom Bird called Virginie; he said she +was his grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not disturbed the +gentleman: she always sang; one could hardly stop her; but she meant no +harm. He stayed to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to put +away the suspicion Bird's kindness roused in him. He was in such need of +kindness that he did not wish to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched +Bird narrowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he listened +warily when he began to talk of the priest and to praise him. It was a +pleasure, Bird said, for one educated man to converse with another; and +Father Étienne and he often maintained opposite sides of a question +merely for the sake of the discussion; it was like a game of cards where +there were no stakes; you exercised your mind. + +Northwick understood this too little to believe it; when he talked, he +talked business; even the jokes among the men he was used to meant +business. + +"Then you haven't really found any gold in the hills?" he asked, slyly. + +"My faith, yes!" said Bird. "But," he added sadly, "perhaps it would not +pay to mine it. I will show you when you get up. Better not go to +Chicoutimi to-day! It is snowing." + +"Snowing?" Northwick repeated. "Then I can't go!" + +"Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best," Bird suggested. "Try to get +some sleep. Sleep is youth. When we wake we are old again, but some of +the youth stick to our fingers. No?" He smiled gayly, and went out, +closing the door softly after him, and Northwick drowsed. In a dream +Bird came back to him with some specimens from his gold mine. Northwick +could see that the yellow metal speckling the quartz was nothing but +copper pyrites, but he thought it best to pretend that he believed it +gold; for Bird, while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was +feeling with the other for the buckle of Northwick's belt, as he sat up +in bed. He woke in fright, and the fear did not afterwards leave him in +the fever which now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was aware +that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared for, and that his host and +all his household were his devoted watchers and nurses; when he knew the +doctor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this he perceived +cloudily, and as with a thickness of some sort of stuff between him and +the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was +always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when +the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did +not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion +was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan. + +The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open +doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of +the men met. + +"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not +speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not +misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then +reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick. +"You think you are among some Yankee defal_ca_tor?" he asked, for sole +resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have +imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick +man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay +across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?" + +Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the +thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the +pouch of the belt. + +"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you +see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?" + +Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills +made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me." + +"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud +air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly +confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call. + +Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he +could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the +air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern +land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare +hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an +illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its +first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales +sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of +his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by +that time. It was then the time of the apple-blossoms there; with his +homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops of his orchard, all +pink-white. He thought how the apples smelt when they first began to +drop in August on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It +seemed to him that if he could only be there again for a moment he would +be willing to spend the rest of his life in prison. As it was, he was in +prison; it did not matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from +his home. He hated the vastness of the half world where he could come +and go unmolested, this bondage that masked itself as such ample +freedom. To be shut out was the same as to be shut in. + +In the first days of his convalescence, while he was yet too weak to +leave his room, he planned and executed many returns to his home. He +went back by stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown in his +sickness, and tried to see what change had come upon it; but he could +never see it different from what it was that clear winter night when he +escaped from it. This baffled and distressed him, and strengthened the +longing at the bottom of his heart actually to return. He thought that +if he could once look on the misery he had brought upon his children he +could bear it better; he complexly flattered himself that it would not +be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Sometimes when this wish +harassed him, he said to himself, to still it, that as soon as the first +boat came up the river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and +arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and abandon the +struggle. + +But as he regained his health, he began to feel that this was a rash and +foolish promise: he thought he saw a better way out of his unhappiness. +It appeared a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of his. He +was restored to this feeling in part by the respect, the distinction +which he enjoyed in the little village, and which pleasantly recalled +his consequence among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was +declared out of danger he began to receive visits of polite sympathy +from the heads of families, who smoked round him in the evening, and +predicted a renewal of his youth by the fever he had come through +safely. Their prophecies were interpreted by Bird and Père Étienne, as +with one or other of these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, +the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to +furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got +ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere +Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor +render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the +treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the +priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not +the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a +great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral, +agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American +scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished +to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was +impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was +too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he +bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's +reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all +respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought +in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself +that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the +victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and +would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money +by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort +of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would +have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have +accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The +doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with +Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to +Père Étienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing +with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner. + + + + +VII. + + +It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man +of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly +decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the +things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and +purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only +the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of +money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and +from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he +was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with rare plants. But the +flowers were possessions, not passions; he did not speak of them as if +they afforded him any artistic or scientific delight. The young priest +learned that he had put a good deal of money in pictures; but then the +pictures seemed to have become investments, and of the nature of stocks +and bonds. He found that this curious American did not care to read the +English books which Bird offered to lend him out of the little store of +gifts and accidents accumulated in the course of years from bountiful or +forgetful tourists; the books in French Père Étienne proposed to him, +Northwick said he did not know how to read. He showed no liking for +music, except a little for the singing of Bird's niece, Virginie, but +when the priest thought he might care to understand that she sang the +ballads which the first voyagers had brought from France into the +wilderness, or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its hard +life, he saw that the fact said nothing to Northwick, and that it rather +embarrassed him. The American could not take part in any of those +discussions of abstract questions which the priest and the old woodsman +delighted in, and which they sometimes tried to make him share. He +apparently did not know what they meant. It was only when Père Étienne +gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly and arid to be +borne, that he began to love him as a brother; when he could make +nothing of Northwick's mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul. + +Père Étienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, and he had his +misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the +American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating +to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there +a pure and unworldly heart, such as Père Étienne bore in his breast, +with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of +the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious +stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he +knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that +Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of an uneasy +conscience in its possession. Why had he come to that lonely place in +midwinter with a treasure such as that; and why did he keep the money by +him, instead of putting it in a bank? Père Étienne talked these +questions over with Bird and the doctor, and he could find only one +answer to them. He wondered if he ought not to speak to Northwick, and +delicately offer him the chance to unburden his mind to such a friend as +only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any +approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the +church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and +reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy +necessary to the good which Père Étienne wished to do the lonely and +silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a piece of +writing, which he always locked carefully into his bag when he left his +room, and which he copied in part or in whole again and again, burning +the rejected drafts in the hearth-fire that had now superseded the +stove, and stirring the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was +left distinguishable on it. + +One day there came up the river a bateau from Tadoussac, bringing the +news that the ice was all out of the St. Lawrence. "It will not be long +time, now," said Bird, "before we begin to see you' countrymen. The +steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of June." + +Northwick responded to the words with no visible sensation. His +sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more and more, and intolerably deepened +the mystification of his failure to do any of the things with his +capital which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citizens. He no +longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, that was true, and there was not +the danger of his putting his money into Markham's enterprise there; but +neither did he show any interest or any curiosity concerning Bird's +discovery of the precious metal at Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as +well as Père Étienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his guest, +even with the intention of making their joint fortune. + +A few days later there came to Père Étienne a letter, which, when he +read it, superseded the interest in Northwick, which Bird felt gnawing +him like a perpetual hunger. It was from the curé at Rimouski, where +Père Étienne's family lived, and it brought word that his mother, who +had been in failing health all winter, could not long survive, and so +greatly desired to see him, that his correspondent had asked their +superior to allow him to replace Père Étienne at Haha Bay, while he came +to visit her. Leave had been given, and Père Étienne might expect his +friend very soon after his letter reached him. + +"Where is Rimouski?" Northwick asked, when he found himself alone with +the priest that evening. + +"It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first point where the +steamers touch in going and coming between Quebec and Liverpool." Père +Étienne had been weeping, and his heart was softened and emboldened by +the anxiety he felt. "It is my native village--where I lived till I went +to make my studies in the Laval University. It is going home for me. +Perhaps they will let me remain there." He added, by an irresistible +impulse of pity and love, "I wish you were going home, too, Mr. +Warwick!" + +"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't--yet." + +"This is a desert for you," Père Étienne pressed on. "I can see that. I +have seen how solitary you are." + +"Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted. + +"My son," said the young priest to the man who was old enough to be his +father, and he put his hand on Northwick's, where it lay on his knee, as +they sat side by side before the fire, "is there something you could +wish to say to me? Something I might do to help you?" + +In a moment all was open between them, and they knew each other's +meaning. "Yes," said Northwick, and he felt the wish to trust in the +priest and to be ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his +heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too innocent, too unversed +in the world and its ways to know his offence in its right proportion; +to know it as Northwick himself knew it; to be able to account for it +and condone it. The affair, if he could understand it at all, would +shock him; he must blame it as relentlessly as Northwick's own child +would if her love did not save him. With the next word he closed that +which was open between them, a rift in his clouds that heaven itself had +seemed to look through. "I have a letter--a letter that I wish you would +take and mail for me in Rimouski." + +"I will take it with great pleasure," said the priest, but he had the +sadness of a deep disappointment in his tone. + +Northwick was disappointed, too; almost injured. He had something like a +perception that if Père Étienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he +could have told him everything, and saved his own soul by the +confession. + +About a month after the priest's departure the first steamboat came up +the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. +Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he +would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it +should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to +the piety of the _habitans_ as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to +Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity +which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye +on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps +both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps +prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave +out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his +wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it +was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon +him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the +community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at +him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he +would. Northwick could not have moved himself. He was like one benumbed. +He let the days go by, and made no attempt to realize the schemes for +the retrieval of his fortunes that had brought him to that region. + +The sound of the steamboat's whistle was a joyful sound to Bird. He rose +and went into Northwick's room. Northwick was awake; he had heard the +whistle, too. + +"Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you' name," said Bird, with trembling +eagerness, "that is the boat. I want you take you' money and go hout my +'ouse. Yes, sir. Now! Pack you' things. Don't wait for breakfast. You +get breakfast on board. Go!" + + + + +VIII. + + +The letter which Père Étienne posted for Northwick at Rimouski was +addressed to the editor of the _Boston Events_, and was published with +every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist +newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room +proofs of his efficiency in the line of the _Events_' greatest +successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands was +capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the effect was disappointing, +not only in the figure of the immediate sales, but in the cumulative +value of the recognition of the fact that the _Events_ had been selected +by Northwick as the best avenue for approaching the public. The +_Abstract_, in copying and commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed +its esteemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of its prime importance +as the organ of the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after +questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as +a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many +defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the +despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several +of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the +picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an +effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his +death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it +experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter +himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public, +but his own family, concerning his fate. + +The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those +belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are +closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and +Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before +opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living _en garçon_. +There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to +question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its +absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his +guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the +beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man +and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It +isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. +Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of +other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that +he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was +found out, and ran away. That's all." + +"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression +that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was _not_ one of your +most remarkable men." + +Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our +_least_ remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which +we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman, +he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made +man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands +of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and now by this +unconsciously hypocritical and nauseous letter. He's what the +commonplace American egotist must come to more and more in finance, now +that he is abandoning the career of politics, and wants to be rich +instead of great." + +"Really?" said the Englishman. + +Among Hilary's guests was Charles Bellingham, a bachelor of pronounced +baldness, who said he would come to meet Hilary's belated Englishman, in +quality of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Corey, a +society veteran of that period when even the swell in Boston must be an +intellectual man. He was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom +left town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner whenever he was +asked. Bellingham came to the rescue of the national repute in his own +fashion. "I can't account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, +when you invited me, unless you knew where you could steal some more." + +"Ah, it isn't quite like a gentleman's stealing a few spoons," old Corey +began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary +sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more +heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as +something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so +does birth; but they're not commonplace." + +"They're not so frequent as defalcation with us, quite--especially +birth," suggested Bellingham. + +"No," Corey went on, "every fact of this sort is preceded by the slow +and long decay of a moral nature, and that is of the most eternal and +tragical interest; and"--here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, +whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him--"if it's very common with +us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we +excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed +moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that +it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our +bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world; our habit of +defalcation hasn't resulted yet in any ethical compensation. Sewell, +here, used to preach about such things, but I'll venture to say we shall +have no homily on Northwick from him next Sunday." + +The Rev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. "What is the use?" +he asked, with a certain sadness. "The preacher's voice is lost in his +sounding-board nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are crying aloud +from twenty-eight pages illustrated." + +"Perhaps _they_ are our moralists," Corey suggested. + +"Perhaps," Sewell assented. + +"By the way, Hilary," said Bellingham, "did you ever know who wrote that +article in the _Abstract_, when Northwick's crookedness first appeared?" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It was a young fellow of twenty-four or five." + +"Come off!" said Bellingham, in a slang phrase then making its way into +merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like +it in the _Abstract_." + +"No, and I'm afraid you're not likely to. The fellow was a reporter on +the paper at the time; but he happened to have looked up the literature +of defalcation, and they let him say his say." + +"It was a very good say." + +"Better than any other he had in him. They let him try again on +different things, but he wasn't up to the work. So the managing editor +said--and he was a friend of the fellow's. He was too literary, I +believe." + +"And what's become of him?" asked Corey. + +"You might get _him_ to read to you," said Bellingham to the old man. He +added to the company, "Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. +He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds their society +oppressive." + +"Why," Hilary answered with a little hesitation, "he was out of health, +and Matt had him up to his farm." + +"Is he Matt's only beneficiary?" Corey asked, with a certain tone of +tolerant liking for Matt. "I thought he usually had a larger colony at +Vardley." + +"Well, he has," said Hilary. "But when his mother and sister are +visiting him, he has to reduce their numbers. He can't very well turn +his family away." + +"He might board them out," said Bellingham. + +"Do you suppose," asked Sewell, as if he had not noticed the turn the +talk had taken, "that Northwick has gone to Europe?" + +"I've no doubt he wishes me to suppose so," said Hilary, "and of course +we've had to cable the authorities to look out for him at Moville and +Liverpool, but I feel perfectly sure he's still in Canada, and expects +to make terms for getting home again. He must be horribly homesick." + +"Yes?" Sewell suggested. + +"Yes. Not because he's a man of any delicacy of feeling, or much real +affection for his family. I've no doubt he's fond of them, in a way, but +he's fonder of himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he's +trying to make interest for himself, and that he's quite willing to use +his children if it will tell on the public sympathies. He knows very +well that they're provided for. They own the place at Hatboro'; he +deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known to have begun; +and his creditors couldn't touch it if they wished to. If he had really +that fatherly affection for them, which he appeals to in others, he +wouldn't have left them in doubt whether he was alive or dead for four +or five months, and then dragged them into an open letter asking +forbearance in their name, and promising, for their sake, to right those +he had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent." + +Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond +question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to +him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp +rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which +he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for +him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, +Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out +of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got +to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to +remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay +the people he had defrauded." + +"Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell. + +"No? Why not?" + +"Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep +up." + +"He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said +Hilary. + +"That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. +"Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death." + +"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the +newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays." + +"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village +down the St. Lawrence--" + +"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey. + +"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite +different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the +wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to +leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save +their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; +a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false." + +"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they +all laughed. + +"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. +You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to +principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless +creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he +can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, +but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would +come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in +greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!" + +"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey. + +"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that +Northwick is cracked." + +"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every +wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the +last state of the wicked." + +"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to +have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?" + +"What a question!" said Hilary. "You're _as_ bad as my daughter. She +asked me the same thing." + +"I wish I were no worse," said the old man. + +"You speak of his children," said the Englishman. "Hasn't he a wife?" + +"No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the other a young girl, whom my +daughter knew at school," Hilary answered. + +"I saw the young lady at your house once," said Bellingham, in a certain +way. + +"Yes. She's been here a good deal, first and last." + +"Rather a high-stepping young person, I thought," said Bellingham. + +"She is a proud girl," Hilary admitted. "Rather imperious, in fact." + +"Ah, what's the pride of a young girl?" said Corey. "Something that +comes from her love and goes to it; no separable quality; nothing that's +for herself." + +"Well, I'm not sure of that," said Hilary. "In this case it seems to +have served her own turn. It's enabled her simply and honestly to deny +the fact that her father ever did anything wrong." + +"That's rather fine," Corey remarked, as if tasting it. + +"And what will it enable her to do, now that he's come out and confessed +the frauds himself?" the Englishman asked. + +Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Bellingham, "Charles, I want you +to try some of these crabs. I got them for you." + +"Why, this is touching, Hilary," said Bellingham, getting his fat head +round with difficulty to look at them in the dish the man was bringing +to his side. "But I don't know that I should have refused them, even if +they had been got for Corey." + + + + +IX. + + +They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in +Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the +stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a +part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the +provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death. +He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such +a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their +doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that +they had _never_ believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who +acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to +cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his +faith restored him to the esteem of many. + +Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said +Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of +his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an +early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public +opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public +confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good +intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no +question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions--if you will +excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for +repentance--when he makes the first payment to his creditors--I will +believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not _till_ then." + +"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to +say to all this. Can he feel that _his_ skirts are quite clean, acting +that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to +say against him?" + +Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on +the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr. +Putney on any subject." + +In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not +discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their +father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through +Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's +character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack +Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not +obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it." + +"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used +to say against Mr. Northwick?" + +"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington. + +"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger +appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery +of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in +it. + +"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?" + +"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?" + +"Oh, _I_ don't know. What do _you_ think, Jack?" + +"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who +avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a +look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too. + +"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on. +"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved +in Hatboro'--not among the ladies at least." + +Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's +the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men +in my family to say a word against her." + +Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. +Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul +of a man." + +"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that +they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," +Mrs. Wilmington teased. + +"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. +Munger alone to his aunt. + +"_Do_ you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, +with cosey confidentiality. + +"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very +poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to +her?" + +"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do _like_ a manly man!" + +She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a +further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one +she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of +the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road +so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it. + +"Doctor," she called out, "what _do_ you think of this extraordinary +letter of Mr. Northwick's?" + +Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the +_Events_? Do you think Northwick wrote it?" + +"Why, don't _you_, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal +grievance in her voice. + +"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he _did_ +write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood +you thought he was burned in that accident last winter." + +"Now, _doctor_!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said +always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I +know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. _She_ +will tell me what you think." + +"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all +well." + +"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though, +with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr. +Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself +to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it +be romantic?" + +"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to +see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. +He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by." + +She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South +Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, +where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely +drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs. +Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and +in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own +emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South +Hatboro'. + +Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat +crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door +that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her +hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter +in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be +crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, +who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he +had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us, +and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead, +long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's +just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell +us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything +we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do +it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't +complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, +what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that +he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he +didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you +think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and +tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one +where he was? That _shows_ he's out of his mind. I always thought that +if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied +about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that +was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that +we trusted so much, had broken his word to _us_. That is what kills me." + +The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at +dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, +as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief +responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if +her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs. + +Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it +of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. +"We must give it up!" + +"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back. + +"The house--and the farm--and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"No. That letter makes it theirs--the people's whose money he took. We +must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know +how." + +Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but +Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!" + +"That was _before_. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we +should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give +it to us when he did?" + +"Suzette!" + +"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to +go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because +he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it +up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my +father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to +me, _now_!" + +The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such +natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about +father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his +mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away +because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him +that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to +blame himself. That's the way I look at it." + +"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You +_know_ you don't believe that!" + +Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist +in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's +confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at +last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it, +Suzette; and I have a right." + +"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't +belong to us till father comes back to prove it." + +"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!" + +"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he +isn't--" + +"Suzette! Don't you dare!" + +"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong +to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be +seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole +world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if +we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look _you_ in the +face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either +of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room. + +"Wait! I can't let you--yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline. + +"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat +in her rocking-chair. + +"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering +strength of resistance in her heart. "Because _you've_ been thinking of +it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was +mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for +both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did +use their money--and I don't believe he did--I don't see why I should +give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said, +"And I won't." + +"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette. + +"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so." + +"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr. +Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves +on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so +terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send +Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any +squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the +property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you +don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I +will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to +you. Do you promise?" + +"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of +tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give +it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall +never say that I wanted you should do it." + +"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you +say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft +throat. "_I_ do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I +care as much for them as you do." + +In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive +whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession +of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it," +she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep +it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up." + +Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had +been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained, +"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they +have on my house and lot?" + +"I don't know. I don't care for the law." + +"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father +is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions +made in the letter he has published." + +"I understand that," said the girl. + +"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the +bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing +to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property." + +He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and +Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the +property, they'd let father come back?" + +Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have +got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been +indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There +can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial." + +"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would +make them easier with him?" + +"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't +like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless +you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property." + +"And do you think it has a moral claim?" + +Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked +his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some +peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing +company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a +sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it +makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who +buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns +its bread by the sweat of its capital--neither better nor worse." +Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from +the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative +economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the +Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral +obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a +clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold +on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a +body that hadn't a soul for that purpose." + +Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then +recollected himself, and put it back. + +"There, Suzette!" said Adeline. + +Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with +her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that. +I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the +company, and if you would do it for me at once." + +"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow +morning and see their attorney." + +"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary." + +"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, +if you wish." + +"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the +company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr. +Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my +sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks +you. Will you?" + +"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, +I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole +place must be sold?" + +Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place +sold?" + +"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?" + +"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm." + +Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps--" + +"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the +world. I--" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on +piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But +I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, +need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?" + +"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw +up the writings." + +"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked. + +"Oh, yes; if you wish." + +"I do." + +"It won't be necessary." + +"I wish it." + +Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt +justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl +freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of +course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of +conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought +to make any one else obey one's conscience?" + +"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why +should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the +frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just +as it does?" + +"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood." + +"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of +pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the +right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. +She would do anything for that. She's as _hard_!" + +"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted. + + + + +X. + + +The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. +"I haven't slept all night--I don't see how _you_ could--and I want you +shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I +want to think it over, first." + +"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first +word. + +Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing +to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. +Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the +writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. +I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like." + +"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated. + +"_No_, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's +right; and I want to do what _I_ think is right. I'm almost sick. I want +Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She +broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! _Do_ give me a little +more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do--" + +They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and +they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, +as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. +Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on +her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him +hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't +agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. +Putney from writing till you think as _I_ do. But be still, now!" + +"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with +you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me! +And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down +sick." + +She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, +dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, +now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney." + +Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up +and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not +slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened +her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a +bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in +it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the +day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very +difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to +compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world +where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from +thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till +now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for +the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser +wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly +within herself before she spoke with Adeline again. + +That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found +as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over +Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; +heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most +pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely. +But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to +excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade +asked. + +"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is +something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this +letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you +once about Jack Wilmington--" + +Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm +sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have +shown it long ago!" + +"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if +it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a +time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried +tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her +so much more than I; and I didn't know--Is it possible--Perhaps I ought +to ask if _you_ are at all--if _you_ care for her?" + +"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! _Why_ do +you ask?" + +"Because _I_ do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that +when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a +wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength +between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind +made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a +hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him +from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I +thought--I thought that if you, old fellow--But now, it's all right--all +right--" + +Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A +great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their +way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a +cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and +which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow +when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was +scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he +could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no +more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by +his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick +was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants +often find themselves in, but his final perception of his +impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's +hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the +purpose when another wishes to do the talking. + +"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got +anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my +way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and +can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere +bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he +walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of +anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for +the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted +sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I +don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; +summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, +anything like _this_. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad +to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good +sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization." +He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor +father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him." + +Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the +thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he +must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all +rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile +for the purpose of this question. + +"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it +must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise +and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever +been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, +though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," +Matt ended, philosophically. + +Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your +family, do they know of your--feeling?" + +"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like +a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added, +despondently. + +Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the +aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to +share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said, +presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation +to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it +very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think +there are very few men like my father?" + +"There are none, Matt!" said Wade. + +"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of +them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered +man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever +loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can." + +"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!" + +"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said +Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I +couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that +she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her +of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I +think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up +altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have +her to _give_ up. Then it's an easy sacrifice." + +"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's +self-satire. + +Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and +looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk. +"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once--to leave her to suffer +it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No +real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might +gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to +think she had given herself through that need--No, it wouldn't do! My +father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and +Louise can be her friend--What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle +it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather +cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I +suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all +the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't +bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I +think I ought to wait." + +"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's +a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and +Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation. + +"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid +it might look calculating and self-interested--" + +"You self-interested, Matt!" + +"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little? +If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and +mother, brother and sister, before all the world?" + +"If you are sure she loves you, yes." + +Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little +condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now. +I've just run over from the farm to see you--" + +"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the +rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly +improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were +immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of +yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as +yourself, to take time before speaking." + +"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade +of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I +should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in +adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much +obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and +helping me to see it in the right light." + +"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation. + +"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think +you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article +on the defalcation in the _Boston Abstract_?" + +"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it, +very humanely--too humanely, perhaps?" + +"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of +that article--a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds +with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no +health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily +newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the +time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who +recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell--that's the fellow's name--and +since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But +he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's +out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative +friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of +the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type--the artistic type +cynicised by the hard conditions of life--newspaper conditions, and then +economic conditions." + +Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful +formulation of Maxwell. + +Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any +use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon +Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he +said, "I think you've decided _so_ wisely, Matt; and justly and +unselfishly." + +"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said +Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of +his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think +it would seem unfeeling--or out of taste, at all--if I went to see her +at such a time?" + +"Why, I can't imagine _your_ doing anything out of taste, Matt." + +"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some +messages by me to her. Will you take them, or--" + +"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's +messages yourself." + +"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid." + + + + +XI. + + +Matt took the lower road that wound away from Wade's church toward the +Northwick place; but as he went, he kept thinking that he must not +really try to see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time; out of +all propriety, of all decency; it would be taking advantage of her +helplessness to intrude upon her the offer of help and of kindness which +every instinct of her nature must revolt from. There was only one thing +that could justify his coming, and that was impossible. Unless he came +to tell her that he loved her, and to ask her to let him take her burden +upon him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love's sake, he had +no right to see her. At moments it seemed as if that were right and he +could do it, no matter how impossible, and then he almost ran forward; +but only to check himself, to stop short, and doubt whether not to turn +back altogether. By such faltering progresses, he found himself in the +Northwick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from the mansion, +which the farm road had brought him to, until he reached the cottage at +the avenue gate. On the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set +his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and he floundered +on till he made out that this languid figure was Adeline. He could have +laughed at the irony, the mockery of the anti-climax, if it had not been +for the face that the old maid turned upon him at the approach of his +footfalls, and the pleasure that lighted up its pathos when she +recognized him. + +"_Oh_, Mr. Hilary!" she said; and then she could not speak, for the +twitching of her lips and the trembling of her chin. + +He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural for him to do that +reverent and tender thing which is no longer a part of our custom; he +bent over it and kissed the chill, bony knuckles. + +She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief and wipe her tears. "I +suppose you've come to see Suzette; but she's gone up to the village to +talk with Mr. Putney; he's our lawyer." + +"Yes," said Matt. + +"I presume I don't need to talk to you about that--letter. I think,--and +I believe Suzette will think so too in the end,--that his mind is +affected, and he just accuses himself of all these things because +they've been burnt into it so. How are your father and mother? And your +sister?" + +She broke off with these questions, he could see, to stay herself in +what she wished to say. "They are all well. Father is still in Boston; +but mother and Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their love, and +they are anxious to know if there is anything--" + +"Thank you. Will you sit down here? It's so close indoors." She made +room for him on the threshold, but he took the step below. + +"I hope Miss Suzette is well?" + +"Why, thank you, not very well. There isn't anything really the matter; +but we didn't either of us sleep very well last night; we were excited. +I don't know as I ought to tell you," she began. "I don't suppose it's a +thing you would know about, any way; but I've got to talk to somebody--" + +"Miss Northwick," said Matt, "if there is anything in the world that I +can do for you, or that you even hope I can do, I _beg_ you to let me +hear it. I should be glad beyond all words to help you." + +"Oh, I don't know as anything can be done," she began, after the fresh +gush of tears which were her thanks, "but Suzette and I have been +talking it over a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your +father about it. You see, Suzette can't feel right about our keeping the +place here, if father's really done what he says he's done. We don't +believe he has; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, and +made to give up the money he says he has got. Suzette thinks we ought to +give up the money we have got in the bank--fifteen hundred or two +thousand dollars--and she wanted I should let her give up her half of +the place, here; and at first I _did_ say she might. But come to find +out from Mr. Putney, the whole place would have to be sold before it +could be divided, and I couldn't seem to let it. That was what +we--disputed about. Yes! We had a dispute; but it's all right now, or it +will be, when we get the company to say they will stop the lawsuit +against father, if he will give up the money he's got, and we will give +up the place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company couldn't stop it; +but I don't see why a rich corporation like that couldn't do almost +anything it wanted to with its money." + +Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor her scheme for defeating +justice; but he smiled forlornly at the hopelessness of it. "I'm afraid +Mr. Putney is right." He was silent, and then at the despair that came +into her face, he hurried on to say, "but I will see my father, Miss +Northwick; I will go down to see him at once; and if anything can be +honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am sure he will try to +do it for your sake. But don't expect anything," he said, getting to his +feet and putting out his hand to her. + +"No, no; I won't," she said, with gratitude that wrung his heart. +"And--won't you wait and see Suzette?" + +Matt reddened. "No; I think not now. But, perhaps, I will come back; +and--and--I will come soon again. Good-by!" + +"Mr. Hilary!" she called after him. He ran back to her. "If--if your +father don't think anything can be done, I don't want he should say +anything about it." + +"Oh, no; certainly not." + +"And, Mr. Hilary! Don't _you_ let Suzette know I spoke to you. _I'll_ +tell her." + +"Why, of course." + +On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less and less impossible +to Matt; but he really knew nothing of the legal complications; and when +he proposed it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. "I don't +believe it could be done. The man's regularly indicted, and he's in +contempt of court as long as he doesn't present himself for trial. +That's the way I understand it. But I'll see our counsel. Whose scheme +is this?" + +"I don't know. Miss Northwick told me of it; but I fancied Miss +Suzette--" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It must have cost her almost her life to give up +her faith in that pitiful rascal." + +"But after she had done that, it would cost her nothing to give up the +property, and as I understood Miss Northwick, that was her sister's +first impulse. She wished to give up her half of the estate +unconditionally; but Miss Northwick wouldn't consent, and they +compromised on the conditions she told me of." + +"Well," said Hilary, "I think Miss Northwick showed the most sense. But +of course, Sue's a noble girl. She almost transfigures that old +scoundrel of a father of hers. That fellow--Jack Wilmington--ought to +come forward now and show himself a man, if he _is_ one. _Any_ man might +be proud of such a girl's love--and they say she was in love with him. +But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his uncle's wife. He +isn't good enough for her, and probably he always knew it." + +Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his father, to go and +look at the picture over the mantel. It was not a new picture; but he +did not feel that he was using his father quite frankly; and he kept +looking at it for that reason. + +"If those poor creatures gave up their property, what would they do? +They've absolutely nothing else in the world!" + +"I fancy," said Matt, "that isn't a consideration that would weigh with +Suzette Northwick." + +"No. If there's anything in heredity, the father of such a girl must +have some good in him. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to suffer." + +"Do you mean that the company would regard the fact that it had no legal +claim on the property, and would recognize it in their behalf?" + +"The company!" Hilary roared. "The company has _no_ right to that +property, moral _or_ legal. But we should act as if we had. If it were +unconditionally offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of +charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man Jack of us would +hold out for a right to it that didn't exist, and we should take it as +part of our due; and I should be such a coward that I couldn't tell the +Board what I thought of our pusillanimity." + +"It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously in a corporate +capacity, or even humanely," said Matt. "But I don't know but there +would be an obscure and negative justice in such action. It would be +right for the company to accept the property, if it was right for +Northwick's daughter to offer it, and I think it is most unquestionably +right for her to do that." + +"Do you, Matt? Well, well," said Hilary, willing to be comforted, +"perhaps you're right. You must send Louise and your mother over to see +her." + +"Well, perhaps not just now. She's proud and sensitive, and perhaps it +might seem intrusive, at this juncture?" + +"Intrusive? Nonsense! She'll be glad to see them. Send them right over!" + +Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went +away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of +till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain +the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own +children. + +What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave his love for her +unconscious approval; but at the same time it created a sort of comedy +situation, and Matt was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from +the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going direct to her, he +hated to be going, like the hero of a novel, to offer himself to the +heroine at the moment her fortunes were darkest; but he knew that he was +only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and humbly her lover, +who wished in any way or any measure he might, to be her friend and +helper. He thought he might put his offer in some such form as would +leave her free to avail herself a little if not much of his longing to +comfort and support her in her trial. But at last he saw that he could +do nothing for the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to +give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend. He did not go +back to Hatboro', as he longed to do. He went back to his farm, and +possessed his soul in such patience as he could. + + + + +XII. + + +Suzette came back from Putney's office with such a disheartened look +that Adeline had not the courage to tell her of Matt's visit and the +errand he had undertaken for her. The lawyer had said no more than that +he did not believe anything could be done. He was glad they had decided +not to transfer their property to the company, without first trying to +make interest for their father with it; that was their right, and their +duty; and he would try what could be done; but he warned Suzette that he +should probably fail. + +"And then what did he think we ought to do?" Adeline asked. + +"He didn't say," Suzette answered. + +"I presume," Adeline went on, after a little pause, "that you would like +to give up the property, anyway. Well, you can do it, Suzette." The joy +she might have expected did not show itself in her sister's face, and +she added, "I've thought it all over, and I see it as you do, now. +Only," she quavered, "I do want to do all I can for poor father, first." + +"Yes," said Suzette, spiritlessly, "Mr. Putney said we ought." + +"Sue," said Adeline, after another little pause, "I don't know what +you'll think of me, for what I've done. Mr. Hilary has been here--" + +"Mr. Hilary!" + +"Yes. He came over from his farm--" + +"Oh! I thought you meant his father." The color began to mount into the +girl's cheeks. + +"Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they all want to do +anything they can; and--and I told Mr. Hilary what we were going to try; +and--he said he would speak to his father about it; and--Oh, Suzette, +I'm afraid I've done more than I ought!" + +Suzette was silent, and then, "No," she said, "I can't see what harm +there could be in it." + +"He said," Adeline pursued with joyful relief, "he wouldn't let his +father speak to the rest about it, till we were ready; and I know he'll +do all he can for us. Don't you?" + +Sue answered, "I don't see what harm it can do for him to speak to his +father. I hope, Adeline," she added, with the severity Adeline had +dreaded, "you didn't ask it as a favor from him?" + +"No, no! I didn't indeed, Sue! It came naturally. He offered to do it." + +"Well," said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and she fell back in +the chair where she had been sitting. + +"I don't see," said Adeline, with an anxious look at the girl's worn +face, "but what we'd both better have the doctor." + +"Ah, the doctor!" cried Suzette. "What can the doctor do for troubles +like ours?" She put up her hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, +and sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the worst had come +upon them. + +The company's counsel submitted Putney's overtures, as he expected, to +the State's attorney, in the hypothetical form, and the State's +attorney, as Putney expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that +when Northwick's friends communicated with him and ascertained his +readiness to surrender the money he had with him, and to make +restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a _nolle +prosequi_. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt +of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the +chance of a merciful sentence. + +There could be no other answer, he said, and he could give none for +Putney to carry back to the defaulter's daughters. + +Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved herself up to bear +it so. Adeline had faltered between her hopes and fears, but she had +apparently decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst came. + +"Well, then," she said, "we must give up the place. You can get the +papers ready, Mr. Putney." + +"I will do whatever you say, Miss Northwick." + +"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my +doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it +all the same." + +Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with +the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see +Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family +that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his +clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed +circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end. + +Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his +mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes +burn on Matt's kindly face. + +"Well, sir," he said, "what do _you_ think can be done for two women, +brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?" + +"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked. + +"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make +their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company--" + +"But I thought--I thought they might have something +besides--something--" + +"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to +their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay +that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?" + +"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with +it--or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it." + +"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the +predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just +nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he +proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to +death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking +down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either." + +Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before +him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, +and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her +father's shame. + +"Of course," he said, "they mustn't be allowed to suffer. We shall count +upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive +somehow not to let them know that they are destitute." + +"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its +seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer +in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, +who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I +mean by every step I take? You're acquainted with Miss Suzette, I +suppose?" + +"Yes," said Matt, consciously. + +"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her +mind to starve, wouldn't know what you were up to if you pretended to +have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?" + +"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no +claim on the property, none whatever!" + +"Now you're shouting." Putney put a comfortable mass of tobacco in his +mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it. + +"They mustn't take it--they won't take it!" cried Matt. + +Putney laughed scornfully. + + + + +XIII. + + +Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous +railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape +the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not +go to see them, and find out some way to help them. + +Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the noble +action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette. + +"Yes, it is noble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn't do +it." + +"Why, mamma?" + +"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well +as they were; and the company doesn't need it; but now where will they +go? What will become of them?" + +Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking. + +"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they +are, for the present, and that they won't be actually houseless. But +they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their +support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself +that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live +on." + +"I _knew_ Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came +out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But +that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no +peace till she had given up everything--everything!" + +"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they--has Suzette--any +plans?" + +"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the +bank," said Matt, forlornly. + +"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, +"they've all managed as badly as they could." + +"Well, mother, they hadn't a very hopeful case, to begin with," said +Matt, and Louise smiled. + +"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs. +Hilary pursued. + +"He was annoyed, but I couldn't see that he had lost his appetite. I +don't think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, +though." + +"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don't know +just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and +see them. They don't seem to have any one else. It is very strange that +they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated +upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try +what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment's pause. + +They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the +end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I +shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the +shore." + +"Oh!" said Louise. + +"Yes; I don't like his being in town so late." + +"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don't you get +him to come up here?" + +"He's been asked," said Matt. + +"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise assented. She rose and went +to the glass door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was +filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think +what we can do for Suzette." + +Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and +listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two +voices retreated together, and Louise's laugh made itself heard farther +off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary. + +"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light +nature himself at that moment. "But I don't know that there is anything +wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily." + +"Oh, I don't mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she +is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I'm +afraid she doesn't feel things deeply. Matt, I don't believe I like this +protégé of yours." + +"Maxwell?" + +"Yes. He's too intense." + +"Aren't you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don't like +Louise's lightness, and you don't like Maxwell's intensity. I think +he'll get over that. He's sick, poor fellow; he won't be so intense when +he gets better." + +"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, +abruptly, "I hope Louise's sympathies will be concentrated on Sue +Northwick for awhile, now."' + +"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I'm sure Louise has +shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I +hadn't supposed she was so attached to her--so constant--" + +"She's romantic; but she's worldly; she likes the world and its ways. +There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of +the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out +of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe. +Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, +because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize. +But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away +she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!" +Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be _entirely_ worldly, it +wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes +in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask +her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly +not a simple character--like Sue Northwick, for instance." + +Matt now roused himself. "Is _she_ a simple character?" he asked, with a +show of indifference. + +"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains +everything she does." + +"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in +openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived +himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with +something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine +her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a +wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her +with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now." + +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than +could have been expected of her father's daughter." + +Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to +answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of +the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick +with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me +that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall +find it difficult to discharge with delicacy." + +"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?" + +"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property +which she is going to give up." + +"We are not the company." + +"Father is the president." + +"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused +it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why +should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do +what is right and proper--even what is delicate--with Miss Northwick." + +"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that." + +"You said something like it, my dear." + +"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her +alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that _we_ +realize all that she is doing." + +"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite +frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and +I wished she wouldn't do it." + + + + +XIV. + + +The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June +day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in +his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, +and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, +with a cushion clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was +pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his +thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted +herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent +gaze. + +"Have you got through?" + +"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to +the camp." + +"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the +importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick +man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her. + +"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But +I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?" + +"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor +and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his +shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly +across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about +the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun +struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their +needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and +through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of +a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place +was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just +beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it. + +Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and +high boots, and his cork helmet topping all. + +"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, +Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?" + +Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up +from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell--" + +"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the +camp." + +"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you +think he is, this morning?" + +"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast." + +"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere +out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a +girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at +such a time as this?" + +"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. +"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't +know what she _will_ do. If Jack Wilmington--but he never really cared +for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be." + +"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now." + +Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she +still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know +that he cared for her." + +"But her pride--wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal +terms--" + +"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a +person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a +thing as that there _is_ no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are +just alike--like cats in the dark." + +"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting +to them before, came into his eyes. + +"I _know_ so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington +still--" + +"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston +to-morrow, and see father--Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow +evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it." + +Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine +before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters. + +"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm +at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that +I thought perhaps you might want to see at once." + +He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. +"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse +me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when +he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; +but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to +feel like work, for the first time since I came up here." + +"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the +board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the +hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. +You must stay the whole summer." + +"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his +side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like." + +"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they +will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly +well?" + +"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one +thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the +light and shade flecks on her face and figure. + +"I _know_ you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted. + +"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor +people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a +caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility." + +"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse +than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will +let you help them." + +"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if +you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're +surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if +you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor +folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to +do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of +riches." + +"You would make me hateful." + +"I would make you charming." + +"Well, do me, then!" + +"Ah, you wouldn't like it." + +"Why?" + +"Because--I found it out in my newspaper work, when I had to interview +people and write them up--people don't like to have the good points they +have, recognized; they want you to celebrate the good points they +haven't got. If a man is amiable and kind and has something about him +that wins everybody's heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very +dignified and commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and +indomitable will." + +"I don't see," said Louise, "why you think I'm weak, and low-minded, and +undignified." + +Maxwell laughed. "Did I say something of that kind?" + +"You meant it." + +"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of +apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound +knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the +most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you +like that?" + +"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be +interviewed." + +"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if +I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I +shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the +_Abstract_. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be +read for me." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up +newspaper work altogether." + +"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal +sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much +would you get for your play?" + +"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six +thousand dollars a year." + +"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness. + +He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and +asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this +time?" + +"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I +should _like_ to." + +Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't +humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your +imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough." + +"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. +"But _I_ know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give +up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he +had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at +all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her +sister will have nothing to live on. And they _won't_ let themselves be +helped--any more than--than--_you_ will!" + +"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them. +Don't they know where their father is?" + +"No. But of course they must, now, before long." + +Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like +to have a peep into that man's soul." + +"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise. + +"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children--" + +"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he +always made me feel creepy." + +"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and +to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you +could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on +them, and forced them to beggar themselves--it would be a tremendous +situation." + +"But I shouldn't _like_ to see him at such a time. It seems to me, +that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell." + +There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt. +It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the +artistic point of view." + +"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be +about any such thing as that--" + +"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic +motive." + +"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not +know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, +but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the +letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you +want this?" + +"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, +"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want +the _true_ artistic point of view." + +"Is he a literary man?" + +"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the +_Events_--when it first came out? All illustrations?" + +"_That?_ I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps +he's your friend--" + +"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. +"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood +frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss +Hilary, though he _is_ a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good +material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has +only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his +generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five +minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't +keep still." + +"I should think she would detest him." + +"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's +affecting to witness their devotion--or it would be if it were not such +a bore." + +"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter. + + + + +XV. + + +Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found +himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the +back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had +the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he +pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, +though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were +never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they +liked Matt. + +Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. +"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked. + +"Yes. Where is Maxwell?" + +"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the +ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees. + +Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the +hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall. + +"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of +the good comradeship he felt for all living things. + +"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of +the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard." + +"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is." + +"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it." + +"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that +probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he +wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but +somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against +odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the +chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But +I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself." + +"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he +doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even +as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that." + +"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, +smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; +he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now." + +"He's older than I am!" said Louise. + +"He hasn't seen so much of the world." + +"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice +as we supposed. I should call him dangerous." + +"Oh, I shouldn't say _that_, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly +hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner." + +"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long +tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her +lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you +suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn. + +Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem +which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl +lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not +know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe +Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging +over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still +opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion +of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've +the time." + +"Well, after dinner," said Matt. + +Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long +slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully +folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the +language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he +usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper. + +"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The +_Events_ is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which +meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and +have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the +change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social +science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing +that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of +belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up +in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got +a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That +letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and +I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. +Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe--of course he +didn't!--but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't +believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business +with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his +investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with +him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am +not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a +detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over +the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends +of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but +I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, +and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, +while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I +shall need active help. + +"Now, I liked some things in that _Abstract_ article of yours; it was +snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. +It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that +could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So +I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into +the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My +idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we +have not only got to get _at_ him, but we have got to _get_ him; and get +him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral +suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect +will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you +believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and +spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously +work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a +great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have +our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, +whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the +fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in +all eternity. + +"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my +wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. _I want you, +old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you._ If this thing goes through, I +shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the _Events_. I +expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall +secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. +Maxwell, and don't you forget it. + +"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got +to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let +the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a +lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work +him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a +bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and +show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward +virtue." + + + + +XVI. + + +Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney +was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for _The Events_. +He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you +would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my +silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, +anyway." + +"Thank you," said Matt. "Then I suppose his proposal doesn't tempt you?" + +"Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I should like such an +adventure well enough, because it would give me a glimpse of life and +character that I should like to know something about. But the reporter +business and the detective business wouldn't attract me." + +"No, I should suppose not," said Matt. "What sort of fellow, personally, +is this--Pinney?" + +"Oh, he isn't bad. He is a regular type," said Maxwell, with tacit +enjoyment of the typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in +the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They +don't know much in the _Events_ office; but they do know Pinney. He's a +great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities +of private life than--Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn +his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very +domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby +now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always +advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most +harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite +soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make +copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a +newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't +the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that +I wanted to guard; and I thought Pinney was on the scent of it, I +shouldn't have any more scruple in setting my foot on him than I would +on that snake." + +A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had crept out of the +stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes +at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous +scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and +ground it into the earth. + +Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and writhing thing. "Ah, I +don't think I should have killed it!" + +"I should," said Maxwell. + +"Then you think one couldn't trust him?" + +"Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it +there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have +room to wriggle." + +They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the image of the tormented +snake in his mind; it somehow mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and +unconsciously softened him toward the reporter. + +"Would there be any harm," he asked, after a while, "in my acting on a +knowledge of this letter in behalf of Mr. Northwick's family?" + +"Not a bit," said Maxwell. "I make you perfectly free of it, as far as +I'm concerned; and it can't hurt Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. +_He_ wouldn't spare _you_." + +"I don't know," said Matt, "that I could justify myself in hurting him +on that ground. I shall be careful about him. I don't at all know that I +shall want to use it; but it has just struck me that perhaps--But I +don't know! I should have to talk with their attorney--I will see about +it! And I thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell." + +"Look here, Mr. Hilary!" said Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and +all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any +harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any +harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and +yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very elect. +Good heavens!" cried Maxwell, "if I could get such a character as +Pinney's into a story or a play, I wouldn't take odds from any man +living!" + +His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so that he waited more and +more impatiently for his mother's return, in order to act upon it. When +she did get back to the farm she could only report from the Northwicks +that she had said pretty much what she thought she would like to say to +Suzette concerning her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up +her property; but Matt inferred that she had at the same time been able +to infuse so much motherly comfort into her scolding that it had left +the girl consoled and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline that +their great distress was not knowing yet where their father was. +Apparently he thought that his published letter was sufficient +reassurance for the time being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at +him in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any appeal from +them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly believed, his mind had been warped by +his suffering--he must have suffered greatly--and he was not able to +reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hilary spoke of the +dignity and strength which both the sisters showed in their trial and +present stress. She praised Suzette, especially; she said her trouble +seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was really a noble girl, +and she had sent her love to Louise; they had both wished to be +remembered to every one. "Adeline, especially, wished to be remembered +to you, Matt; she said they should never forget your kindness." + +Matt got over to Hatboro' the next day, and went to see Putney, who +received him with some ironical politeness, when Matt said he had come +hoping to be useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks. + +"Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. Hilary. You were here on +a mission of that kind before. But may I ask why you think I should +believe you wish to be useful to them?" + +"Why?" + +"Yes. Your father is the president of the company Mr. Northwick had his +little embarrassment with, and the natural presumption would be that you +could not really be friendly toward his family." + +"But we _are_ friendly! All of us! My father would do them any service +in his power, consistent with his duty to--to--his business associates." + +"Ah, that's just the point. And you would all do anything you could for +them, consistent with your duty to him. That's perfectly +right--perfectly natural. But you must see that it doesn't form a ground +of common interest for us. I talked with you about the Miss Northwicks' +affairs the other day--too much, I think. But I can't to-day. I shall be +glad to converse with you on any other topic--discuss the ways of God to +man, or any little interest of that kind. But unless I can see my way +clearer to confidence between us in regard to my clients' affairs than I +do at present, I must avoid them." + +It was absurd; but in his high good-will toward Adeline, and in his +latent tenderness for Suzette, Matt was hurt by the lawyer's distrust, +somewhat as you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns over +your check and says you must bring some one to recognize you. It cost +Matt a pang; it took him a moment to own that Putney was right. Then he +said, "Of course, I must offer you proof somehow that I've come to you +in good faith. I don't know exactly how I shall be able to do it. Would +the assurance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. Michael's--" + +The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly; he smiled, and then he +said, "Brother Wade is a good man, and his words usually carry +conviction, but this is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary." He laughed, and +concluded earnestly, "You _must_ know that I can't talk with you on any +such authority. I couldn't talk with Mr. Wade himself." + +"No, no; of course not," Matt assented; and he took himself off +crestfallen, ashamed of his own short-sightedness. + +There was only one way out of the trouble, and now he blamed himself for +not having tried to take that way at the outset. He had justified +himself in shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he could +justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feeling compelled, as it were, +to take it. At least, now, he should not be acting from any selfish +impulse, and if there were anything unseemly in what he was going to do, +he should have no regrets on that score, even in the shame of failure. + + + + +XVII. + + +Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the Northwick place, or at +least as much time as would pass between walking and driving, but that +was because he was impatient, and his own going seemed faster to his +nerves than that of the swiftest horse could have seemed. At the crest +of the upland which divides Hatboro' from South Hatboro', and just +beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell's house, he met Sue Northwick; +she was walking quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put aside +her long, crape veil, and she came towards him with her proud face +framed in the black, and looking the paler for it; a little of her +yellow hair showed under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt was +afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of her. She seemed not to +know him at first, or rather not to realize that it was he; when she +did, a joyful light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed +over her visage; and "Mr. Hilary!" she said as simply and hospitably as +if their last parting had not been on terms of enmity that nothing could +clear up or explain away. + +He ran forward and caught her hand. "Oh, I am so glad," he said. "I was +going out to see you about something--very important; and I might have +missed you." + +"No. I was just coming to the doctor's, and then I was going back. My +sister isn't at all well, and I thought she'd better see the doctor." + +"It's nothing serious, I hope?" + +"Oh, no. I think she's a little worn out."' + +"I know!" said Matt, with intelligence, and nothing more was said +between them as to the cause or nature of Adeline's sickness. Matt asked +if he might go up the doctor's avenue with her, and they walked along +together under the mingling elm and maple tops, but he deferred the +matter he wished to speak of. They found a little girl playing in the +road near the house, and Sue asked, "Is your father at home, Idella?" + +"Mamma is at home," said the child. She ran forward, calling toward the +open doors and windows, "Mamma! Mamma! Here's a lady!" + +"It isn't their child," Sue explained. "It's the daughter of the +minister who was killed on the railroad, here, a year or two ago--a very +strange man, Mr. Peck." + +"I have heard Wade speak of him," said Matt. + +A handsome and very happy looking woman came to the door, and stilled +the little one's boisterous proclamation to the hoarse whisper of, "A +lady! A lady!" as she took her hand; but she did not rebuke or correct +her. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Morrell," said Suzette, with rather a haughty +distance; but Matt felt that she kept aloof with the pride of a person +who comes from an infected house, and will not put herself at the risk +of avoidance. "I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my sister. She isn't +well. Will you kindly ask him to call?" + +"I will send him as soon as he comes," said Mrs. Morrell, giving Matt +that glance of liking which no good woman could withhold. "Unless," she +added, "you would like to come in and wait for him." + +"Thank you, no," said Suzette. "I must go back to her. Good-by." + +"Good-by!" said Mrs. Morrell. + +Matt raised his hat and silently bowed; but as they turned away, he said +to Suzette, "What a happy face! What a lovely face! What a _good_ face!" + +"She is a very good woman," said the girl. "She has been very kind to +us. But so has everybody. I couldn't have believed it." In fact, it was +only the kindness of their neighbors that had come near the defaulter's +daughters; the harshness and the hate had kept away. + +"Why shouldn't they be kind?" Matt demanded, with his heart instantly in +his throat. "I can't imagine--at such a time--Don't you know that I love +you?" he entreated, as if that exactly followed; there was, perhaps, a +subtle spiritual sequence, transcending all order of logic in the +expression of his passion. + +She looked at him over her shoulder as he walked by her side, and said, +with neither surprise nor joy, "How can you say such a thing to me?" + +"Because it is true! Because I can't help it! Because I wish to be +everything to you, and I have to begin by saying that. But don't answer +me now; you need never answer me. I only wish you to use me as you would +use some one who loved you beyond anything on earth,--as freely as that, +and yet not be bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do that? I +mean, can you feel, 'This is my best friend, the truest friend that any +one can have, and I will let him do anything and everything he wishes +for me.' Can you do that,--say that?" + +"But how could I do that? I don't understand you!" she said, faintly. + +"Don't you? I am so glad you don't drive me from you--" + +"I? _You!_" + +"I was afraid--But now we can speak reasonably about it; I don't see why +people shouldn't. I know it's shocking to speak to you of such a thing +at such a time. It's dreadful; and yet I can't feel wrong to have done +it! No! If it's as sacred as it seems to me when I think of it, then it +couldn't be wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you; and I +want you some day for my wife. Yes! But don't answer that now! If you +never answer me, or if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me +be your true lover, while I can, and to do everything that your accepted +lover could, whether you ever look at me again or not. Couldn't you do +that?" + +"You know I couldn't," she answered, simply. + +"Couldn't you?" he asked, and he fell into a forlorn silence, as if he +could not say anything more. He forced her to take the word by asking, +"Then you are offended with me?" + +"How could I be?" + +"Oh--" + +"It's what any girl might be glad of--" + +"Oh, my--" + +"And I am not so silly as to think there can be a wrong time for it. If +there were, you would make it right, if you chose it. You couldn't do +anything I should think wrong. And I--I--love you, too--" + +"Suzette! Suzette!" he called wildly, as if she were a great way off. It +seemed to him his heart would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and +tried to seize her hand. + +She slipped by him, with a pathetic "Don't! But you know I never could +be your wife. You _know_ that." + +"I don't know it. Why shouldn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't bring my father's shame on my husband." + +"It wouldn't touch me, any more than it touches you!" + +"It would touch your father and mother--and Louise." + +"They all admire you and honor you. They think you're everything that's +true and grand." + +"Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to myself. I know how; +and I shall not give way. Don't think it!" + +"You will do what is right. I shall think that." + +"Don't praise me! I can't bear it." + +"But I love you, and how can I help praising you? And if you love me--" + +"I do. I do, with all my heart." She turned and gave him an impassioned +look from the height of her inapproachability. + +"Then I won't ask you to be my wife, Suzette! I know how you feel; I +won't be such a liar as to pretend I don't. And I will respect your +feeling, as the holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, we will be +engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall promise nothing but to +let me help you all I can, for our love's sake, and I will promise never +to speak to you of our love again. That shall be our secret--our +engagement. Will you promise?" + +"It will be hard for you," she said, with a pitying look, which perhaps +tried him as sorely as anything could. + +"Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you." + +They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, that he knew had +tears in them, "I promise." + +"And I promise, too," he said. + +She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, and he held its slim +fingers in his right a moment, and then let it drop. They both honestly +thought they had got the better of that which laughs from its +innumerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices to escape it. + +"And now," he said, "I want to talk to you about what brought me over +here to-day. I thought at first that I was only going to see your +lawyer." + + + + +XVIII. + + +Matt felt that he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking +to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. +Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust +established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was +any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater +forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing +as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both +insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the +fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for +otherwise unaccountable things. + +"It is what my sister has always said," Sue eagerly assented to his +suggestion of this theory. "I suppose it's what I've always believed, +too, somehow, or I couldn't have lived." + +"Yes; yes, it _must_ be so," Matt insisted. "But now the question is how +to reach him, and make some beginning of the end with him. I suppose +it's the suspense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister +down?" + +"Yes--that and what we ought to do about giving up the property. +We--quarrelled about that at first; we couldn't see it alike; but now +I've yielded; we've both yielded; and we don't know what to do." + +"We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in connection with +something I've just heard of." He told her of Pinney's scheme, and he +said, "We must see if we can't turn it to account." + +They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, but she began it +herself. She looked very old and frail, as she sat nervously rocking +herself in a corner of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, +anxious note. "What I think is, that now we know father is alive, we +oughtn't to do anything about the property without hearing from him. It +stands to reason, don't you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he would +know better than anybody else, what we ought to do. Any rate, I think we +ought to wait and consult with him about it, and see what he says. The +property belonged to mother in the first place, and he mightn't like to +have us part with it." + +"I don't think you need trouble about that, now, Miss Northwick," said +Matt. "Nothing need be done about the property at present." + +"But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what Sue thinks is right, +and to see it just in the light she does; and I've told her I would do +exactly as she said about it; but now she won't say; and so I think +we've got to wait and hear from father. Don't you?" + +"Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, till you hear from +him," said Matt. + +"I knew you would," said the old maid, "and if Sue will be ruled by me, +she'll see that it will all turn out right. I know father, and I know +he'll want to do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. He is +a person who could never bear to wrong any one out of a cent." + +"Well," said Sue, "we will do what Mr. Hilary says; and now, try not to +worry about it any more," she coaxed. + +"Oh, yes! It's well enough to say not to worry _now_, when my mind's got +going on it," said the old maid, querulously; she flung her weak frame +against the chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. "But +if you'd agreed with me in the first place, it wouldn't have come to +this. Now I'm all broken down, and I don't know _when_ I shall be well +again." + +It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted the cushion to her +sister's shoulders, while Adeline's tongue ran helplessly on. "You were +so headstrong and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were just +like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces against you, and you +wouldn't move." + +"I was wrong," said the proud girl, meekly. + +"I'm sure," Adeline whimpered, "I hate to make an exhibition before Mr. +Hilary, as much as any one, but I can't help it; no, I can't. My nerves +are _all_ gone." + +The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of doors, to leave her, for +the first few confidential moments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, +alone with the physician. There was a little sequestered space among the +avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward which he led the way, +but the girl would not sit down. She stood with her arms fallen at her +side, and looked him steadily in the face. + +"It's all true that she said of me. I set myself like a rock against +her. I have made her sick, and if she died, I should be her murderer!" + +He put his arms round her, and folded her to his heart. "Oh, my love, my +love, my love!" he lamented and exulted over her. + +She did not try to resist; she let her arms hang at her side; she said, +"Is _this_ the way we keep our word?--Already!" + +"Our word was made to be broken; we must have meant it so. I'm glad we +could break it so soon. Now I can truly help you; now that you are to be +my wife." + +She did not gainsay him, but she asked, "What will you think when you +know--you must have known that I used to care for some else; but he +never cared for me? It ought to make you despise me; it made me despise +myself! But it is true. I did care all the world for him, once. _Now_ +will you say--" + +"Now, more than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his +own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from +under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them in +mid-heaven. + +"Suzette!" Adeline's voice called from within. "Suzette! Where are you?" + +Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She came out again in a +little while, and said that the doctor thought Adeline had better go to +bed for a day or two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all +excitement. "We mustn't talk before her any more, and you mustn't stay +any longer." + +He accepted the authority she instinctively assumed over him, and found +his dismissal already of the order of things. He said, "Yes, I'll go at +once. But about--" + +She put a card into his hand. "You can see Mr. Putney, and whatever you +and he think best, will _be_ best. Haven't you been our good angel ever +since--Oh, I'm not half good enough for you, and I shouldn't be, even if +there were no stain--" + +"Stop!" he said; he caught her hand, and pulled her toward him. + +The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, "There's nothing to be +anxious about, but she really must have quiet. I'll send Mrs. Morrell +down to see you, after tea. She's quiet itself." + +Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again in parting. + +"Will you give me a lift, doctor, if you're going toward town?" + +"Get in," said the doctor. + +Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off together. + +Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read: "Mr. Putney: Please talk +to Mr. Hilary as you would to my sister or me." Suzette's printed name +served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket-book, and then he +said, "What sort of man is Mr. Putney, doctor?" + +"Mr. Putney," said the doctor, with a twinkle of his blue eyes, "is one +of those uncommon people who have enemies. He has a good many because +he's a man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But he's his own +worst enemy, because from time to time he gets drunk." + +"A character," said Matt. "Do you think he's a safe one? Doesn't his +getting drunk from time to time interfere with his usefulness?" + +"Well, of course," said the doctor. "It's bad for him; but I think it's +slowly getting better. Yes, decidedly. It's very extraordinary, but ever +since he's been in charge of the Miss Northwicks' interests--" + +"Yes; _that's_ what I was thinking of." + +"He's kept perfectly straight. It's as if the responsibilities had +steadied him." + +"But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge of one that's +gathering violence from its postponement," Matt suggested. + +"I think not," said the doctor after a moment. "But of course I can't +tell." + +"They trust him so implicitly," said Matt. + +"I know," said the doctor. "And I know that he's entirely devoted to +them. The fact is, Putney's a very dear friend of mine." + +"Oh, excuse me--" + +"No, no!" The doctor stayed Matt's apologies. "I understand just what +you mean. He disliked their father very much. He was principled against +him as a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the imaginations +of all the poor people about him who wanted to be like him--" + +"Oh, that's rather good," said Matt. + +"Do you think so?" asked the doctor, looking round at him. "Well! I +supposed you would be all the other way. Well! What I was saying was +that Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father's chief victims. +I think he was touched by their coming to him, and has pitied them. The +impression is that he's managed their affairs very well; I don't know +about such things; but I know he's managed them honorably; I would stake +my life on it; and I believe he'll hold out straight to the last. I +suppose," the doctor conjectured, at the end, "that they will try to get +at Northwick now, and arrange with his creditors for his return." + +"I don't mind telling you," said Matt, "that it's been tried and failed. +The State's attorney insists that he shall come back and stand his +trial, first of all." + +"Oh!" said the doctor. + +"Of course, that's right from the legal point of view. But in the +meantime, nobody knows where Mr. Northwick is." + +"I suppose," said the doctor, "it would have been better for him not to +have written that letter." + +"It's hard to say," Matt answered. "I thought so, too, at first. I +thought it was cowardly and selfish of him to take away his children's +superstition about his honesty. You knew that they held to that through +all?" + +"Most touching thing in the world," said the doctor, leaning forward to +push a fly off his horse with the limp point of his whip. "That poor old +maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it myself." + +"I don't know that I should hold him severely accountable. And I'm not +sure now that I should condemn him for writing that letter. It must have +been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say he _had_ to do it. +It's conceivable that if he had kept it on his mind any longer, his mind +would have given way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another +superstition--if it is a superstition. What do you think, doctor? Do you +believe that there was a mental twist in him?" + +"There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. What they do is so +senseless--so insane. I suppose that's the true theory of all crime. But +it won't do to act upon it, yet awhile." + +"No." + +The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of enjoyment at the +notion. "Above all, it won't do to let the defaulters act upon that +theory, and apply for admission to the insane asylums instead of taking +the express for Canada, when they're found out." + +"Oh, no," said Matt. He wondered at himself for being able to analyze +the offence of Suzette's father so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could +not relate the thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all; +he could only realize their kindred in her share of his suffering. + + + + +XIX. + + +Putney accepted Suzette's authorization of Matt with apparent +unconsciousness of anything but its immediate meaning, and they talked +Pinney's scheme intimately over together. In the end, it still remained +a question whether the energies of such an investigator could be +confined to the discovery of Northwick's whereabouts; whether his +newspaper instincts would not be too strong for any sense of personal +advantage that could be appealed to in him. They both believed that it +would not be long before Northwick followed up the publication of his +letter by some communication with his family. + +But time began to go by again, and Northwick made no further sign; the +flurry of activity which his letter had called out in the detectives +came to nothing. Their search was not very strenuous; Northwick's +creditors were of various minds as to the amount of money he had carried +away with him. Every one knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he +could not be molested there; and it seemed very improbable that he could +be persuaded to put himself within reach of the law. The law had no +terms to offer him, and there was really nothing to be done. + +Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when he held that they +must wait Northwick's motion. He professed himself willing to wait as +long as Northwick chose, though he thought they would not have to wait +long, and he contended for a theory of the man's whole performance which +he said he should like to have tested before a jury. + +Matt could not make out how much he really meant by saying that +Northwick could be defended very fairly on the ground of insanity; and +that he would enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common thing to +show that a murderer was insane; why not a defaulter? Tilted back in his +chair, with one leg over the corner of his table, and changing the +tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, the +lawyer outlined the argument which he said could be made very effective. +There was the fact to begin with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, +and had no need of more money when he began to speculate; Putney held +that this want of motive could be made a strong point; and that the +reckless, almost open, way in which Northwick used the company's money, +when he began to borrow, was proof in itself of unsound mind: apparently +he had no sense whatever of _meum_ and _tuum_, especially _tuum_. Then, +the total collapse of the man when he was found out; his flight without +an effort to retrieve himself, although his shortage was by no means +hopelessly vast, and could have been almost made up by skilful use of +the credit that Northwick could command, was another evidence of shaken +reason. But besides all this, there was his behavior since he left home. +He had been absent nearly five months, and in that time he had made no +attempt whatever to communicate with his family, although he must have +known that it was perfectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who +was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singularly attached to his +home; yet he had remained all that time in voluntary exile, and he had +left them in entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they +could accept the probability of his death by a horrible casualty. This +inversion of the natural character of a man was one of the most striking +phenomena of insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, +maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously with a jury. + +Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with +Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. +Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every +wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of the +fact. + +"I don't suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though I think I could make +out a strong case for Brother Northwick," said Putney. He seemed to +enter into it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of +Matt's uneasiness, and chose to torment him; but then apparently he +changed his mind, and dealt with other aspects of their common interest +so seriously and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with a +regret that he could not remove the last barrier between them, and tell +the lawyer that he concerned himself so anxiously in the affairs of that +wretched defaulter because his dearest hope was that the daughter of the +criminal would some day be his wife. + +But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to those who were +nearest him; and how to shape it in terms that would convey the fact and +yet hide the repulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased +him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome riddle. He +understood why his love for Suzette Northwick must be grievous to his +father and mother; how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in +some sort disastrous; and yet he felt that if there was anything more +sacred than another in the world for him, it was that love, he must be +true to it at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must begin by +being perfectly frank with those whom it would afflict, and confessing +to himself all its difficulties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of +dealing with his father; they were both men, and they could look at it +from the man's point of view. Besides, his father really cared little +what people would say; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not +change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see so much good in it +that he would be promptly and finally reconciled. + +But Matt knew that his mother was of another make, and that the blow +would be much harder for her to bear; his problem was how to lighten it. +Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten it, but let it +fall at once, and trust to her affection and good sense for the rest. +But when he found himself alone with her that night, he began by making +play and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in this perverse +effort that he was not aware of some such effort on her part, till she +suddenly dropped it, and said, "Matt, there is something I wish to speak +to you about--very seriously." + +His heart jumped into his throat, but he said "Well?" and she went on. + +"Louise tells me that you think of bringing this young man down to the +shore with you when you come to see us next week." + +"Maxwell? I thought the change might do him good; yes," said Matt, with +a cowardly joy in his escape from the worst he feared. He thought she +was going to speak to him of Suzette. + +She said, "I don't wish you to bring him. I don't wish Louise to see him +again after she leaves this place--ever again. She is fascinated with +him." + +"Fascinated?" + +"I can't call it anything else. I don't say that she's in love; but +there's no question but she's allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her +fancy to be taken; the two strongest things in her--in most girls. I +want to break it all up." + +"But do you think--" + +"I _know_. It isn't that she's with him at every moment, but that her +thoughts are with him when they're apart. He puzzles her; he piques her; +she's always talking and asking about him. It's their difference in +everything that does it. I don't mean to say that her heart is touched, +and I don't intend it shall be. So, you mustn't ask him to the shore +with you, and if you've asked him already, you must get out of it. If +you think he needs sea air, you can get him board at some of the +resorts. But not near us." She asked, in default of any response from +her son, "You _don't_ think, Matt, it would be well for the acquaintance +to go on?" + +"No, I don't mother; you're quite right as to that," said Matt, "if +you're not mistaken in supposing--" + +"I'm not; you may depend upon it. And I'm glad you can see the matter +from my point of view. It is all very well for you to have your queer +opinions, and even to live them. I think it's all ridiculous; but your +father and I both respect you for your sincerity, though your course has +been a great disappointment to us." + +"I know that, mother," said Matt, groaning in spirit to think how much +worse the disappointment he was meditating must be, and feeling himself +dishonest and cowardly, through and through. + +"But I feel sure," Mrs. Hilary went on, "that when it's a question of +your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, +and in the surroundings she had always been used to." + +"I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise's ideas," +said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface. + +"Ideas!" cried his mother. "She _has_ no ideas. She merely has impulses, +and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and +breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she +would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each +other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, +and all that; and I shouldn't at all mind his being poor. I never minded +Cyril Wade's being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because +he was one of ourselves; and this young man--Matt, you _can't_ pretend, +that with all his intellectual qualities, he's what one calls a +gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all +his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn't be; and +Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have +all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don't deny that he +has--" + +"He has some very serious faults," Matt interrupted. + +"We all have," said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. "But he might be a perfect +saint--a hero--a martyr, and if he wasn't what one calls a gentleman, +don't you see? We can't be frank about such things, here, because we +live in a republic; but--" + +"We get there, just the same," said Matt, with unwonted slang. + +"Yes," said his mother. "That is what I mean." + +"And you're quite right, as to the facts, mother." He got up, and began +to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were +sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting +to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber +where Maxwell was probably writing. "The self-made man can never be the +society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more +money, more virtue, but he's a kind of inferior, and he betrays his +inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he's successful, he's so +because he's been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of +life. That's one reason why I say that there oughtn't to _be_ any battle +of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages--I see that. He's +often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his +bread. He isn't Louise's social equal; I quite agree with you there, +mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in +danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. +I'm sorry for Maxwell, but I don't pity him, especially. He bears the +penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him +stand it! But there are others--weaker, unhappier--Mother! You haven't +asked me yet about--the Northwicks." Matt stopped in front of her chair, +and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his +acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her +perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She +was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more +and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure +to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an +expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts +and theories. + +"No," she said, "I expected to do that. You know I've seen them so very +lately, and with this about Louise on my mind--How are they? That poor +Adeline--I'm afraid it's killing her. Were you able to do anything for +them?" + +"Ah, I don't know," the young man sighed. "They have to suffer for their +misfortunes, too." + +"It seems to be the order of Providence," said Mrs. Hilary, with the +resignation of the philosophical spectator. + +"No!" Matt protested. "It's the disorder of improvidence. There's +nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. +Those women are perfectly innocent; they've only wished to do right, and +tried to do it; but they're under a ban the same as if they had shared +their father's guilt. They have no friends--" + +"Well, Matt," said his mother, with dignity, "I think you can hardly say +that. I'm sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to +reproach ourselves with. I think we've gone to the extreme to show our +good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don't like +your saying this!" + +"I beg your pardon. I certainly don't blame you, or Louise, or father. I +blame myself--for cowardice--for--for unworthiness in being afraid to +say--to tell you--Mother," he burst out suddenly, after a halt, "I've +asked Suzette Northwick to marry me." + +Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the +effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing +presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and +now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and +Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, +so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed +wholly incredible. + + + + +XX. + + +The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary +heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in +making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the +affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, +and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a +personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she +liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and +similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest +kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them +to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had +them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was +more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her +husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she +had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun +to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial +slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer +him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal +tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts +as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of +doctrine. + +"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?" + +"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his +mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know +that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected +her to refuse me." + +"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I +can't imagine it." + +"Can't imagine it? _I_ can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother +did not seem to notice his resentment. + +"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?" + +"I wish you to say everything, mother--all that you feel and +think--about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think--I +can't _let_ you think--that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed +me to suppose that my offer would be welcome." + +"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for +that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he +allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no +doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride." + +"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself. +But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I +know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it +can't be helped." + +"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always +imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur +of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people +who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons." + +"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted. + +"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family +connections that every one else has--" + +"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a +smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was +making. + +"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to +see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the +princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent +creature." + +Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly +reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to +overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled: + +"She is--she _is_--angelically!" + +"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a +good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more +to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about +their property, than for wishing to give it up." + +"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully. + +"But there, _there_ is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the +highest position. But her father! What will people say?" + +"Need we mind that, mother?" + +"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were--if he had +never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do +next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!" + +"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately. + +"Matt!" + +"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength +for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I +should be glad to stand by him!" + +"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel +about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer +anything more on that wretch's account?" + +"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my +engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass +him--compromise him, even--" + +"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know +best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or +mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable--" + +"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I +feel--" + +"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe +he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to +make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into +State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your +marriage." + +Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not +perceive so keenly. + +"I don't intend that, exactly." + +"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing +is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone." + +"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it +up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the +matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to +face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette +see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is +guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But +he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to +be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, +his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether +he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty--" + +"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious +than a self-confessed defaulter's." + +"No, I don't say--" + +"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty +with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, +though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very +differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, +nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father +was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him." + +Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world +enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She +will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of +what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way." + +"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose +it _is_ here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you +hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point +Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail +for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you +here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you +marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father +into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home." + +"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her +to run from it." + +"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, +if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he +dies. Good-night." + +Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had +sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved +one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not +rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in +dazzling illusions. + +The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; +he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew +how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his +father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt +instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more +unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother. + +But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all +his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of +meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had +done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said +it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he +said, "I shall have to take some action about it." + +"How, action?" + +"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes +known--and you wish it to be known, of course--" + +"Of course!" + +"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to +Northwick." + +"Northwick?" + +"As president of the Board, I'm _ex officio_ his enemy and persecutor. +It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that +after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It +wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board +altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a +cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty." + +"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt. + +"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise." + +"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position +so much." + +Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we +discovered Northwick's obliquities--excuse me!" + +Matt blushed. "Oh, I know he's oblique, as such things go." + +"In fact," his father resumed, "I shall be glad to be out of it, and I +don't think there'll be much opposition to my going out; I know that +there's a growing feeling against me in the Board. I _have_ tried to +carry water on both shoulders. I've made the effort honestly; but the +effect hasn't been good. I couldn't keep my heart out of it; from the +very first I pitied that poor devil's children so that I got him and +gave him all the chance I could." + +"That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like--" + +"It wasn't business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he +might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I'm +afraid this is what I've hoped, in spite of myself," said Hilary. + +This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. +He could only say, "I don't believe you've ever allowed that hope to +interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment." + +"No; but I've had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I've +had it. I've felt that; and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm not +ashamed of your choice, Matt; I'm proud of it. The thing gave me a shock +at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she's all +kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why +she hasn't done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don't believe +people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. +But if they do, they may do it, and be damned." + +Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, +upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure +that he exchanged with his son. + +"We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by +that--We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion +where he is than we have." + +"No; not the least," said Matt. "I think it's the uncertainty that's +preying upon Miss Northwick." + +"The man's behaving like a confounded lunatic," said Hilary. + +The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, "That's their lawyer's +theory of him--" + +"Oh, you've _seen_ him, have you? Odd chap." + +"Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after--after--at the request of +Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell's heard +of from a brother reporter," and Matt now unfolded Pinney's plan to his +father, and showed his letter. + +Hilary looked from it at his son. "You don't mean that this is the +blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the _Events_?" + +"Yes; the same fellow. But as to blackguard--" + +"Well, then, Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it +would be a kind of insult to those poor girls." + +"I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, I don't think he +knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself. Maxwell says he +wouldn't know. And besides, we can't help ourselves. If he doesn't go +for us, he will go for himself. We _must_ employ him. He's a species of +_condottiere_; we can buy his allegiance with his service: and we must +forego the sentimental objection. I've gone all over it, and that's the +only conclusion." + +Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help +themselves, that they could not do better. He asked, "And what did their +lawyer think of it?" + +"He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better +wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his +family." + +"I'm not so sure of that," said Hilary. "If this fellow is such a fellow +as you say, I don't see why we shouldn't make use of him at once." + +"Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?" said Matt. "I think it +would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily--" + +"Come back?" said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than +this. "Nonsense! And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I +mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out +just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in +order to make up his shortage." + +Matt now perceived the extent of his father's purpose, and on its plane +he honored it. + +"Father, you're splendid!" + +"Stuff! I'm in a corner. What else is there to do? What less could we +do? What's the money for, if it isn't to--" Hilary choked with the +emotion that filled him at the sight of his son's face. + +Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is +the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a +daughter's faith in him; for a son _knows_ whether his father is good or +not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son's opinion +than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary +valued his judgment as something ideal. + +After a moment he asked, "Can this fellow be got at?" + +"Oh, I imagine very readily." + +"What did Maxwell say about him, generally?" + +"Generally, that he's not at all a bad kind of fellow. He's a reporter +by nature, and he's a detective upon instinct. He's done some amateur +detective work, as many reporters do--according to Maxwell's account. +The two things run together--and he's very shrewd and capable in his +way. He's going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to +be worth his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion +is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of +control. He's a mixture, like everybody else. He's devotedly fond of his +wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air--" + +"My idea," Hilary interrupted, "would be not to wait for the Social +Science Convention, but to send this--" + +"Pinney." + +"Pinney at once. Will you see him?" + +"If you have made up your mind." + +"I've made up my mind. But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven's +sake bind him by all that's sacred--if there's anything sacred to +him--not to give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and offer him a +pension for his widow afterwards." + + + + +XXI. + + +Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, the prophecy in +amplitude of what her son might come to be if he did not carry the +activities of youth into his later life. She, for her part, was long +past such activities; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass grow +upon any path she had taken. She appointed the afternoon of the day +following her talk with Matt for leaving the farm and going to the +shore; Louise was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it best +to tell her why, when the girl came to say good-night, and to announce +that her packing was finished. + +"But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, mamma, all of a +sudden?" + +"We are in a hurry because--don't you really know, Louise?--because in +the crazy atmosphere of this house, one loses the sense of--of +proportion--of differences." + +"Aren't you rather--Emersonian, mamma?" + +"Do you think so, my dear? Matt's queer notions infect everybody; I +don't blame _you_, particularly; and the simple life he makes people +lead--by leading it himself, more than anything else--makes you think +that you could keep on living just as simply if you wished, everywhere." + +"It's very sweet--it's so restful," sighed the girl. "It makes you sick +of dinners and ashamed of dances." + +"But you must go back to them; you must go back to the world you belong +to; and you'd better not carry any queer habits back with you." + +"You _are_ rather sphinx-like, mamma! Such habits, for instance, as?" + +"As Mr. Maxwell." The girl's face changed; her mother had touched the +quick. She went on, looking steadily at her daughter, "You know he +wouldn't do, there." + +"No; he wouldn't," said Louise, promptly; so mournfully, though, that +her mother's heart relented. + +"I've seen that you've become interested in him, Louise; that your fancy +is excited; he stimulates your curiosity. I don't wonder at it! He _is_ +very interesting. He makes you feel his power more than any other young +man I've met. He charms your imagination even when he shocks your +taste." + +"Yes; all that," said Louise, desolately. + +"But he does shock your taste?" + +"Sometimes--not always." + +"Often enough, though, to make the difference that I'm afraid you'll +lose the sense of. Louise, I should be very sorry if I thought you were +at all--in love with that young man!" + +It seemed a question; Louise let her head droop, and answered with +another. "How should I know? He hasn't asked me." + +This vexed her mother. "Don't be trivial, don't be childish, my dear. +You don't need to be asked, though I'm exceedingly glad he _hasn't_ +asked you, for now you can get away with a good conscience." + +"I'm not sure yet that I want to get away," said the girl, dreamily. + +"Yes, you are, my dear!" her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do +at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money +enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little +nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be +different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in +as different a world from yours as if it were another planet--I want you +to think over all the girls you know--all the _people_ you know--and see +how many of them have married out of their own set, their own circle--we +might almost say, their own family. There isn't one!" + +"I've not said I wished to marry him, mamma." + +"No. But I wish you to realize just what it would be." + +"It would be something rather distinguished, if his dreams came true," +Louise suggested. + +"Well, of course," Mrs. Hilary admitted. She wished to be very, very +reasonable; very, very just; it was the only thing with a girl like +Louise; perhaps with any girl. "It would be distinguished, in a way. But +it wouldn't be distinguished in the society way; the only way you've +professed to care for. I know that we've always been an intellectual +community, and New-Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess +to think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We do invite them +somewhat, but I pass whole seasons without meeting them; and I don't +know that you could say that they are _of_ society, even when they are +_in_ it. If such a man has society connections, he's in society; but +he's there on account of his connections, not on account of his +achievements. This young man may become very distinguished, but he'll +always be rather queer; and he would put a society girl at odds with +society. His distinction would be public; it wouldn't be social." + +"Matt doesn't think society is worth minding," Louise said, casually. + +"But _you_ do," returned her mother. "And Matt says that a man of this +young man's traditions might mortify you before society people." + +"Did Matt say that?" Louise demanded, angrily. "I will _speak_ to Matt +about that! I should like to know what he means by it. I should like to +hear what he would say." + +"Very likely he would say that the society people were not worth +minding. You know his nonsense. If you agree with Matt, I've nothing +more to say, Louise; not a word. You can marry a mechanic or a +day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self-respect. I've only been +talking to you on the plane where I've always understood you wished to +be taken. But if you don't, then I can't help it. You must understand, +though, and understand distinctly, that you can't live on two levels; +the world won't let you. Either you must be in the world and of it +entirely; or you must discard its criterions, and form your own, and +hover about in a sort of Bohemian limbo on its outskirts; or you must +give it up altogether." Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where she had +been sitting, and said, "Now I'm going to bed. And I want you to think +this all carefully over, Louise. I don't blame you for it: and I wish +nothing but your good and happiness--yours and Matt's, both. But I must +say you've been pretty difficult children to provide for. Do you know +what Matt has been doing?" Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, but +she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last. + +"Something new about the Northwicks?" + +"Very decidedly--or about one of them. He's offered himself to Suzette." + +"How grand! How perfectly magnificent! Then she can give up her property +at once, and Matt can take care of her and Adeline both." + +"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a +capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to +live here on the farm with him." + +"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could +she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people +thought?" + +"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it +comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much +what her father had been--that is, society people wouldn't, _as_ society +people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and +she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be +talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived +down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage +of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us +off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some +farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say +'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is +indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must +confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged." + +"Why, _were_ you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along +that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy +would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And +then, Suzette _is_ a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's +just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of _course_ he would be taken with +her. I'm not a _bit_ surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the +world." + +"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has +seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. +Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year." + +Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad." + +"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing. + +"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in +chains, long enough to give away the bride?" + +"Louise!" said her mother. + +Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, +"for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's +money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no +matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society +man--" + +"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. +Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell--" + +"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite +rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, +which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. +She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the +light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated +it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the +moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor. + +After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell +waiting for her on the piazza. + +"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked. + +"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered. + +"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon +train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed +with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go +over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, +for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any +reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with +her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to +speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and +tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, +"Will you?" + +"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing." + +"Well, you ought to like this." + +"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating." + +They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture +and the pines. + +"Before I say it, you must _promise_ to take it in the right way," she +said. + +He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?" + +"Because--because I wish you to so much!" + +"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to +behave myself, under ordinary provocation?" + +"You may think the provocation is extraordinary." + +"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to +scramble after him. + +She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he +would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, +rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care +for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman +could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not +go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as +Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. +She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit +beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock +swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs +over them. + +"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence. + +"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for +you." + +"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when +we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?" + +"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that." + +"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were." + +"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?" + +"Because--because you seemed very worldly." + +"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with +his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I +take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm +going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss +Hilary." + +"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of +life Matt's trying to live is better?" + +"Your brother is the best man I ever knew--" + +"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!" + +"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means +business." + +"And can't you think--can't you wish--for anything better than the life +that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you +ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away +from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't +you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?" + +"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy +godmother?" asked Maxwell. + +"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. +"You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile. + +"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile +that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if +I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen +what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in +the summer." + +"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go +and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell"--she mechanically +gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to +the world again." + +"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going +to make of my patience, my docility--" + +She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. +Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house +with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the +hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength +for the battle of life as fast as you can." + +She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, +felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that +she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, +and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her +capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping +meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell +her his love. + +Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; +but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded. + + + + +PART THIRD. + + + + +I. + + +Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and +possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really +expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper +sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the +interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he +said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and +he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving +that his account of the defalcation in the _Events_ could have been +displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He +referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly +agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object. + +It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to +Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney +was disappointed in the _Events'_ people; they had not seen his proposed +excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an +enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to +invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. +This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another +calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some +minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with +gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who +attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a +partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, +though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for +it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and +which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most +valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she +did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she +believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she +would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were +lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long +run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that +she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to +look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That +would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better +than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much +good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay +quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that +was necessary. + +"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get +him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both +sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as +a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies--" + +"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked +thing! So dishonorable!" + +"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney. + +"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I _won't_. But +if you go as a detective, _go_ as a detective; and if you go as their +friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try +to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with +you; so there!" + +"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you +needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for +practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter +line. You won't object to that?" + +"No; I won't object to that." + +They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they +were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had +seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At +Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick +had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him +in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search +in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not +only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he +could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went +about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not +wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the +_Events_. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie +with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on +his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local +press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of +newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the +leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material +relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a +sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came +to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but +it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very +well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not +in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned +that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because +they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at +home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence +in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by +their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had +fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a +different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who +had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no +domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. +These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too +proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study +in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They +did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed +to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in +tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the +confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent +temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes +in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said +they had no statement to make. + +It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man +he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, +and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, +Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice +of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather +comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the +local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it +was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like +himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest +defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should +be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if +at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he +did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but +he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his +way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the _Events_ was posted. +This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone +unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he +came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such +friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, +that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to +feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them +behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing +what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an +English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down +the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in +compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by +any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the +baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting +into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the +calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through +the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as +soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, +and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, +and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole +enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had +said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means +of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it +the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he +could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish +view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and +nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only +right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the +Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; +good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which +he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and +thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only +to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found +it in lasting prosperity. + + + + +II. + + +These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left +his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number +of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had +already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not +playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale +straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal +speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were +Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was +national as well as what was individual in his talk. + +"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that +fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his +soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip +out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got +tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the +spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to +go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; +but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall +into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. +Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'" + +One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to +invest." + +"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of +thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old +Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and _he_ would +be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, +and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him." + +"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even +go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?" + +"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of +the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might +have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, +and the thousand-dollar bills--there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau +says--were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had +no faith in Oiseau--knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just +putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left +him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. +Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind +of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them +must bring money away with them, and there are business openings +everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here." + +"That _is_ odd," said the Canadian. + +"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't +know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, +except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the +only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was +a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes +to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply +rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a +safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's +business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been +able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and +he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just +_couldn't_. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend +to respect it. I can imagine just how the man _trembled_ to go into some +speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. +But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he +gets away with it, and he can't risk it." + +"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you +could have got at him," said the Canadian. + +"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock +in England." + +Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for +a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the +request as an overture to his acquaintance. + +"Brother Yank?" he suggested. + +"Boston." + +"Going over?" + +"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, +do you?" + +"No; I don't," said Markham. + +"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney. + +Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?" + +"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But +I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little +article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's +Pinney." + +"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, +going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But +don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine." + +"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a +much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the +American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing +soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely +conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, +and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and +address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was +about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half +of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then +he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission +concerning Northwick. + +"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he +asked. + +"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash +off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted +acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt +the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire +in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who +knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish +now--yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me--at Rimouski. You'd better +look him up." + +"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'll _live_ with him before +I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds." + +He had no trouble in finding Père Étienne, but after the first hopeful +encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found +him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at +Haha Bay. It became evident that Père Étienne took Pinney for a +detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for +Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he +was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison. + +Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's +caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his +authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's +acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their +parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after +several weeks, and Père Étienne knew where he was then living. But he +was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him +as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the +learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the +largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at +Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, +that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished +him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile. + +Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. André, +and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in +finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's +spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized +toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père +Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to +him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at +the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at +the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. +Northwick, I believe." + +It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since +Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when +he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was +suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much +so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face. + +"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of +taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and +of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. +Northwick, you won't open the letter." + +He handed him, not the letter which Père Étienne had given him, but the +letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he +recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter +tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched +it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of +the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," +he said, kindly, and turned away. + + + + +III. + + +When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still +holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a +kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint. + +"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If +it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me +at once?" + +"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than +Pinney had expected to find him. "But--are they well? Is it--bad news?" + +"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read +the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it +was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring +him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by +the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and +built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain +nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, +seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, +apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a +little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his +wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she +said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he +unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look +sick." + +"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the +bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he +would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it +but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety +of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that +he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy +only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done +so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would +write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that +for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better +and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him. + +When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter +open in his hand. + +"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that +had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the +hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully +established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant +to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people +ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city. + +Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of +the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to +take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir." + +Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting +mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to +speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how +Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, +and now he gave him the letter of Père Étienne, with a eulogy of the +priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how +Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly +recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the +postmark on his letter to the _Events_ that gave him the notion of going +to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect +of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him +ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and +he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." +The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, +"I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different +way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I +believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never +believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable +he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he +went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that +you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a +little." + +As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his +wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not +help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with +Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral +suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the +conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the +making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of +those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a +reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one +of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his +best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his +promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with +accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this +matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own. + +"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and +he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter +as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's +nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but +he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew +just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect +for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing +to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make +out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a +growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and +conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by +the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression +concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's +opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work +exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault +in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the +situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight +were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was +concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary +machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came +within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had +been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no +light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love +from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had +not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and +anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about +them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, +and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive +circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. +The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not +broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary +criticised for it, and he told Northwick so. + +"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he +consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he +expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and +talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added. + +Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the +fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't +know anything about the way they're living?" + +"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they +were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what +they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. +My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as +they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in +the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of +yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in +that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home." + +Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded. + +"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a +name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not +in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch +engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick--" + +"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real +name!" + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, +when he first takes another. It's natural." + +"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; +and then I was sick--They must have believed I was dead!" + +"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and +myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it +was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a +friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand +how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that +they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of +the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about +it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor +there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all +theories to the contrary--though _they_ must have been pretty well +exploded by your letter to the _Events_--and the question is what answer +are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some +word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I +won't. But if I was in your place, I know what _I_ should do." + +Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep +silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face +became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is +doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute +misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer +soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a +quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must +have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly +because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which +he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his +guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, +Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between +them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for +nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself +and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to +perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in +this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh. + +"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain +amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not +misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them." + +"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter +despair, and an openness that he had not shown before. + +Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, +Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, +joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you +believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in +good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your +daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!" + +"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation. + +"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got +to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you +just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. But _I_ think +you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for +nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all +you've brought with you,"--Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for +the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added--"and +more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when +it's needed. I can't say _how_ I know it, for I don't exactly _know_ how +I know it. But I do know it; and you know that _it's_ for you to take +the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and +where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, +with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred +to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again." + +Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought +upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as +it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, +bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, +with a kind of severity. + +"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate +it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped--" + +"Then I _was_ the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly +reflected-- + +"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a +place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you +can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, +I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four +hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, +I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for +you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your +distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a +candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's +this?" + +A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly +approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur." + +"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to +join me." + +"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They +had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was +an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, +what's this?" + +"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't +been here for several years." + +"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in +the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly +established in him. + +"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with +unresentful dignity. + +"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a +little English, after all the French you have around." + +"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father +Étienne." + +"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and +weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did +not resent the help offered him. + +"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he +explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal." + +"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney. + +"No," said Northwick, briefly. + + + + +IV. + + +Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the +local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more +freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up +toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque +details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under +attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney +with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he +took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him +that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be +both fortune and fame to him. + +They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. +"What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?" + +Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the +time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour +each day came and went. + +"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still +looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I +to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off +suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as +safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts +are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they +can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you +say?" + +Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you." + +"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your +traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much +interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a +great deal better,--get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little +nurse in _this_ world; and, as you _say_, you don't seem over and above +strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's +the _best_ baby! I've heard that child cry just _once_ since it was +born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of +tears; I believe we all do that; but _our_ baby finished up the whole +crying-business on that occasion." + +With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed +Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with +himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services +to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his +helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it +a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney +could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his +things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making +interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to +describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in +Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk +gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied +it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, +and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. +Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; +Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when +he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick +man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him +comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were +closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and +there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer +yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went +and came so softly Pinney could not hear it. + +Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a +prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of +him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. +They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and +Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed +up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when +it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. +He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home +for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked +Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing. + +Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so +deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost +the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a +fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, +with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine +emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be +fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life +he needed it. + +"And I don't believe but what it _could_ be fixed," he said. "I don't +know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the +friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume +there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those +things can always be appealed and continued and _nolle prossed_, and all +that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would +have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. +But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the +whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski +hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. +No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends +stood by you as they ought to,--I don't believe you'd get more than a +mere nominal sentence, if you got that." + +Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having +weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept +the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says +there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, +public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people +get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going +to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper +experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public +opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact +is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. +Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to +fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that +was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're +pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's +pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the +paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The +worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion +are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations +are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about +it, if you ain't too sleepy?" + +"I _am_ rather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience. + +"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. +My! It don't seem as I _was_ going back to my wife and baby. It seems +too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't +get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and +I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet." + +Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over +Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. +Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made +him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, +after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, +good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a +light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower +berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; +but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some +medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was +easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one +of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his +breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his +berth, and fell heavily asleep. + +He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be +lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying +down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled +the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick +lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned +courage to look, he found the berth empty. + +He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his +clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's +travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He +rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every +part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be +seen. + +He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said +since six o'clock. It was then eight. + +Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed +disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last +resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him +a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager. + +It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as +Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery. + +"Did you say anything about his going back?" + +"Why--in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully. + +"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, +and it's served you right." + +His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said +it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he +had better go out and get a doctor. + +It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could +be. + +"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was +putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior. + +"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, +coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, _do_ go for the doctor!" + + + + +V. + + +The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent +avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily +began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and +waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a +wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he +was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety +of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through +and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the +night. + +A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to +him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and +stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at +the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were +open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck +a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this +faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he +had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He +tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring +at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had +stolen out of it. + +One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he +stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the +change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and +he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every +detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, +and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the +desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the +doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and +hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the +stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself +that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic +expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was +nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search +of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might +well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of +risk to himself. + +He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of +the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured +face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last +night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it +gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze +his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper +die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, +and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns +showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the +coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment +through the window, and then vanished. + +Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some +homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his +confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps +sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind +reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come +and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the +action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer +before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; +it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless +charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against +him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family +one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of +them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door +without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and +looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the +bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair +which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him. + +It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a +lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his +children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and +he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone +again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to +light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window +he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on +the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man. + +"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, +anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, +'Lectra." + +Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known +Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman +beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. +Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the +least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, +especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and +deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a +knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for +mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did +not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for +a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick +felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. +Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be +dumned," said Elbridge. + +His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you +going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not +present; he stood so dumb and impassive. + +"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar +complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the +probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't +you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, +"lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, +and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, +anyhow?" + +Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him +carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his +stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, +anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this +because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to +another. + +His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the +piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to +speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he +stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to +make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, +"You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've +got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, +silently obeyed. + +"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence +which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I +blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be +afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you +against your will, you know." + +"Well, I _guess_ not," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. +"If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face +first. Bring him along, Elbridge." + +As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and +helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, +tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and +pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate. + +Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret +purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; +but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached +the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, +while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and +Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?" + +Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss +Northwick. If you're sure you're awake--" + +"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!" + +"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. +Don't call out--don't speak loud. There's somebody here--Come down, and +let him in." + +Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs +inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with +choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! +Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?" + +She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was +shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they +understood. + + + + +VI. + + +Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned +up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he +gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?" + +"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did +for them when their little boy died, if _he_ has, and I _guess_ he +hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?" + +"In the house. I was there." + +"But how did he know it?" + +"I had to have a light to see by." + +"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what I +_should_ have done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!" + +"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any +longer, when that fellow came with your letter." + +"Oh, he _found_ you," she cried, joyfully. "I _knew_ he would find you, +and I said so--Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a +cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it +always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise +Hilary bought it at the sale--I know she bought it--and gave it to me. +It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give +it up to the company." + +He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her +piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about +that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I--" + +"No! Of _course_ you didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you +suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, +through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I +knew you were just overwrought." + +Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came +closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll +of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always +kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of +it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay." + +"Oh, they _won't_ let you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the +court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will +put you in prison." + +Northwick mechanically put the money back. + +"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I +have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears. + +"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that +there's never been any disgrace on!" + +"What--what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps +overhead. + +"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, +breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and +called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, +come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be +hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; +the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you +be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton +comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we +don't mind it a bit, being alone here. I _did_ want to go into the +farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right +in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than +being afraid; but we haven't _been_ afraid; and the Newtons come all the +time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back--" She +stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, +as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, +lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to +let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what +Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and +glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary--oh, he's the +_best_ young man!--and I guess they're going to be married just as soon +as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came +down." + +Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not +appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll +speak to me?" + +"_Speak_ to you!" + +"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the +money, all but the little I've had to use--" + +There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in +the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she +flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and +kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with +a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not +simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them. + +Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over +her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their +lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity. + +Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed +to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She +praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for +advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that +last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She +praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for +doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the +Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and +she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there +never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she +wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. +He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and +Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!" + +"Go?" Adeline echoed. + +"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him. + +They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the +face. + +Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her +words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's _got_ to go! Oh, Suzette, +let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!" + +"It's prison _there_" said Northwick. "Let me stay!" + +"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What +makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as +anything, I do it." + +"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, +or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I +won't _let_ you think of me!" + +"But what would they say--Mr. Hilary say--if they sent father to +prison?" + +Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trust +_him_, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes +to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make +him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, +that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what +they please." + +Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, +as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when +Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking +about! Father, tell her you don't _wish_ to stay!" + +"I must go, Suzette; I had better go--" + +"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." +Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through +all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say +good-by! You've got to go, now--yes, you've _got_ to!--but it won't be +for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and +now we can write--be sure you write, father, when you get back there; +or, you'd better telegraph--and we can arrange--I know we can--for you +to come home, and stay home." + +"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured. + +"It seems as if he wanted to _kill_ me!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. +She took them away. "Well, _stay_, then!" she said. + +"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's +all right--all for the best. I'll go--" + +"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" +said Adeline. + +"Yes, I will." + +"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together +in Canada, as well as here." + +Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; +their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any +of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And--and I want +to get back into our place." + +He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final +conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline +would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way +of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to +be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my +goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start +from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What +shall we do?" + +"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going +back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, +and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in +words. + +"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in +the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come +for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away." + +"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!" + +Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the +dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black +Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light. + +"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's +head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the +carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, +anyway." + +"Oh, well, we _did_!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, +now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! +Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, +Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the +shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you--" + +"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped +up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going +to get the black colt's time out of the old mare." + +"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked. + + + + +VII. + + +On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some +anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was +safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for +himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He +had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in +helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put +himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the +stable after the horse was stolen. + +He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as +Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument +before breakfast. + +Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential +voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, +to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be +li'ble?" + +"Why?" asked Putney. + +"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately. + +"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought +his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and +you didn't let me know?" + +"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged. + +"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars +to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about +it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: +"Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place +myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!" + +Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was +besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours +he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had +learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, +though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held +out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat +hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that +those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him +soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she +was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if +he gave way now. + +When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew +that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and +made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he +boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the +Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, +and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards +the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the +mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, +as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were +both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit +reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for +some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to +serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and +since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking +for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not +because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly +to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests +of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked +over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some +virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a +sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of +exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so +strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own +usefulness. + +He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now +dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he +turned to go into the house. + +"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after +him. + +"Say?" + +"You know: about what I done." + +"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you +sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do." + +Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, +already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the +strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast +down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at +breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, +Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow." + + + + +VIII. + + +Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. +She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she +said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old +mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the +sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so +as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they +brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time +she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back +alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected +they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette +tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild +upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her +father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please +the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was +perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had +come over her. + +Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came +back. Then he walked to the lodge to report. + +"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him +before he could get a word out. + +"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on +his way back to Canady, again." + +"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his +home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! _Send_ for him! +Bring him _back_, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him +I said to come back! What are you standing there for?" + +She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her +bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for +the doctor. + +Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he +walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He +found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," +said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. +I shall come again later in the day." + +Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and +knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched +it. + +"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her +almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble +of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to +quiet her, broke in upon their talk. + +"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should +come back, no matter what happens?" + +"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said." + +"And you would not care if they put him in prison?" + +"I should care very much." + +"You would be ashamed of me!" + +"No! Never! What has it to do with you?" + +"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed +all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an +intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have +done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how +inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come +back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if +something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay +because--because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be +ashamed--" + +"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you +let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while +they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. +Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go +down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor +said; and if you try to stop me--" She came clattering down the stairs +in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed +her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. +Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask +him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes +back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can +take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as +long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll +say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. +Will you go?" + +"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" +Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child. + +"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm +perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my +mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what +Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father +back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs +some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon +as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want +Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon +as father is. Will you go?" + +"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to +Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to +save your father any further suffering, or yourself--" + +"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young +and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about." + +She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he +walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with +Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the +case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There +seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick +to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences +together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to +take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places +and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One +might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the +fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a +deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in +the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, +and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever +might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and +enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and +then, who should gainsay him? + +Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question +before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no +one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could +forbid him." + +"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have +a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest +thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that _true_ +love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our +impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone +knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the +higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it +won't satisfy?" + +For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of +arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house +that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them +to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt +explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic +demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be +done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding +any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; +if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, +but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You +know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily +submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the +greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined +life." + +"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and +perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the +divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God +for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could +not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure +the shame of his penalty with him--" + +"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned +to endure?" + +"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, +yourself, Matt; your family--" + +Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no +question of _me_. And if _they_ could not endure their portion,--the +mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar +people,--I should be ashamed of them." + +"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide +you!" added the priest. + +The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at +his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his +gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's +happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face. + +"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered +every point? Isn't there some chance--" + +Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he +began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, +and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his +escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?" + +"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He +supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been +willing to accept something short of it. + +"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have +kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved +off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we +could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." +Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that +he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered +with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel +sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show +it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to +convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be +a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a +retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges +against him." + +Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious +discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added +seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is +the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly +and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation +came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I +know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in +court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit +here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time +he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while +before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at +last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it +will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced +him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. +But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a +full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to +find him in Canada?" + +"He promised to let them know." + +"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. +The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts--the perfectly needless and +motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned--would be a +strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the +thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our +life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no +reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The +conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply +incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the +fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for +money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the +accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?" + +Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, +whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went +back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting +her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the +assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted +if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this +notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he +permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at +last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, +before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She +did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get +home without her; and Suzette must come, too. + + + + +IX. + + +The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at +Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, +he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the +troubled dream he had waked from. + +"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have _you_ been?" he +demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood. + +A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. +"I've been at home--at Hatboro'." + +"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference +he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at +him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could +only have it for a scoop--" + +Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and +fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney +listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest +thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it +leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent +of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and +given the whole thing away, _I_ can't ask anything for my services." + +Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had +worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested. + +"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked +Pinney. + +"Yes. Only--don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence. + +"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He +took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to +Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He +counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he +called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay +it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it." + +Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own +wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby +got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established +with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's +filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; +and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of +his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; +but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters +when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. +Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but +was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy +confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with +the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her +to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She +asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his +answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his +farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; +and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not +thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she +began to sink rapidly. + +In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had +dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come +back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. +The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, +if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about +it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know +there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he +ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside +her mother. + +The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last +words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, +whimpered too. + +"I believe he _could_ be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, +in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his +own room. + +The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in +Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, +but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a +course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his +ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he +suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he +could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. +Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business +view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great +tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both +took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms +round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good +care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his +hand at the last moment. + +Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after +these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his +own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had +with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's +forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she +proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her +undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for +a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved +of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to +Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, +recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and +expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. +If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told +heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, +it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert +might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of +Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct +in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances +which he really was. + +Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of +their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the +parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old +Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile +frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the +admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your +enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have +been more of a Roman father." + +"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper +to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over +to Rome for the winter." + +"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would +take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will +end by killing me." + + + + +X. + + +Northwick, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved +only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the +offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who +pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home +again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business +life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had +operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He +felt himself too old to begin life over; his energies were spent. Such +as he had been, he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in +familiar conditions; he had never been a man of business dash, and he +could not pick himself up and launch himself in a new career, as a man +of different make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps there had +been some lesion of the will in that fever of his at Haha Bay, which +disabled him from forming any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry +out any such purpose as he did form. Perhaps he was, in his +helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile moulds men to: a +thing of memories and hopes, without definite aims or plans. + +As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams +and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had +seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the +sentence of the law, and then go to live again in the place which, in +spite of his senses, he could only imagine clothed in the comfort and +state that had been stripped from it. Elbridge's talk, on the way to +West Hatboro', about the sale, and what had become of the horses and +cattle, and the plants, went for no more than the evidence of his own +eyes that they were all gone. He did not realize, except in the shocks +that the fact imparted at times, that death as well as disaster had +invaded his home. Adeline was, for the most part, still alive: in his +fond reveries she was present, and part of that home as she had always +been. + +He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that +compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; +he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence +that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some +punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were +all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest +could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it +was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should +seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt +guilty of wrong. + +It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were +so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came +and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems +certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home +a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be +suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought +that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in +accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might +be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first +met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation +of his action. + +In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the +chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness +to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted +him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney's +fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long +journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney's society. He liked +Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. +He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself +to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul +that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come +for him, and he was impatient till he came. + +Pinney started the instant he received Northwick's telegram, and met him +with an enthusiasm of congratulation. "Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a +great thing. It's the right thing, and it's the wise thing. It's going +to have a tremendous effect. I suppose," he added, a little tremulously, +"that you've thought it all thoroughly over?" + +"Yes; I'm prepared for the worst," said Northwick. + +"Oh, there won't be any _worst_," Pinney returned gayly. "There'll be +legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he +can't, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought +into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through +with the forms, and it'll be all over before anybody knows anything +about it. I'll see that there's no _interviewing_, and that there are no +reporters present. There'll probably be a brief announcement among the +cases in court; but there won't be anything painful. You needn't be +afraid. But what I'm anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to +bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn't urge you, and I won't; I know +I'm a little optimistic, and if you don't see this thing exactly +_couleur de rose_, don't you do it from anything _I_ say." Pinney +apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out. + +"I've looked it in the face," said Northwick. + +"And your friends know you're coming back?" + +"They expect me at any time. You can notify them." + +Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. "Well," he said, with a sort of +desperation, "then I don't see why we don't start at once." + +"Have you got your papers all right?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes," said Pinney, with a blush. "But you know," he added, +respectfully, "I can't touch you till we get over the line, Mr. +Northwick." + +"I understand that. Let me see your warrant." + +Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully +over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope +from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. "Here +is the money I brought with me." + +"Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every +confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, +and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean +business--" + +"I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it." + +Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six +hundred and forty." + +"That is right," said Northwick. "Now, another matter. Have you got +handcuffs?" + +"Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?" demanded Pinney. "I'd as +soon put them on my own father." + +"I want you to put them on _me_," said Northwick. "I intend to go back +as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate"--and he seemed to +indulge a question of the fact for the last time--"I want the atonement +to begin as soon as possible. If you haven't brought those things with +you, you'd better go out to the police station and get them, while I +attend to the tickets." + +"Oh, I needn't go," said Pinney, and his face burned. + +He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the +journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the +first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed +to have fallen. + +"By George!" said Pinney, when they started, "anybody to see us would +think _you_ were taking _me_ back." He was tenderly watchful of +Northwick's comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; +from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but +Northwick said he did not care to eat. + +They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper +on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked +Pinney what the next station was. + +Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession +of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept. + +"I haven't slept," said Northwick. "I suppose I'm rather excited. My +nerves seem disordered." + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly. + +They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, "What did you say +the next station was?" + +"I'll ask the brakeman." They could see the brakeman on the platform. +Pinney went out to him, and returned. "It's Wellwater, he says. We get +breakfast there." + +"Then we're over the line, now," said Northwick. + +"Why, yes," Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, +"You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I'm ready to meet it +half way." He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. "If I should happen +to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your +mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents +happen, and--" Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. "Or if +you don't feel quite able to travel--" + +"Let me see your warrant again," said Northwick. + +Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick +read it all once more. "I'm your prisoner," he said, returning the +paper. "You can put the handcuffs on me now." + +"No, no, Mr. Northwick!" Pinney pleaded. "I don't want to do that. I'm +not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn't necessary +between gentlemen." + +Northwick held out his wrists. "Put them on, please." + +"Oh, well, if I _must_!" protested Pinney. "But I _swear_ I won't lock +'em." He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were +noticing. "You can slip 'em off whenever you get tired of 'em." He +pushed Northwick's sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. +"Don't let people see the damned things, for God's sake!'" + +"That's good!" murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased +him. + +The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of +the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation +with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he +left him. His head had fallen on his breast. "Poor old fellow, he's +asleep," Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick's shoulder. +"I'll have to wake you here," he said. "We'll be in, now, in a minute." + +Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the +neck, and lifted his face. + +"Oh, my God! He's dead!" + +The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor. + + + + +XI. + + +After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and +it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given +up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her +father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had +made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the +sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering +from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she +was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her +own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case +forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his +last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had +committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his +creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself +to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was +dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty +in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather +a joyful relief. + +Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the +narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow +conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they +had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had +everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left +her incalculably rich. + +Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept +himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the +comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far +as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's +estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness +to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the +money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in +the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more +for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow +Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic +theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be +said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that +in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its +pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them. + +The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment +of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they +had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked +at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former +owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view +of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had +remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no +account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the +owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in +surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to +suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she +conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the +commonwealth. + +"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part +of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. +Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first +duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to +turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It +appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset +dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their +interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's +this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last +that he intended to do; and, of course, the _he_ in question is a _she_. +'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole +affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing, +beginning with my own. _I_ can look back to the time when I meant to +have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years, +waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected +somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to +justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's +counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of +grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I +wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send +him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off +on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a +little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and +against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The +directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign +from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand, +considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living, +and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope +of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the +money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. +Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William +B. Gerrish,--couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick +himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, +after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to +fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing +he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let +him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed _her_. +Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first +thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way +with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There +wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's +much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of--incident; and a pretty +common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances--like the rest of +us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. +Sometimes I think there _was_ nothing to Northwick, except what happened +to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we +fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, +and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where +it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I +suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few æons of eternal +punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate." + +"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested. + +"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and +seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll +split the difference with you and call it Mercy." + + + + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S NOVELS. + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + +AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. + +A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. + +THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. + +ANNIE KILBURN. + +APRIL HOPES. + + + + +BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. + + +AS WE WERE SAYING. + +With Portrait, and Illustrated by H.W. MCVICKAR and Others. + +So dainty and delightsome a little book may it be everybody's good hap +to possess.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +OUR ITALY. + +In this book are a little history, a little property, a few fascinating +statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and +abundant humor and charm--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD. + +A Novel. + +The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not +its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, +possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. + +A powerful picture of that phase of modern life in which unscrupulously +acquired capital is the chief agent.--_Boston Post._ + +STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, with Comments on Canada. + +Perhaps the most accurate and graphic account of these portions of the +country that has appeared, taken all in all.... A book most charming--a +book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly +prize.--_Boston Traveller._ + +THEIR PILGRIMAGE. + +Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of +the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities +peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are +as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of +the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the +brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he +mingles.--_Christian Union_, N. Y. + + + + +BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON. + + + JUPITER LIGHTS. + EAST ANGELS. + ANNE. + FOR THE MAJOR. + CASTLE NOWHERE. + RODMAN THE KEEPER. + +There is a certain bright cheerfulness in Miss Woolson's writing which +invests all her characters with lovable qualities.--_Jewish Advocate_, +N. Y. + +Miss Woolson is among our few successful writers of interesting magazine +stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of +her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local +life.--_Jewish Messenger_, N. Y. + +Constance Fentmore Woolson may easily become the novelist +laureate.--_Boston Globe._ + +Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and +conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the development of a +story is very remarkable.--_London Life._ + +Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox +novelist, but strikes a new and richly-loaded vein, which so far is all +her own; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh +sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant +task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to +her in very pleasant places; or she has, perhaps, within herself the +wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all she +writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of the +day--a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time.--_Whitehall Review_, +London. + + + + +BY MARY E. WILKINS. + + +A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. + +A HUMBLE ROMANCE, and Other Stories. + +Only an artistic hand could have written these stories, and they will +make delightful reading.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of those stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.--_Literary World_, +Boston. + +The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's +worth in every one of the delightful stories.--_Chicago Journal._ + +Miss Wilkins is a writer who has a gift for the rare art of creating the +short story which shall be a character study and a bit of graphic +picturing in one; and all who enjoy the bright and fascinating short +story will welcome this volume.--_Boston Traveller._ + +The author has the unusual gift of writing a short story which is +complete in itself, having a real beginning, a middle, and an end. The +volume is an excellent one.--_Observer_, N. Y. + +A gallery of striking studies in the humblest quarters of American +country life. No one has dealt with this kind of life better than Miss +Wilkins. Nowhere are there to be found such faithful, delicately drawn, +sympathetic, tenderly humorous pictures.--_N. Y. Tribune._ + +The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.--_Springfield Republican._ + +There is no attempt at fine writing or structural effect, but the tender +treatment of the sympathies, emotions, and passions of no very +extraordinary people gives to these little stories a pathos and human +feeling quite their own.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ + +The author has given us studies from real life which must be the result +of a lifetime of patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the +same kind of work so lovingly and so well.--_Christian Register_, +Boston. + + + + +By LEW. WALLACE + + +BEN-HUR: + +A TALE OF THE CHRIST. + +Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of +this romance does not often appear in works of notion.... Some of Mr. +Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes +described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of +an accomplished master of style.--_N. Y. Times._ + +Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at +the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and +brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we +witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman +galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the +tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman +youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of +exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing.--_N. Y. +Tribune._ + +It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and +there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., +to greatly strengthen the semblance.--_Boston Commonwealth._ + +"Ben-Hur" is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. +Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is +laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to +realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman +life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.--_Examiner_, N.Y. + +The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted +interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel and +romance.--_Boston Journal._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. Howells + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30108 *** diff --git a/30108-h/30108-h.htm b/30108-h/30108-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..66a74c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/30108-h/30108-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12935 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Quality Of Mercy, by W. D. Howells. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +--> + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30108 ***</div> + +<h1>THE QUALITY OF MERCY</h1> + +<h3>A NOVEL</h3> + +<h2>BY W. D. HOWELLS</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF "AN IMPERATIVE DUTY" "ANNIE KILBURN" "A HAZARD OF NEW +FORTUNES" ETC.</h3> + + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE<br /> +1892</h4> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#PART_FIRST">PART FIRST.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#I">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#II">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#III">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IV">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#V">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VI">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VII">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IX">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#X">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XI">XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XII">XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIII">XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIV">XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XV">XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVI">XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVII">XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIX">XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XX">XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXI">XXI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXII">XXII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIII">XXIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIV">XXIV.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_SECOND">PART SECOND.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#IB">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIB">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIIB">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IVB">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#VB">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIB">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIB">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIIB">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IXB">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XB">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIB">XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIIB">XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIIIB">XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIVB">XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVB">XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIB">XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIIB">XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIIIB">XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIXB">XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXB">XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIB">XXI.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_THIRD">PART THIRD.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#IC">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIC">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIIC">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IVC">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#VC">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIC">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIC">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIIC">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IXC">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XC">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIC">XI.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS">BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER">BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON">BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_MARY_E_WILKINS">BY MARY E. WILKINS.</a><br /> +<a href="#By_LEW_WALLACE">BY LEW. WALLACE</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE QUALITY OF MERCY.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick's man met him at the station with the cutter. The train was a +little late, and Elbridge was a little early; after a few moments of +formal waiting, he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the +street. As they walked they sent those quivers and thrills over their +thin coats which horses can give at will; they moved their heads up and +down, slowly and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; +the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous pace died back in +showers and falling drops of music. All the time Elbridge swore at them +affectionately, with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee +whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the halts he made at each +return to the station, he let his blasphemies bubble sociably from him +in response to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other +drivers who were waiting for the train; they had apparently no other +parlance. The drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon +were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every +other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the +merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless +maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as +he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the +professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them +with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally +speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and +skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against +counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore +a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold; +its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his +head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had +on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain +coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a +closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have +done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick +in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in +any other quality.</p> + +<p>"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked +the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been +half a mile off instead of half a rod.</p> + +<p>"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you —— —— old fool, +you?" asked Elbridge in his turn.</p> + +<p>The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the +sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and +said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any +way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full +readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him.</p> + +<p>No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most +remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same +train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed +to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, +and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While +Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove +away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the +highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line +cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid +crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment, +but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the +accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced +it and shone quivering through. The shortest days were past, but in the +first week of February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to a +finer perception there was the promise of release from the winter dark, +if not from the winter cold. It was not far from six o'clock when +Northwick mounted the southward rise of the street; it was still almost +light enough to read; and the little slender black figure of a man that +started up in the middle of the road, as if it had risen out of the +ground, had an even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in the +snow; the horses crouched back with a sudden recoil, as if he had struck +them back with his arm, and plunged the runners of the cutter into the +deeper snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight pause, long enough +to give Northwick a contemptuous glance, and then continued along the +road at a leisurely pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next +house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as Northwick had in +quieting his horses, and getting underway again. He said nothing, and +Northwick did not speak; Elbridge growled, "He's on one of his tears +again," and the horses dashed forward with a shriek of all their bells. +Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that +led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the +snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with the colt?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I +guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>"Better look after it."</p> + +<p>Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the cutter at the +flight of granite steps which rose to the ground-floor of his wooden +palace. Broad levels of piazza stretched away from the entrance under a +portico of that carpentry which so often passes with us for +architecture. In spite of the effect of organic flimsiness in every +wooden structure but a log cabin, or a fisherman's cottage shingled to +the ground, the house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There were +double windows on all round the piazzas; a mellow glow from the +incandescent electrics penetrated to the outer dusk from them; when the +door was opened to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together with +the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner.</p> + +<p>"Dinner is just served, sir," said the inside man, disposing of +Northwick's overcoat and hat on the hall table with respectful scruple.</p> + +<p>Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, and vaguely held his +hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes +below.</p> + +<p>"The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn't be home till the next +train," the man suggested, at the sound of voices from the dining-room.</p> + +<p>"They have some one with them?" Northwick asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. The rector, sir; Mr. Wade, sir."</p> + +<p>"I'll come down by and by," Northwick said, turning to the stairs. "Say +I had a late lunch before I left town."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said the man.</p> + +<p>Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed by the thickly-padded +thick carpet, and turned into the sort of study that opened out of his +bedroom. It had been his wife's parlor during the few years of her life +in the house which he had built for her, and which they had planned to +spend their old age in together. It faced southward, and looked out over +the greenhouses and the gardens, that stretched behind the house to the +bulk of woods, shutting out the stage-picturesqueness of the summer +settlement of South Hatboro'. She had herself put the rocking-chair in +the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not allowed it to be disturbed +there since her death. In an alcove at one side he had made a place for +the safe where he kept his papers; his wife had intended to keep their +silver in it, but she had been scared by the notion of having burglars +so close to them in the night, and had always left the silver in the +safe in the dining-room.</p> + +<p>She was all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had +seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, +hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the +painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and +had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive +of his own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. She was +really one of those hen-minded women, who are so common in all walks of +life, and are made up of only one aim at a time, and of manifold +anxieties at all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the days +of struggle in which she had joined it to Northwick's instinct for +getting; she lived and died in the hope, if not the belief, that she had +contributed to his prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of +valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively happy with her; since +her death, he had allowed her to return much into his thoughts, from +which her troublesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in +important matters had obliged him to push her while she lived. He often +had times when it seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, and +then he found he had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, +he realized that he missed her; but perhaps the wound was to habit +rather than affection. He now sat down in his swivel-chair and turned it +from the writing-desk which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and +looked up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intangible +presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest his soul against hers. +She was the only one who could have seen him in his wish to have not +been what he was; she would have denied it to his face, if he had told +her he was a thief; and as he meant to make himself more and more a +thief, her love would have eased the way by full acceptance of the +theories that ran along with his intentions and covered them with +pretences of necessity. He thought how even his own mother could not +have been so much comfort to him; she would have had the mercy, but she +would not have had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under all +his pretences, Northwick knew that it was not mercy which would help +him; but he wanted it, as we all want what is comfortable and bad for us +at times. With the performance and purpose of a thief in his heart, he +turned to the pictured face of his dead wife as his refuge from the face +of all living. It could not look at him as if he were a thief.</p> + +<p>The word so filled his mind that it seemed always about to slip from his +tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the +fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so +distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal +instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The +other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they +hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not +supplied them with the emotional materials for making one. The +president, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced upon +Northwick. "What does all this mean, sir? I'll tell you what it means. +It means that you're a thief, sir; the same as if you had picked my +pocket, or stolen my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall."</p> + +<p>He shook his clenched fist in Northwick's face, and seemed about to take +him by the throat. Afterwards he inclined more to mercy than the others; +it was he who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three days' +grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the directors the proof +that he had ample means, as he maintained, to meet the shortage in the +accounts. "I wish you well out of it, for your family's sake," he said +at parting; "but all the same, sir, you are a thief."</p> + +<p>He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when some others +meaninglessly shook hands with Northwick, at parting, as Northwick +himself might have shaken hands with another in his place; and he +brushed by him out of the door without looking at him. He came suddenly +back to say, "If it were a question of you alone, I would cheerfully +lose something more than you've robbed me of for the pleasure of seeing +you handcuffed in this room and led to jail through the street by a +constable. No honest man, no man who was not always a rogue at heart, +could have done what you've done; juggled with the books for years, and +bewitched the record so by your infernal craft, that it was never +suspected till now. You've given <i>mind</i> to your scoundrelly work, sir; +all the mind you had; for if you hadn't been so anxious to steal +successfully, you'd have given more mind to the use of your stealings. +You <i>may</i> have some of them left, but it looks as if you'd made ducks +and drakes of them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Employees' +Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe you're of about the intellectual +calibre of that sort of thief. I can't respect you even on your own +ground. But I'm willing to give you the chance you ask, for your +daughter's sake. She's been in and out of my house with my girl like one +of my own children, and I won't send her father to jail if I can help +it. Understand! I haven't any sentiment for <i>you</i>, Northwick. You're the +kind of rogue I'd like to see in a convict's jacket, learning to make +shoe-brushes. But you shall have your chance to go home and see if you +can pay up somehow, and you sha'n't be shadowed while you're at it. You +shall keep your outside to the world three days longer, you whited +sepulchre; but if you want to know, I think the best thing that could +happen to you on your way home would be a good railroad accident."</p> + +<p>The man's words and looks were burnt into Northwick's memory, which now +seemed to have the faculty of simultaneously reproducing them all. +Northwick remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, and the +swing of his large stomach, and just how it struck against the jamb as +he whirled a second time out of the door. The other directors, some of +them, stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their hats on, +and a sort of stunned aspect; some held their hats in their hands, and +looked down into them with a decorous absence of expression, as people +do at a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer's private +room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey rugs, leathern +arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors standing one on each side of the +hearth where a fire of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a +subdued and respectful flicker.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of the president, +Northwick might have come away from the meeting, after the exposure of +his defalcations, with an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he +felt curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing habit of his +mind enabled him to piece himself together again and resume his former +size and shape. This happened very quickly; he had conceived of himself +so long as a man employing funds in his charge in speculations sometimes +successful and sometimes not, but at all times secured by his personal +probity and reliability. He had in fact more than once restored all that +he had taken, and he had come to trust himself in the course of these +transactions as fully as he was trusted by the men who were ignorant of +his irregularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete confidence +they reposed in him, though he really felt it to be no more than his +due; he had always merited and received the confidence of men associated +with him in business, and he had come to regard the funds of the +corporation as practically his own. In the early days of his connection +with the company, it largely owed its prosperity to his wise and careful +management; one might say that it was not until the last, when he got so +badly caught by that drop in railroads, that he had felt anything wrong +in his convertible use of its money. It was an informality; he would not +have denied that, but it was merely an informality. Then his losses +suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the +first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which +the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he +considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties +which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other +operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he +dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, +especially of late, he easily satisfied them as to the nature of his +motives and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their attention to +these successful deals, and to the probability, the entire probability, +that he could be at any moment in a position to repay all he had +borrowed of the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long habit +of making himself these loans and returning them, he had come to have a +sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was +almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first +intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness +that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose +discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's +paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the +papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some +novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the +presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but +after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He +was like those fools, exactly like them, in what they had done, and in +the way of doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. All of +them had used others' money in speculation, expecting to replace it, and +then had not been able to replace it, and then had skipped, as the +newspapers said.</p> + +<p>Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, too, was a point +which he had not yet acknowledged to himself that he had decided. He +never had believed that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when +the president said he could wish him nothing better on his way home than +a good railroad accident, it flashed upon him that one of the three +alternatives before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill himself, +which was supposed to be the gentlemanly way out of his difficulties, +and would leave his family unstained by his crime; that matter had +sometimes been discussed in his presence, and every one had agreed that +it was the only thing for a gentleman to do after he had pilfered people +of money he could not pay back. There was something else that a man of +other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that was to stand his +trial for embezzlement, and take his punishment. Or a man, if he was +that kind of a man, could skip. The question with Northwick was whether +he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he would be that +kind of man; whether the skipping would make him that kind of man.</p> + +<p>The question was a cruel one for the self-respect which he had so +curiously kept intact. He had been respectable ever since he was born; +if he was born with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, +the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was all the stronger in +him, because his father had never had it; perhaps an hereditary trait +found expression in him after passing over one generation; perhaps an +antenatal influence formed him to that type. His mother was always +striving to keep the man she had married worthy of her choice in the +eyes of her neighbors; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had +been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine; in carrying on the +drug and book business of the village, he cared much more for the +literary than the pharmaceutical side of it; he liked to have a circle +of cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, and discuss +morals and religion with them; and one night, when denying the plenary +inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an +ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his +mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he +lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a +total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his +son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain +sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always +disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he +said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in +Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material +success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few +people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer +of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a +man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. +They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there +a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come +back to the village. But he had not. He had, as they had all heard, that +splendid summer place at Hatboro', where he spent his time when he was +not at his house in Boston; and when they verified the fact of his +immense prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who knew him +or knew about him, they were obscurely flattered by the fact; just as +many of us are proud of belonging to a nation in which we are enriched +by the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. They did not +blame Northwick for never coming to see his father, or for never having +him home on a visit; they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how +little he was fitted for the society of a man whose respectability, even +as it was reflected upon them, was so dazzling. Old Northwick had never +done anything for Milt; he had never even got along with him; the fellow +had left him, and made his own way; and the old man had no right to +talk; if Milt was ever of a mind to cut off his rations, the old man +would soon see.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>The local opinion scarcely did justice to old Northwick's imperfect +discharge of a father's duties; his critics could not have realized how +much some capacities, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, +contributed to that very effect of respectability which they revered. +The early range of books, the familiarity with the mere exterior of +literature, restricted as it was, helped Northwick later to pass for a +man of education, if not of reading, with men who were themselves less +read than educated. The people whom his ability threw him with in Boston +were all Harvard men, and they could not well conceive of an +acquaintance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was not college +bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which we carry through life, they knew +he was from the country, and they attributed him to a freshwater +college. They said, "You're a Dartmouth man, Northwick, I believe," or, +"I think you're from Williams," and when Northwick said no, they forgot +it, and thought that he was a Bowdoin man; the impression gradually +fixed itself that he was from one or other of those colleges. It was +believed in like manner, partly on account of his name, that he was from +one of those old ministerial families that you find up in the hills, +where the whole brood study Greek while they are sugaring off in the +spring; and that his own mother had fitted him for college. There was, +in fact, something clerical in Northwick's bearing; and it was felt by +some that he had studied for the ministry, but had gone into business to +help his family. The literary phase of the superstition concerning him +was humored by the library which formed such a striking feature of his +house in Boston, as well as his house in Hatboro'; at Hatboro' it was +really vast, and was so charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea +of a cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and rarely used +the drawing-room, which was much smaller, and was a gold and white +sanctuary on the north side of the house, only opened when there was a +large party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and went without +seeing it, and it remained shut up, as much a conjecture as the memory +of Northwick's wife. She was supposed to have been taken from him early, +to save him and his children from the mortifying consequences of one of +those romantic love-affairs in which a conscientious man had sacrificed +himself to a girl he was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that +his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she brought him, and upon +the stay her belief in him had always been. She was a church-member, as +such women usually are, but Northwick was really her religion; and as +there is nothing that does so much to sanctify a deity as the blind +devotion of its worshippers, Northwick was rendered at times worthy of +her faith by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her love; he +was not the kind of man whose affections are apt to wander, perhaps +because they were few and easily kept together; perhaps because he was +really principled against letting them go astray. He was not merely true +in a passive way, but he was constant in the more positive fashion. When +they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him +into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her +shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to +them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his +experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that +sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and +qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his +knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, +and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his +money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he +began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his +children; for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his wife's +memory, and apparently never imagined such a thing as marrying again.</p> + +<p>He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up into her pictured +face, and went to open the safe near the window. But he stopped in +stooping over to work the combination, and glanced out across his +shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the scene tempted him to +the window for what, all at once, he felt might be his last look, though +the next instant he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his +meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval and honorable +return. He must have been thinking there before the fire a long time, +for now the moon had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the +southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These were in a sort the +mechanism that transacted the life of his house, ministering to all its +necessities and pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long +stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was +the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy +mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a +ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and +dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the +hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; +in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the +coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the +dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's +business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than +half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial +consequence with regard to his place. It was really a farm in extent, +and it was mostly a grazing farm; his cattle were in the herd-books, and +he raised horses, which he would sell now and then to a friend; they +were so distinctly varied from the original stock as to form almost a +breed of themselves; they numbered scores in his stalls and pastures. +The whole group of the buildings was so great that it was like a sort of +communal village. In the silent moonlight Northwick looked at it as if +it were an expansion or extension of himself, so personally did it seem +to represent his tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of +his whole life; he realized that it would be like literally tearing +himself from it, when he should leave it. That would be the real pang; +his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded +himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate +himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he +was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the +meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was +that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the +full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a +perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must +go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,—all but +the furniture and pictures,—were the children's and could not be +touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and +cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he +must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could.</p> + +<p>After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If +he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed +himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else +of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the +forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself +possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to +be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the +very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it +to have gone with.</p> + +<p>Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his +reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a +duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured, +if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means +of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left +providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it +would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope +of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word +again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of +his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane +necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a +sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took +a turn about the room.</p> + +<p>He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised +him to find in himself, he was laboring under some strong inward stress, +and he must have relief from it if he was to carry this business +through. He threw up the window and stood with his hand on the sash, +quivering in the strong in-rush of the freezing air. But it strengthened +him, and when he put down the window after a few moments, his faintness +passed altogether. Still, he thought he would not go through that +business at once; there was time enough; he would see his girls and tell +them that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the morning.</p> + +<p>He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and his house-coat, and +went to the stair-landing outside, and listened to the voices in the +library below. He could hear only women's voices, and he inferred that +the young man who had been dining with his daughters was gone. He went +back into his bedroom, and looked at the face of an unmasked thief in +his glass. It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that he +looked; it was to see if he was pale or would seem ill to his children.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative +in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more +urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the +elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and +remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she +watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him +and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too; +and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin +and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking +frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of +circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her +parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she +preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight, +bony fingers she wore a good many rings.</p> + +<p>Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that +name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow +suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its +suggestion of coquettishness.</p> + +<p>She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he +stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she +seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to +leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her +so.</p> + +<p>"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down +before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where +the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of +the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the +face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, +he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the +morning, and I still have some things to put in shape."</p> + +<p>"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had +resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her +head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary +beauty, as a stranger might have had.</p> + +<p>"Trouble?" he echoed.</p> + +<p>"With the hands."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick, +rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question, +to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an +instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor +trouble.</p> + +<p>"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all +sorts of reports."</p> + +<p>"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said +Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground."</p> + +<p>"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the +girl, "without wearing your own life out about it."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to +acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well, +that—"</p> + +<p>He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter +said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought +to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge +told James that you almost drove over him, coming up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the +horses' feet."</p> + +<p>"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of +awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women +often feel.</p> + +<p>"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his +family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to +himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as +possible."</p> + +<p>Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the +inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard +him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home +would be a good railroad accident."</p> + +<p>He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't +for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of +others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a +very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest. +He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish +to judge him. He may have"—Northwick sighed again, and ended +vaguely—"his reasons."</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed. "How moderate you always are, papa! And how tolerant!"</p> + +<p>"I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he's got to deal with, and +that he's safe in abusing you all he likes," said Adeline. "But I don't +see how such respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell can +tolerate him. I've no patience with Dr. Morrell, or his wife, either. To +be sure, they tolerate Mrs. Wilmington, too."</p> + +<p>Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. "Well, I'm going to bed, +papa. If you'd wanted more of my society you ought to have come down +sooner. I suppose I sha'n't see you in the morning; so it's good-bye as +well as good-night. When will you be home?"</p> + +<p>"Not for some days, perhaps," said the unhappy man.</p> + +<p>"How doleful! Are you always so homesick when you go away?"</p> + +<p>"Not always; no."</p> + +<p>"Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you have to be gone a +great while, send for me, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; I will," said Northwick. The girl gave his head a hug, and +then glided out of the room. She stopped to throw him a kiss from the +door.</p> + +<p>"There!" said Adeline. "I didn't mean to let Mrs. Wilmington slip out; +she can't bear the name, and I <i>know</i> it drove her away. But you mustn't +let it worry you, father. I guess it's all going well, now."</p> + +<p>"What's going well?" Northwick asked, vaguely.</p> + +<p>"The Jack Wilmington business. I know she's really given him up at last; +and we can't be too thankful for that much, if it's no more. I don't +believe he's bad, for all the talk about him, but he's been weak, and +that's a thing she couldn't forgive in a man; she's so strong herself."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not think of Wilmington; he thought of himself, and in the +depths of his guilty soul, in those secret places underneath all his +pretences, where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered if his +child's strength would be against her forgiving his weakness. What we +greatly dread we most unquestioningly believe; and it did not occur to +him to ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary inference +from strength. He only knew himself to be miserably weak.</p> + +<p>He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his impassive, handsome +face turned toward his daughter as if he were going to speak to her. He +was a tall man, rather thin; he was clean shaven, except for the grayish +whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line with them; he had a +regular profile, which was more attractive than the expression of his +direct regard. He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and +looked into it as if he were reading his future in its lucid depths, and +then put it down again, with an effect of helplessness. When he spoke, +it was not in connection with what his daughter had been talking about. +He said almost dryly, "I think I will go up and look over some papers I +have to take with me, and then try to get a little sleep before I +start."</p> + +<p>"And when shall we expect you back?" asked his daughter, submissively +accepting his silence concerning her sister's love affairs. She knew +that it meant acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought best.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, exactly; I can't say, now. Good-night."</p> + +<p>To her surprise he came up and kissed her; his caresses were for Sue, +and she expected them no more than she invited them. "Why, father!" she +said in a pleased voice.</p> + +<p>"Let James pack the small bag for me, and send Elbridge to me in about +an hour," he said, as he went out into the hall.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this +age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of +the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. +He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which +would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or +would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. +The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the +fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the +reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but +evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This was the doctrine +which framed the man's intention if not his conduct of life, and +continued to shape it years after experience of the world, and +especially of the business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great +many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its +reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad +behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any +discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it +was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still +intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and +improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his +principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong +before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him.</p> + +<p>But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery +of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all +the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had +tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a +dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish +exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made +him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The +people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of +Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it +seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those +things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of +the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been +quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower +than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man. +Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it +was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression; +his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it +most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically +strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the +need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was +forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the +beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, +to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom +his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame +and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant +censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had +become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if +by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, impulses, fantasies, in +which he swiftly dreamed renunciation of escape. Then he knew that it +would not avail anything to remain; it would not avail anything even to +die; nothing could avail anything at once, but in the end, his going +would avail most. He must go; it would break the child's heart to face +his shame, and she must face it. He did not think of his eldest +daughter, except to think that the impending disaster could not affect +her so ruinously.</p> + +<p>"My God, my God!" he groaned, as he went up stairs. Adeline called from +the room he had left, "Did you speak, father?"</p> + +<p>He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience which becomes so active +in times of great moral obliquity, against telling a little lie, and +saying he had not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering +anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, of feeling himself +an old man forced from his home, and he had a blind reasonless +resentment of the behavior of the men who were driving him away, and +whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful of. But he threw +off this mood when he entered his room, and settled himself to business. +There was a good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for his +indefinite absence, and he used the same care in providing for some +minor contingencies in the company's affairs as in leaving instructions +to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. +Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among +those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality +of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general +conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an +interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts +which persisted at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have +been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives.</p> + +<p>The question was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it +appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful +of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it +further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of +money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider +that this money necessarily belonged to the company, any more than his +daughters' house and farm belonged to it. To be sure it was the fruit of +money he had borrowed or taken from the company and had used in an +enormously successful deal; but the company had not earned it, and in +driving him into a corner, in forcing him to make instant restitution of +all its involuntary loans, it was justifying him in withholding this +part of them. Northwick was a man of too much sense to reason explicitly +to this effect, but there was a sophistry, tacitly at work in him to +this effect, which made it possible for him to go on and steal more +where he had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the further +theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to +nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed +his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to +that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He +contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, +with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most +fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his +broker sent him that large check for his winnings in stocks the day +before, but Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the check, and +put the money in his safe instead of banking it. Now he could perceive a +leading in the whole matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant +defiance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. He seemed to +himself like a burglar, when he had locked the doors and pulled down the +curtains, and stood before the safe working the combination. He +trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a +slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the +same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out +in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: +"Hello! Who's there? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"It's me," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! Well! All right! Hold on, a minute! Ah—you can come back in +ten or fifteen minutes. I'm not quite ready for you, yet." Northwick +spoke the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood in a +frenzy of dismay; the more collected words were uttered from his desk, +where he ran to get his pistol. He did not know why he thought Elbridge +might try to force his way in; perhaps it was because any presence on +the outside of the door would have terrified him. He had time to +recognize that he was not afraid for the money, but that he was afraid +for himself in the act of taking it.</p> + +<p>Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, and said with a +little hesitation, "All right," and Northwick heard him tramp away, and +go down stairs.</p> + +<p>He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy door, whose +resistance helped him shake off his nervousness. Then he took the money +from the drawer where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the +inner pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He shut the +safe and locked it. The succession of these habitual acts calmed him +more and more, and after he had struck a match and kindled the fire on +his hearth, which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle again +to his preparations in writing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went +and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said, +carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got +to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a +strong smell of stable through the hot room.</p> + +<p>"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the +morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick +satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula; +and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the +management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his +pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said, +"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine. +You can drive me up with the black mare."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of +reluctance that did not escape Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Anything the matter?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well."</p> + +<p>"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for +him to feel.</p> + +<p>"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the +membranous crou—" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped +it down.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I <i>hope</i> not," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"He's comin' back again—he had to go off to another place—but I could +see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got +himself in hand again, and spoke clearly.</p> + +<p>Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow +thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the +earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must +telephone Simpson to come for me."</p> + +<p>"All right." Elbridge took himself away.</p> + +<p>Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the +coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the +windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck +a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have +been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought +he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people; +but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the +useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His +thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had +lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash +into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his +family ought to feel in the matter.</p> + +<p>No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found +his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. +The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his +arms thrown wildly about.</p> + +<p>"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the +mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him, +save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him +suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's +hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was +suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What +are you big, strong men good for, any—" She looked down at the child's +face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild +screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment.</p> + +<p>It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless +there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to +go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her +coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he +heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue.</p> + +<p>The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had +been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love +with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since +their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of +exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put +Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the +will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the +little boy who had just died.</p> + +<p>He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full +outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given +him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the +company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses +he must meet at such a time.</p> + +<p>Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out +to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have +liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case +Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this +possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of +Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells +before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his +bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, +but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of +that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out. +He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried +down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on +the threshold, and took his bag from him.</p> + +<p>"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?"</p> + +<p>"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and +gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I +thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for +the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the +broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the +booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin' +to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway."</p> + +<p>The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank +you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted +to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his +house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to +be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with +himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to +Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving +home—at such a time—when you've—"</p> + +<p>"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously +warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly +lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the +door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on +the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been +some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they +did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and +fixed him severely with his eye.</p> + +<p>"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?"</p> + +<p>Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing +look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I +didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses—"</p> + +<p>"It was the <span class="smcap">Law</span> you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with +a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! +You can't drive over the Law, <i>yet</i>—you haven't quite millions enough +for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of +asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it.</p> + +<p>Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set +off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and +Northwick went out and got aboard.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>The president of the Board, who had called Northwick a thief, and yet +had got him a chance to make himself an honest man, was awake at the +hour the defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a night. +He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to forget Northwick, but he +seemed to be eating and drinking him at every course. When he came home +toward eleven o'clock, he went to his library and sat down before the +fire. His wife had gone to bed, and his son and daughter were at a ball; +and he sat there alone, smoking impatiently.</p> + +<p>He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted anything that he might +go to bed; he need not sit up for the young people. Hilary had that kind +of consideration for servants, and he liked to practise it; he liked to +realize that he was practising it now, in a moment when every habit of +his life might very well yield to the great and varying anxieties which +beset him.</p> + +<p>He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from him to himself, as a +gentleman and a citizen, and he could not conceal from himself that he +had been mainly instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, when +he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. His ideals had not hitherto +stood in the way of his comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more +than they had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a kind far +above those which commercial honor permits a man to be content with. He +held himself bound, as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, +to have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He believed that +he owed it to the community to do nothing to lower its standards of +personal integrity and responsibility; and he distinguished himself by a +gratified consciousness from those people of chromo-morality, who held +all sorts of loose notions on such points. His name stood not merely for +so much money; many names stood for far more; but it meant reliability, +it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He really loved these things, +though, no doubt, he loved them less for their own sake than because +they were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect +everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they +should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value +that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him +not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort +of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even +more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he +once saw it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it.</p> + +<p>The error that he had committed in Northwick's case, if it was an error, +was one that presented peculiar difficulties, as every error in life +does; the errors love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade +as all sorts of things. There were moments when Hilary saw his mistake +so clearly that it seemed to him nothing less than the repayment of +Northwick's thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of +justice to his fellow-losers if Northwick ran away; and then again, it +looked like the act of wise mercy which it had appeared to him when he +was urging the Board to give the man a chance as the only thing which +they could hopefully do in the circumstances, as common sense, as +business. But it was now so obvious that a man like Northwick could and +would do nothing but run away if he were given the chance, that he +seemed to have been his accomplice when he used the force of his +personal character with them in Northwick's behalf. He was in a +ridiculous position, there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to +get out of it without much painful wear and tear of pride, of +self-respect.</p> + +<p>After a long time he looked at the clock, and found it still early for +the return of his young people. He was impatient to see his son, and to +get the situation in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. +He had already told him of the defalcation, and of what the Board had +decided to do with Northwick; but this was while he was still in the +glow of action, and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who came in +just as he was going out to dinner; it was before his cold fit came on.</p> + +<p>He had reached that time of life when a man likes to lay his troubles +before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, +Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, +different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger +and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, +and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, +but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. +The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go +into the mills at Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the +natural course. But one day he came home and told his father that he had +begun to have his doubts of the existing relations of labor and capital; +and until he could see his way clearer he would rather give up his +chance with the company. It was a keen disappointment to Hilary; he made +no concealment of that; but he did not quarrel with his son about it. He +robustly tolerated Matt's queer notions, not only because he was a +father who blindly doted on his children and behaved as if everything +they did was right, no matter if it put him in the wrong, but because he +chose to respect the fellow's principles, if those were his principles. +He had his own principles, and Matt should have his if he liked. He bore +entirely well the purpose of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he +wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry +on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and +published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the +expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale +of the little book as if it had cost him nothing.</p> + +<p>Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone +counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he +came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had +exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good for only a +certain degree of advance in opinion; few men are indefinitely +progressive; and Hilary had not caught on to the movement that was +carrying his son with it. But he understood how his son should be what +he was, and he loved him so much that he almost honored him for what he +called his balderdash about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at +last he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door below, and +he made lumbering haste down stairs to open and let the young people in. +He reached the door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness of +his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay welcome, and took +his daughter, all a fluff of soft silken and furry wraps, into his arms.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't kiss my nose!" she called out. "It'll freeze you to death, +papa! What in the world are you up, for? Anything the matter with +mamma?"</p> + +<p>"No. She was in bed when I came home; I thought I would sit up and ask +what sort of a time you'd had."</p> + +<p>"Did you ever know me to have a bad one? I had the best time in the +world. I danced every dance, and I enjoyed it just as much as if I had +'shut and been a Bud again.' But don't you know it's very bad for old +gentlemen to be up so late?"</p> + +<p>They were mounting the stairs, and when they reached the library, she +went in and poked her long-gloved hands well in over the fire on the +hearth while she lifted her eyes to the clock. "Oh, it isn't so very +late. Only five."</p> + +<p>"No, it's early," said her father with the security in a feeble joke +which none but fathers can feel with none but their grown-up daughters. +"It's full an hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his +cattle, if he were in Vardley." Hilary had given Matt the old family +place there; and he always liked to make a joke of his getting an honest +living by farming it.</p> + +<p>"Don't speak of that agricultural angel!" said the girl, putting her +draperies back with one hand and confining them with her elbow, so as to +give her other hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet she +dropped on both knees before it.</p> + +<p>"Was he nice?" asked the father, with confidence.</p> + +<p>"Nice! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all the dull girls he +talked with! When I think what a good time I should have with him as a +plain girl, if I were not his sister, I lose all patience." She glanced +up in her father's face, with all the strange charm of features that had +no regular beauty; and then, as she had to do whenever she remembered +them, she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture +in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed +flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with +as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She +was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; +though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery +red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. +She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself +tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect +neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't +have treated us better."</p> + +<p>"Do you hear that, Matt?" asked the father, as his son came in, after a +methodical and deliberate bestowal of his outer garments below; his +method and his deliberation were part of the joke of him in the family.</p> + +<p>"Complaining of me for making her walk home?" he asked in turn, with the +quiet which was another part of the joke. "I didn't suppose you'd give +me away, Louise."</p> + +<p>"I didn't; I knew I only had to wait and you would give yourself away," +said the girl.</p> + +<p>"Did he make you walk home?" said the father. "That's the reason your +hands are so cold."</p> + +<p>"They're not very cold—now; and if they were, I shouldn't mind it in +such a cause."</p> + +<p>"What cause?"</p> + +<p>"Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me. But +it was only three blocks, and I had my arctics." She moved a little away +toward the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where she must +have been scuffling them off under her skirts. "Ugh! But it's cold!" She +now stretched a satin slipper in toward the fire.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's a cold night; but you seem to have got home alive, and I +don't think you'll be the worse for it now, if you go to bed at once," +said her father.</p> + +<p>"Is that a hint?" she asked, with a dreamy appreciation of the warmth +through the toe of her slipper.</p> + +<p>"Not at all; we should be glad to have you sit up the whole night with +us."</p> + +<p>"Ah, now I know you're hinting. Is it business?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's business."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm just in the humor for business; I've had enough pleasure."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why Louise shouldn't stay and talk business with us, if she +likes. I think it's a pity to keep women out of it, as if it didn't +concern them," said the son. "Nine-tenths of the time it concerns them +more than it does men." He had a bright, friendly, philosophical smile +in saying this, and he stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a +patience which their father did not share. He stood something over six +feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame seemed starting out of the +dress-suit, which it appeared so little related to. His whole face was +handsome and regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a mouth of +singular sweetness.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I think so too, in the abstract," said the father. "If the +business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the +term—"</p> + +<p>"Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?" The girl put her +arms round her father's neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a +little way from her cloak and her arctics. "If you hadn't said it was +business, I should have been in bed long ago." Then, as if feeling her +father's eagerness to have her gone, she said, "Good night," and gave +him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said "Good night, Matt," and got +herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and +stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying +to follow her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>Louise's father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt +himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred +itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about +picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the +cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove +on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to +it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that +was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to +get sight of.</p> + +<p>"What in the devil is that?" he roared.</p> + +<p>"Louise's pin," said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place +for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went +and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, "It's about Northwick, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said his father, still furious from the pinprick. "I'm afraid the +miserable scoundrel is going to run away."</p> + +<p>"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly.</p> + +<p>"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might +have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at +the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all +sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him, +but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to +be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a +turnip, even by crushing the turnip."</p> + +<p>"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile.</p> + +<p>"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he +was a thief."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an +air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more.</p> + +<p>"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it +will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent +things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being +rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him +for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him +the chance he asked for."</p> + +<p>"It was really the only thing you could do."</p> + +<p>"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't +seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought +the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on +his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter +who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him +handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables."</p> + +<p>Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in +criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the +point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature."</p> + +<p>"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his +father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up +abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall, +for the time being."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't +shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on +you."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss +Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I +never quite saw what Louise found to like in her."</p> + +<p>"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently +offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a +person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I +suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like +Louise."</p> + +<p>Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that +affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to +all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get +married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to +be done with it."</p> + +<p>"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I never believed in it."</p> + +<p>"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem +the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because—"</p> + +<p>"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he +is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the +matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say +what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next +in the matter?"</p> + +<p>"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to +right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the +hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in +Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, +with a smile of sympathy:</p> + +<p>"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't +a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the +apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to +get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money +even when he's made it in large sums as our class do."</p> + +<p>The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with +himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's +rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may +fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself."</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you."</p> + +<p>"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his +own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to +me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than +I've done. I know I've made myself responsible, in a way, for +Northwick's getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give +him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won't change that fact +at all; but I can't conceal from myself that I half-expected him to +abuse it."</p> + +<p>He put this tentatively, and his son responded, "I suppose that +naturally inclines you to suppose he'll run away."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"But your supposition doesn't establish the fact."</p> + +<p>"No. But the question is whether it doesn't oblige me to act as if it +had; whether I oughtn't, if I've got this suspicion, to take some steps +at once to find out whether Northwick's really gone or not, and to mix +myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I +promised him he shouldn't be shadowed in any way till his three days +were over."</p> + +<p>"It's a nice question," said Matt, "or rather, it's a nasty one. Still, +you've only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your +fears before. I don't think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry +one into the catchpole business." Matt laughed again with that fondness +he had for his father. "Though as for any peculiar disgrace in +catchpoles as catchpoles, I don't see it. They're a necessary part of +the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I +don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as +respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who +puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is +one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in +every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's +all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in +the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board +know that you have your misgivings?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, "I +felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to <i>him</i>! And I wanted +to talk with you."</p> + +<p>"It was just as well to let them have their night's rest. There isn't +really anything to be done." Matt rose from the low chair where he had +been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. "If the man was +going he's gone past recall by this time; and if he isn't gone, there's +no immediate cause for anxiety."</p> + +<p>"Then you wouldn't do anything at present?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly shouldn't. What could you do?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Good night," the son said, suggestively, "I suppose there isn't really +anything more?"</p> + +<p>"No, what could there be? You had better go to bed."</p> + +<p>"And you, too, I hope, father."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall go to bed—as a matter of form."</p> + +<p>The son laughed. "I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go +to sleep, too. I shall."</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't sleep," said the father, bitterly. "When things like this +happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them."</p> + +<p>"Well, I dare say Northwick's doing that."</p> + +<p>"I doubt it," said Hilary. "I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing +slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this +time."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he's only going to a +larger prison if he's going into exile. He may be on the Montreal +express, but I guess he isn't sleeping," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Yes," his father admitted. "Poor devil! He'd much better be dead."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that +day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister +that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, +but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch +with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o'clock +train.</p> + +<p>She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four +balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had +promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night.</p> + +<p>"I don't see how she lives through it," said Adeline. "And at her age, +it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud."</p> + +<p>"Louise is only twenty-three," said Suzette. "If she were married, she +would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older."</p> + +<p>"But she isn't married, and that makes all the difference."</p> + +<p>"Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of +his being with them."</p> + +<p>"Has he given up his farming? It's about time."</p> + +<p>"No; not at all, I believe. She says he's in Boston merely as a matter +of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to +go with her."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Adeline, "I should think he would want to be of <i>some</i> use +in the world; and if he won't help his father in business, he had better +help his mother in society."</p> + +<p>Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if +she had not heeded, "I think I will give a little dance here, next week. +Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We +made out the list—just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, +and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert +will matronize them; it'll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls +are concerned, but I've asked two or three buds; and some of the young +married people. It will be very pleasant, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>"Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?"</p> + +<p>Suzette smiled. "I dare say he would. I wasn't thinking of him in making +it, but I don't see why he shouldn't look in."</p> + +<p>"He might come to the supper," Adeline mused aloud, "if it isn't one of +his church days. I never can keep the run of them."</p> + +<p>"We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be +perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could +make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have +been certain to object if we had made any mistake."</p> + +<p>"I'm very glad," said Adeline. "I know father will be glad to have Mr. +Wade here. He's taken a great fancy to him."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Wade's very nice," said Suzette, coolly. "I shouldn't have liked to +have it without him."</p> + +<p>They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at +larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her +escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and +from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and +then went on talking.</p> + +<p>"Shall you have any of the South Hatboro' people?" her sister asked.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little +smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; +or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack +Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she +went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he +were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now +to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise +suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a +quarrel."</p> + +<p>Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always +afraid you'll get—"</p> + +<p>"To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly +dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in +the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, +"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put +an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't +believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the +point."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you +needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; +and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him +here."</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see +me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him +at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his +explanations."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak."</p> + +<p>"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his +weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and +didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be +explained."</p> + +<p>"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the +world, after the way he's treated you!"</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in +love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other +things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?"</p> + +<p>She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the +chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet +nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second +husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a +rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and +returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and +undying thing is a slight. That lasts—with <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from +the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant +it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced—"</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, <i>you're</i> in love with him! +Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at +the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each +rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, +across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said, +with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have +to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb—as +good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, +come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!"</p> + +<p>She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. +"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had +reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little +boy—"</p> + +<p>"Well, that's <i>like</i> you, Adeline! To bring <i>that</i> up! <i>No</i>, indeed! +It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he <i>isn't</i> quite one of the +family. What an idea!"</p> + +<p>"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl, +with some relenting. "When is it to be?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's +selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts +or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them +you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will +understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly +fib like this seemed no harm to her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the +coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead +child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it +wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me; +that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him +back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said, +and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work +to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live."</p> + +<p>The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one +lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's +watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she +can't seem to sense the comfort of it."</p> + +<p>"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon +her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more +care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you +talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and +nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up +against death, but I don't want any <i>comfort</i>. You want to see Elbridge, +Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep +about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have +to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such things to each other +as women do, big fools as they be!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity for Mrs. Newton and +expressed that she was hardly accountable for what she was saying.</p> + +<p>"He used to complain of me for lettin' Arty get out into the stable +among the horses; but I guess he won't be troubled that way <i>much</i> +more," said the mother; and then something in Miss Northwick's face +seemed to stay her in her wild talk; and she asked, "Want I should call +him for you?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," said Adeline, "I'll go right through to him, myself." She knew +the way from the coachman's dwelling into the stable, and she found +Elbridge oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged attention to +the work, which he hardly turned from to look at her. "Elbridge," she +asked, "did you drive father to the depot yesterday morning?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am, I did."</p> + +<p>"When did he say he would be back?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he said he couldn't say, exactly. But I understood in a day or +two."</p> + +<p>"Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset?"</p> + +<p>"No, ma'am, I didn't hear him say as he did."</p> + +<p>"Then it's a mistake; and of course I knew it was a mistake. There's +more than one Northwick in the world, I presume." She laughed a little +hysterically; she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with the +nervous tremor that passed over her.</p> + +<p>"Why, what is it, Miss Northwick?" said Elbridge with a perception of +the trouble in her voice through the trouble in his own heart. He +stopped pulling the greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned +towards her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing. There's been an accident on the Union and Dominion +Railroad; and of course it's a mistake."</p> + +<p>She handed him the paper, folded to the column which she wished to show, +and he took it between two finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as +possible, and stood reading it. She went on saying, "He wouldn't be on +the train if he was at Ponkwasset; I got the paper when I first came +down stairs, but I didn't happen to read the account till just now; and +then I thought I'd run out and see what father said to you about where +he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, too, and—" Her +voice growing more and more wistful, died away in the fascination of +watching the fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half-column +of scare-heads, and then followed down to the meagre details of the +dispatch eked out with double-leading to cover space.</p> + +<p>It appeared that the Northern express had reached Wellwater Junction, on +the Union and Dominion line, several hours behind time, and after the +usual stop there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the United +States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just after leaving the +Junction, run off the track. "The deadly car stove got in its work" on +the wreck, and many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the +parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list of the killed and +wounded, but several bodies were identified, and among the names of +passengers in the Pullman that of T. W. Northwick was reported, from a +telegram received by the conductor at Wellwater asking to have a seat +reserved from that point to Montreal.</p> + +<p>"It ain't him, I know it ain't, Miss Northwick," said Elbridge. He +offered to give her the paper, but took another look at it before he +finally yielded it. "There's lots of folks of the same name, I don't +care what it is, and the initials ain't the ones."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, doubtfully, "but I didn't like the last name being the +same."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't help that; and as long as it ain't the initials, and +you know your father is safe and sound at the Mills, you don't want to +worry."</p> + +<p>"No," said Adeline. "You're sure he told you he was going to the Mills?"</p> + +<p>"Why, didn't he tell <i>you</i> he was? I don't recollect just what he said. +But he told me about that note he left for me, and that had the money in +it for the fun'al—" Elbridge stopped for a moment before he added, "He +said he'd telegraph just which train he wanted me to meet him when he +was comin' back.... Why, dumn it! I guess I <i>must</i> be crazy. We can +settle it in half an hour's time—or an hour or two at the outside—and +no need to worry about it. Telegraph to the Mills and find out whether +he's there or not."</p> + +<p>He dropped his harness, and went to the telephone and called up the +Western Union operator at the station. He had the usual telephonic +contention with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but he got her +at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset Falls, asking whether +Northwick was at the Mills.</p> + +<p>"There!" he said, "I don't believe but what that'll fix it all right. +And I'll bring you in the answer myself, when it comes, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, when—"</p> + +<p>"I guess you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it +wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be +a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, +and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for +him, interpreted them aright.</p> + +<p>She stayed to add, "I don't know what he could have been on that train +for, any way, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No, and he wa'n't on it; you'll find that out."</p> + +<p>"It'll be very provoking," she said, forecasting the minor trouble of +the greater trouble's failure. "Everybody will wonder if it isn't +father, and we shall have to tell them it isn't."</p> + +<p>"Well, that won't be so bad as havin' to tell 'em it is," said Elbridge, +getting back for the moment to his native dryness.</p> + +<p>"That's true," Adeline admitted. "Don't speak to anybody about it till +you hear." She knew from his making no answer that he would obey her, +and she hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the +intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world.</p> + +<p>She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her day in Boston and +the excitement of their talk at night, which she suspected had prevented +the girl from sleeping early. Elbridge's sympathetic incredulity had +comforted her, if it had not convinced her, and she possessed herself in +such patience as she could till the answer should come from the mills. +If her father were there, then it would be all right; and in the +meantime she found some excuses for not believing the worst she feared. +There was no reason in the world why he should be on that train; there +was no reason why she should identify him with that T. W. Northwick in +the burnt-up car; that was not his name, and that was not the place +where he would have been.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between +Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an +answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony +and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could +have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether +misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned +down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain +told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended, +she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home +with her.</p> + +<p>"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her +troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning +and began to cry.</p> + +<p>"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and +with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought +it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel +for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow +to her—so sudden, and her only child."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have—have you seen +the—paper this morning?"</p> + +<p>"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I +thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?"</p> + +<p>"No, nothing. Only—only—" Adeline had not been able to separate +herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage +pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly, +but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you +see—see—" She stopped, and handed him the paper.</p> + +<p>He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her +trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of +reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the +train?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part +about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't +have been on the train at all. Only the name—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he +would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to +be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of +possibility.</p> + +<p>"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the +Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there +must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before +the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep +round after him when—"</p> + +<p>"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news +is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station, +and find out whether any answer has been—"</p> + +<p>"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will +telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you +haven't something to do, and stay with us till we—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the +accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the +horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts +with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been +on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability.</p> + +<p>Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby, +which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got +into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once; +"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at +Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some +hosses there—"</p> + +<p>"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply.</p> + +<p>Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well, +no, he hain't been, yet—"</p> + +<p>Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks.</p> + +<p>At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to +the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where +this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the +world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight +of Elbridge lifting something from the floor.</p> + +<p>"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a +little faint, and—"</p> + +<p>"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and +setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll +get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping +over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air +began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, +"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline +answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is. +Let us get her into the library on the lounge."</p> + +<p>She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried +Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly +about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come +back.</p> + +<p>Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When +she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the +clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her."</p> + +<p>"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle +eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and +physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the +morning paper, and among the passengers—the missing—was one of the +name of Northwick—"</p> + +<p>"But father is at the Mills!"</p> + +<p>"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure—and word +has come that he—isn't there."</p> + +<p>"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty +incredulity.</p> + +<p>Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving +it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to +one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while +her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came +from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity.</p> + +<p>"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the +train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at +this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and +came back to the other two.</p> + +<p>"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable—"</p> + +<p>"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at +the Mills?"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette, +scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought."</p> + +<p>"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there."</p> + +<p>"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a +little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries +there; and—"</p> + +<p>"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going +farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in +the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see +the paper first?"</p> + +<p>"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly.</p> + +<p>"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?"</p> + +<p>Adeline's silence made confession.</p> + +<p>"What I think is, we'd better all have <i>lunch</i>," said Suzette, and she +went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't +you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who +answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see +Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when +the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will +drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall +not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be +no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad +guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and +came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe +he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for +the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last +night. The express has to come up from Boston—" She stopped and ran +over the time-table of the route. "Well, he <i>could</i> get a connecting +train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did."</p> + +<p>She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then +suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready +yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and +I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father +was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before +yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph +to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home, +Adeline, till I know something definite."</p> + +<p>The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that +betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste, +and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, +untasted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till +she comes back!" she entreated.</p> + +<p>Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a +harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said.</p> + +<p>She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they +heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then +came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away.</p> + +<p>Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as +one can in the suspense of a strong emotion.</p> + +<p>"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he +were a little abashed by it.</p> + +<p>"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that +she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every +minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd—I mustn't keep +you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical +strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be +anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!"</p> + +<p>She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really +wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away, +before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and +he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early +winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl +had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be +resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had +now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the +presumptuous rumor and destroy it.</p> + +<p>Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village +from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped +into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their +feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the +side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and +saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and +the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque +sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and +then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron +filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her +to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was +another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon +liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his +astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays +nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if +fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew +it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her +friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her +brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of +it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at +the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and +he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater +now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing +is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills. +Some one was asking for him there yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested."</p> + +<p>"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very +provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline +know."</p> + +<p>"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of +good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he +suggested to Louise.</p> + +<p>"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you. +Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we +were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous."</p> + +<p>"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep +thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this +fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she +called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add, +"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something +definite?"</p> + +<p>Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a +resolute cheerfulness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2> + + +<p>The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the +suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two +more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade +loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was +such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its +strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the +moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed +roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the +witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to +her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help +bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible.</p> + +<p>He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the +platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two +of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some +wornout rails with new ones.</p> + +<p>"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, +Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his +face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in +position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the +plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, +free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer.</p> + +<p>"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor, +even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association +with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of +the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief +just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: +in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their +work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which +ennobled the scene.</p> + +<p>When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade, +who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the +moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her +father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that +matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it. +"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or—"</p> + +<p>Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height +with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss +Northwick's father?"</p> + +<p>"Very little—nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in +the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just +met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at +the station."</p> + +<p>Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk +from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the +station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of +the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't +follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and +directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the +station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he +met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I +should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our +state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust +can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the +business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that +doesn't belong to him?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick +was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked."</p> + +<p>"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe +that?"</p> + +<p>"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss +Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I +was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that +wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt +that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In +fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut +their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding +defaulter."</p> + +<p>"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These +things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind +of—" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's +revery in which he seemed to have been far absent.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen much of the family this winter?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've +been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at +their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with +the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I +don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all +kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was +willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that <i>she</i> kept the +family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture."</p> + +<p>"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared +anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her."</p> + +<p>Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean, +Matt? Is there anything besides—"</p> + +<p>"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him +steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary +tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something +that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what +Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their +suspicions."</p> + +<p>"Right?"</p> + +<p>"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter +to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the +directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the +face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make +up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best +thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke +his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the +defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no +question about it."</p> + +<p>"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts +which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible—do you +suppose—imagine—that it was really he who was in that burning car? +What an awful fate!"</p> + +<p>"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe +ground in regard to a thing of that kind—the only ground."</p> + +<p>"The only ground?"</p> + +<p>"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of +the Board—called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names—and told +him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident +on his way home."</p> + +<p>"Ah!"</p> + +<p>"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this +morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he +was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused +his death—I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything +of the kind."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Wade, compassionately.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the +devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean +anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any +superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a +friend—or a victim—of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way +out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke +from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been +telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his +business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my +coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two +poor women."</p> + +<p>"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst +always seems to do."</p> + +<p>"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to +fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be +when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that +awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was +running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it."</p> + +<p>"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?"</p> + +<p>"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but +sorrow and shame have to come out—I don't know why, but they do. Then, +when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the +cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in +silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in +words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that +bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she +took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating +with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it +was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!"</p> + +<p>"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was +very good of her to come."</p> + +<p>"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head +up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her +friendship with Miss Northwick—she's so much younger than I, and they +came together when I was abroad—but I've fancied she wasn't much liked +among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read +that report, nothing would do but she must come."</p> + +<p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a +sacrifice for him to let us come."</p> + +<p>"I don't understand."</p> + +<p>"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick; +and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to +cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a +rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have +some interest in getting him out of the way."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as +Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even +from the man's son.</p> + +<p>"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach +to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt.</p> + +<p>Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the +case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor +sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so +little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to +make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins +to God!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I'm with you <i>there</i>!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther +through his friend's arm.</p> + +<p>They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for +mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life, +which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had +thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to +verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good +deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points +in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life. +Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard +they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was +not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured +in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them: +Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his +back on manufacturing.</p> + +<p>They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the +calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their +sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the +victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so +much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick +old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of +her doom which Matt tried to put into words.</p> + +<p>"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I +don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when +I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were +taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and +I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with +my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the +most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why, +just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They +will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up +everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the +world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her +head!"</p> + +<p>Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of +course she won't be allowed to come to want."</p> + +<p>"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a +disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve +everything."</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade.</p> + +<p>"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that +you—" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed +nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get +Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is."</p> + +<p>They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a +head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet +of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and +then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could.</p> + +<p>"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks +best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. +Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your +sister."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll +see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch."</p> + +<p>The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to +meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it +to Matt and promptly turned his back on him.</p> + +<p>Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car +passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at +Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst."</p> + +<p>Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no. +This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting. +And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go +up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to +send if anything else comes."</p> + +<p>"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left +the station. "I'm going to my study, there."</p> + +<p>They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more +elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow.</p> + +<p>From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous +little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I +beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly +transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to +Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is +impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car."</p> + +<p>"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be +<i>our</i> Mr. Northwick. Er—good-morning, sir."</p> + +<p>He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked +Wade, "Who in the world is that?"</p> + +<p>"He's a Mr. Gerrish—keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant +type."</p> + +<p>Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so +low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business +standing."</p> + +<p>"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar +of material success."</p> + +<p>Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is +simply seething with curiosity."</p> + +<p>Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down +to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was +alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble.</p> + +<p>"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply.</p> + +<p>Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater.</p> + +<p>"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. +"It's perfectly ridiculous! <i>Why</i> should he have been there? I think +there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating +false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the +train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some +horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm +going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's +bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out."</p> + +<p>"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you +back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she +handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell +them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes."</p> + +<p>The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the +paper in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully +backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing +from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater +Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's +the worst, I want to know the worst."</p> + +<p>Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to +gain time.</p> + +<p>"Of course! At such a time, I would <i>rather</i> be alone."</p> + +<p>At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he +said he would like to speak with her there.</p> + +<p>She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, +"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my +sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this +week. What have you heard?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? +Must you go back?"</p> + +<p>"No—not exactly."</p> + +<p>"Not exactly? What are you driving at?"</p> + +<p>"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go +up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she +wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose +she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she +do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the +accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was—"</p> + +<p>"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She +mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her +go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this +point. "She must send somebody—some of their men. She mustn't go. It's +too hideous!"</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go."</p> + +<p>"You!"</p> + +<p>"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I +can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible +suspense for her."</p> + +<p>"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that +poor, sick old maid."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left +her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for +her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more."</p> + +<p>"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, +Matt. <i>You</i> couldn't do <i>less</i>! It's magnificent of you. Have you told +her, yet, that you would go?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay +here till you come back—"</p> + +<p>"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. +"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for +them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts +with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to +Canada to escape arrest."</p> + +<p>He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her.</p> + +<p>"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope +he's killed."</p> + +<p>Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much +the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way."</p> + +<p>"When must it come out?"</p> + +<p>"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may +come out—some rumor of it—in the morning papers. The question is +whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be +wise, or useful."</p> + +<p>"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a +thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me +get away alive. I must go at once!"</p> + +<p>She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up +a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from.</p> + +<p>"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without +telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would +insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>that</i> was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to +get away."</p> + +<p>"I hope you won't let her suspect—"</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>think</i> you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning +round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as +sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a +warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he +was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and +he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, +fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other +than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from +her friend.</p> + +<p>Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library.</p> + +<p>"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at +Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would +be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the +same farm."</p> + +<p>The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head +in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, +she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe +herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an +apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable."</p> + +<p>"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no +news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to +that."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were +red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears +came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. +Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time +we went to Quebec?"</p> + +<p>Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at +least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?"</p> + +<p>Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. +"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map +of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal +and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the +Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get +to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly +frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of +<i>course</i>, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's +usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans—"</p> + +<p>She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and +began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at +the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might +not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the +Springfield train at Wellwater."</p> + +<p>"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the +ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a +man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot +help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time +does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train—if I +don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear."</p> + +<p>A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette +went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing +the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on, +and her jacket over her arm.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you—I had to do that—but we +both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences." +Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite +know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she +spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, +she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell +you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time +for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could +out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about +all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But +remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can +send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm +simply waiting. Will you remember that—<i>whatever</i> happens?"</p> + +<p>Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in +formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of +them than it could to the other.</p> + +<p>"Come, Matt!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they +would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then +Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and +wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette."</p> + +<p>"That is a good idea," said Louise.</p> + +<p>"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston +alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!"</p> + +<p>"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive, +I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him +I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall +be set down at our door in perfect safety."</p> + +<p>They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined +reluctantly in it.</p> + +<p>When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she +will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she +will trust you enough to turn to us?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall +come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections, +as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But +I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?"</p> + +<p>"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at +the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country +person."</p> + +<p>"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise.</p> + +<p>Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven +knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation +of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see +him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits +seem ugly."</p> + +<p>They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked +up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father +might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question +whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief +for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided +motive.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said +Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt +answered.</p> + +<p>There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, +released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station +an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming +and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with +envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were +both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their +fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of +good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against +whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help +carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to +help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality +she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the +front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell +plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed +with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls +who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a +young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; +she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated +operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was +no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why +he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second +glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a +studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his +clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however +he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned +from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came +up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, +and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went +to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for +Miss Northwick.</p> + +<p>She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it +up."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's," +said Matt.</p> + +<p>"All right."</p> + +<p>Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting +quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the +station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short +of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as +observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from +the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the +awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of +the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called +from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the +depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have a telegram."</p> + +<p>"Oh, give it to me!"</p> + +<p>He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But +if isn't what you expected, will you let—will you allow me—"</p> + +<p>As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from +his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been +there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously +in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins.</p> + +<p>Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn't. You—you must let me go."</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I +can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn't do. +Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I +solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or +forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish +done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if +you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you've borne +with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust +me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go +in your place on such an errand, but it really isn't so. You ought to +know that I wouldn't offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all +that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!"</p> + +<p>He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without +strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she +answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of +assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping +his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that +day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he +stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the +rise of ground to the southward.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2> + + +<p>The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight +thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to +Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and +shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young +man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of <i>The +Boston Events</i>' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far +from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young +man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a +woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual +sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching +the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in +rows on either side of the room.</p> + +<p>She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for +his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "let's see. No use asking if you've got coffee?" He +inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a +deep breath.</p> + +<p>"Baked beans?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't think there's anything much better than baked beans. Do +you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not when you git 'em <i>good</i>," the woman admitted. "<i>Ril</i> good."</p> + +<p>"And what's the matter with a piece of mince pie?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see's there's any great deal. Hot?"</p> + +<p>"Every time."</p> + +<p>"I <i>thought</i> so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I'd as soon +eat a piece of I don't know what as a piece o' <i>cold</i> mince pie."</p> + +<p>"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I +guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor +round inside of five minutes."</p> + +<p>The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship +established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need +to. Nothin' else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot +plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them +on the table before the young man, "Your pie's warmin' for you; I got +you some rolls; they're just right out the oven; and here's some the +best butter I ever put a knife to, if I <i>do</i> say so. It's just as good +and sweet as butter can be, if it <i>didn't</i> come from the Northwick place +at a dollar a pound."</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I should have thought you'd have used the Northwick butter," +said the young man with friendly irony.</p> + +<p>"You know the Northwick butter?" said the woman, charmed at the +discovery of another tie.</p> + +<p>"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a +fancy brand for the table."</p> + +<p>The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I'll bet you +grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy +which he did not disallow.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm pretty particular," said the young man. "But I <i>have</i> to be, +to find anything to find fault with in the way <i>my</i> wife manages. I +don't suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick butter, now."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Why, if he was killed in that accident—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I guess there ain't anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it +was some other Northwick. Their coachman—Elbridge Newton—was tellin' +my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at +some hosses there. He's always buyin' more hosses. I guess he must have +as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don't place any dependence on +that report."</p> + +<p>"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at +the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?"</p> + +<p>"What fellow?"</p> + +<p>"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and +blazing, as you may say."</p> + +<p>"Oh,—Mr. Putney! That's just one of his jokes. He's always down on Mr. +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble +there."</p> + +<p>"Labor trouble?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so."</p> + +<p>The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" +and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor +trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward +inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the <i>Events</i>' +young man.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost +so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston +to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles."</p> + +<p>"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm a reporter—same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps +you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in +Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the +<i>Events</i>' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee +caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the +drug store that seemed to be pretty happy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife."</p> + +<p>"Who <i>is</i> Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the <i>Events</i>' man.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for +instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the +old Hatboro' Putneys, here."</p> + +<p>"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much +liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man +perceived that he had struck a false note.</p> + +<p>"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more +bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a +month on a strict prohibition basis."</p> + +<p>The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, +I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is +bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way +you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in +every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as +anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband."</p> + +<p>"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go +ahead of him, well, not in <i>this</i> town," said the husband.</p> + +<p>"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes +him so down on Mr. Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I dunno," said the host, "<i>what</i> it is. He's always been so. I +presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is +anything else."</p> + +<p>"Why, what kind of a man <i>is</i> Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man +asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had +now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's +only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never +did have much to do with the place, before."</p> + +<p>"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?"</p> + +<p>"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered.</p> + +<p>His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue +Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be +merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more +available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose +slippers require constant attention?"</p> + +<p>"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as +that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the +workin' folks, since Mr. Peck."</p> + +<p>"Who was Mr. Peck?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here +two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort +of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union."</p> + +<p>"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. +"Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard +history of co-operation."</p> + +<p>"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly.</p> + +<p>"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he +isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on +that big place of his; and give work."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the +neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The +hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been +quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a +man of the reporter's wide observation. "<i>He</i> thinks Hatboro' was better +off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place."</p> + +<p>"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and +he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. +Northwick, personally?"</p> + +<p>The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a +moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had +anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything +against him. I guess he's a pretty good man."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he <i>was</i> going +to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. +With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to +throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, +sarcastically.</p> + +<p>"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on +in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line +of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed.</p> + +<p>"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion +road there. Then it's on a branch."</p> + +<p>"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. +<i>What</i> did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick +family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up +his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. +"Married man myself, you know."</p> + +<p>"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her +husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk +in the corner of the room, and brought back the change.</p> + +<p>"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" +the young man asked, in pocketing his money.</p> + +<p>"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. +"There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the +hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. +Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, +either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't +suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to +talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell."</p> + +<p>"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter.</p> + +<p>"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see: second wife. Then <i>he's</i> the young man, heigh!"</p> + +<p>The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat +the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en."</p> + +<p>The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, +and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he +had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. +Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband +long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth +crying for.</p> + +<p>The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of +accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so +much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his +own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist +the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended +himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular +belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one +else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if +you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was +what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the +happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, +and on his own exceptional good fortune in it.</p> + +<p>He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat +he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the +pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in.</p> + +<p>The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You +onto it, too?"</p> + +<p>"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion.</p> + +<p>"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him +alone.</p> + +<p>"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." +Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting +Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably +shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, +"some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He +rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and +pressed his fingers against his temples.</p> + +<p>"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one +another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take +something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache."</p> + +<p>The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth +while?"</p> + +<p>"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?"</p> + +<p>"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of +the news with us," he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney.</p> + +<p>"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, +Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an +object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the +consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away."</p> + +<p>"The what is?" asked Pinney.</p> + +<p>"The consensus."</p> + +<p>"Anything like the United States Census?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't spelt like it."</p> + +<p>Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my +own wherever I find it, as George Washington said."</p> + +<p>"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't +know what the word means."</p> + +<p>"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his +book.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had +revived himself with a sip or two.</p> + +<p>"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do +you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have +you. There are no scoops in it."</p> + +<p>"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly.</p> + +<p>Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a +detective—in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, +like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney.</p> + +<p>"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a +space-man can't do."</p> + +<p>"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and +superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at +trifles."</p> + +<p>"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt +up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their +emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome +to it."</p> + +<p>"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name +and—"</p> + +<p>"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind."</p> + +<p>"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, +anyhow. It's not a personal thing."</p> + +<p>"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, +but it makes the man's face burn."</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that +stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay +there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for +a reporter. When are you going to Boston?"</p> + +<p>"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously.</p> + +<p>"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the +cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your +diffidence is infectious, Maxwell."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2> + + +<p>Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it +appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to +pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him +suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They +would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see +him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all +the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family +required him to use every means for making copy.</p> + +<p>He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably +doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly +well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden +palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the +inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of +baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance +gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or +a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney +in, and in his absence, the representative of the <i>Events</i> made note of +the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and +of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The +inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he +returned with his card still in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at +home."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see +Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. +She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence +of an interviewer.</p> + +<p>"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card +which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. +Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words <i>Representing the Boston +Events</i>. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and +business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a +certain shade of authority.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some +conversation with you in regard to this—this rumor—accident. Can you +tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?"</p> + +<p>"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. +She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the +mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to +its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She +wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do +this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not +telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; +and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to +have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this +reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior.</p> + +<p>"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days."</p> + +<p>"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney.</p> + +<p>"Yes, three or four. There <i>is</i> one train, at half-past-twelve, I +think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you +there in three hours."</p> + +<p>"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?"</p> + +<p>"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often +take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the +Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses +from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have +run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any +reliance on that story"—she gasped the rest out—"about—that +accident."</p> + +<p>"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those +flying rumors—they get the names all mixed up, those country +operators."</p> + +<p>"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. +"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs."</p> + +<p>"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are +they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed +questionings.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, +and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the +Falls."</p> + +<p>"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope +you'll find out it's all a mistake about—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman—a friend of ours—has +just gone up to Wellwater to see about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. +I suppose you've telegraphed?"</p> + +<p>"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went."</p> + +<p>It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did +not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, +"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to +see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd +taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, +smiling.</p> + +<p>There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by +seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They +take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; +their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts +warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use +to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about +him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five +minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later.</p> + +<p>When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't +at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the +troubles."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her +relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, +in summer, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been +enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long +time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to +their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and +to warrant her father's safety.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my +wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the +country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have +to live there."</p> + +<p>Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the +vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper +from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to +your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth +in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She +thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and +keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to +ask him not to do so.</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to—it's very kind of +you—I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely +human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away +from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now +suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home +life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, +he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, +it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him +down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given +him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; +on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and +dropped them into the deep snow.</p> + +<p>His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success +he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an +enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done.</p> + +<p>She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, +you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the <i>Abstract</i> clear out +of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and +the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on +the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the +world."</p> + +<p>Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are +ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big +default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a +chance to make up his shortage—it's the old story. I've got just the +setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the +word to go ahead—"</p> + +<p>"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall +do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute."</p> + +<p>Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her +enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why +he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective +authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. +"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm +going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. +There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, +any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell +you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk.</p> + +<p>His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work +on the table there. It's bigger than this desk."</p> + +<p>"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and +followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their +simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" +He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into +it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!"</p> + +<p>"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a +pathetic little mouth.</p> + +<p>Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he +was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his +dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, +of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter +which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which +enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do +justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's +home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with +a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit +in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when +he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as +plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would +sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his +daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't +quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently +hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to +Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!"</p> + +<p>His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. +"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure +out of it for <i>me</i>; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of +his family, I can't help you any more."</p> + +<p>"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I +guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall +handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. +"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it +hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to +Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I +knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so +I didn't go."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes +upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back."</p> + +<p>"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he +asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, +and the love he saw in them.</p> + +<p>Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take +air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife +often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she +saw him.</p> + +<p>This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, +when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the <i>Events</i>. She +had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in +a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up +the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main +dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the +clerks.</p> + +<p>At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in +the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready +to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, +and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under +his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more +like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He +wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they +began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the +summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first +meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. +They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social +splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that +they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value +each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the +greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they +were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was +good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great +deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a +virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual +devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great +merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they +prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so +deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of +altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and +content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married +on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been +rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their +happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2> + + +<p>Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached +the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house +his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told +her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work.</p> + +<p>"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying +round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. +You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks +it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the +defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't +<i>do</i> that."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to +have you."</p> + +<p>"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young +fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a +business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is +getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an +owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years."</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother.</p> + +<p>"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at +this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a +wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and +he's sure to get on."</p> + +<p>"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged +soothingly.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my +own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of +working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first +thing is to earn your bread."</p> + +<p>"Well, you <i>do</i> earn yours, my son—and no one works harder to earn +it."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my son!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the +rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the +door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar +and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to +leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he +finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on +the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! +He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only +chance for a scoop."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a +gentleman."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the +room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of +business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I +intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to +pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps <i>he</i> isn't +a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to +write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility +with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it."</p> + +<p>"He's very kind to you, Brice."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my +life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every +now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room +in independent journalism?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning +the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had +not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to +put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call.</p> + +<p>The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, +but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He +tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat +and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather +haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, +and led him in there.</p> + +<p>Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after +dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange +experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and +comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over +the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the +contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', +with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she +remembered.</p> + +<p>The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood +irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father."</p> + +<p>"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very +soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along +unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for +the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes +were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her +nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far +as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of +man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, +and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's +very cold out, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an +illogical sense of acquaintance with him.</p> + +<p>"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the +beginning of February."</p> + +<p>"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than +she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold +weather after the January thaw."</p> + +<p>"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought +of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes +any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the +proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be +a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some +of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a +walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her +father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision +gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, +he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he +found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, +as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking +up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's +library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which +was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare +Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes +without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a +scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say +next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with +no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what +he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the +country."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town."</p> + +<p>"And how dreary," he added.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be +debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this +rate."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, +to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color +and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the +literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to +get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall +below.</p> + +<p>Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that +brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the <i>Daily +Abstract</i>, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about +this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick."</p> + +<p>"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about +the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! +Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?"</p> + +<p>"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out.</p> + +<p>"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how <i>could</i> you treat him so?"</p> + +<p>"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! +What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of +my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?"</p> + +<p>"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!"</p> + +<p>"Saw that he was a gentleman?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not—not a common reporter +at <i>all</i>!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, +and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous +experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father +who had not been the gentleman. "You—you might have been a little +kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether +you would say anything. He didn't persist."</p> + +<p>"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw +always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find +himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and +admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the +way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for +you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What +does it all mean?"</p> + +<p>The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: +"Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I +should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I +<i>could</i>. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if +you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you +did."</p> + +<p>Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as +you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise +gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a +tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have +been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters +after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this +bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to +Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and +more?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was +going alone. He couldn't do less."</p> + +<p>"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He +turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a +strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's +this?"</p> + +<p>He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, +"Of course he will come back for it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll—I'll write him a note," Hilary +groaned.</p> + +<p>Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor +fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? +It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, +and meet all kinds of rebuffs."</p> + +<p>"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, +with some return to his grudge.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean <i>you</i>, papa," said Louise, sweetly.</p> + +<p>The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came +up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his +note-book, he—"</p> + +<p>Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it +is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2> + + +<p>Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in the little triptych +mirror against one of the shelves. Her hair was not tumbled, and she +completed her toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending the +edge of her skirt over them where she stood.</p> + +<p>Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and she smiled a fresh +greeting to him. "We—I had just picked your note-book up. I—I'm glad +you came back, I—was a little short with you a moment ago. I—I—Mayn't +I offer you a cigar?"</p> + +<p>"No, thanks. I don't smoke," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Then a glass of—It's pretty cold out!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you; I never drink."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's good! That's—sit down; sit down!—that's a very good +thing. I assure you, I don't think it's the least use, though I do both. +My boy doesn't, he's a pattern to his father."</p> + +<p>In spite of Hilary's invitation Maxwell remained on foot, with the +effect of merely hearing him out as he went on.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm sorry I haven't anything to tell about that accident. I've been +telegraphing all day, without finding out anything beyond the fact as +first reported; and now my son's gone up to Wellwater, to look it up on +the ground. It may have been our Mr. Northwick, or it may not. May I ask +how much you know?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I'm quite free to say," answered Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"And I didn't expect you to say anything unless you wished to make +something known. It's a matter of business."</p> + +<p>"Exactly," said Hilary. "But I think I might been a little civiller in +saying what I did. The rumor's been a great annoyance to me; and I like +to share my annoyances with other people. I suppose your business often +brings you in contact with men of that friendly disposition? Heigh?" +Hilary rolled the cigar he was about to light between his lips.</p> + +<p>"We see the average man," said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his +poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that +from the bore it is to interview."</p> + +<p>"I dare say that's often the worst part of it," said Hilary, lighting +his cigar, and puffing out the first great clouds. "Well, then, I may +congratulate myself on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn't know I +should come off so handsomely."</p> + +<p>There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell did not attempt to make +conversation. Hilary offered him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve +the parting of abruptness, "If you care to look in on me again, later +on, perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Maxwell, and he turned to go. Then he turned back, and +after a moment's hesitation, bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, +"Good-evening!" and went out.</p> + +<p>Louise fetched a deep breath. "Why didn't you keep him longer, papa, and +find out all about him?"</p> + +<p>"I think we know all that's necessary," said her father, dryly. "At +least he isn't on my conscience any longer; and now I hope you're +satisfied."</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes," she hesitated. "You don't think you were too patronizing in +your reparation, papa?"</p> + +<p>"Patronizing?" Hilary's crest began to rise.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean that; but I wish you hadn't let him see that you +expected him to leap for joy when you stooped to excuse yourself."</p> + +<p>Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the violence he was about to +permit himself. "The next time, if you don't like my manner with people, +don't stay, Louise."</p> + +<p>"I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how beautifully you could do +it; and you <i>did</i> do it beautifully. It was magnificent—perhaps <i>too</i> +magnificent." She began to laugh and to kiss away the vexation from her +father's face, keeping her hands behind her with her shoes she had +picked up again, in them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat.</p> + +<p>"And did I want you to stay and entertain him here till I came in?" he +demanded, to keep from being mollified too soon.</p> + +<p>"No," she faltered. "<i>That</i> was a work of necessity. He looked so sick +and sad, that he appealed to my sympathy, and besides—Do you think I +could trust you with a secret, papa?"</p> + +<p>"What are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you see I thought he was a walking-delegate at first."</p> + +<p>"And was that the reason you stayed?"</p> + +<p>"No. That was what frightened me, and then interested me. I wanted to +find out what they were like. But that isn't the secret."</p> + +<p>"It's probably quite as important," Hilary growled.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see it's such a good lesson to me! I had slipped off my shoes +when I was lying down, and I couldn't get away, he came in so suddenly."</p> + +<p>"And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you were talking to that +reporter all the time in—"</p> + +<p>"How should he know it? You didn't know it yourself, papa. I couldn't +get my shoes on after he came, of course!" She brought them round before +her in evidence.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous! I never come in after +you've been here without finding some part of your gear lying +round—hair-pins, or gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or +something—and I won't have it. I want you to understand that I think +it's disgraceful. I'm ashamed of you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Not <i>ashamed</i>, papa!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am!" said her father; but he had to relent under her look of +meek imploring, and say, "or I ought to be. I don't see how you could +hold up your head."</p> + +<p>"I held it very <i>high</i> up. When you haven't got your shoes on—in +company—it gives you a sort of—internal majesty; and I behaved very +loftily. But it's been a fearful lesson to me, papa!" She made her +father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, and kissed him for +his amiability.</p> + +<p>She said at the end of this rite, "He didn't seem much impressed even +after you had apologized, do you think, papa?"</p> + +<p>"No, he didn't," Hilary grumbled. "He's as stiff-necked as need be."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Louise, thoughtfully. "He must be proud. How funny proud +people are, papa! I can't understand them. That was what always +fascinated me with Suzette."</p> + +<p>Hilary's face saddened as it softened. "Ah, poor thing! She'll have need +of all her pride, now."</p> + +<p>"You mean about her father," said Louise, sobered too. "Don't you hope +he's got away?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, child? That would be a very rascally wish in me."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'd rather he had got away than been killed?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course, of course," Hilary ruefully assented. "But if Matt +finds he wasn't—in the accident, it's my business to do all I can to +bring him to justice. The man's a thief."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, <i>I</i> hope he's got away."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't say such things, Louise."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>no</i>, papa! Only <i>think</i> them."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2> + + +<p>Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look +into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It +was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have +three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have +justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing +to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way. +Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same +errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with +them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in +agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end; +but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith +with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could +have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do, +and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. +The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck. +There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely +swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to +the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent +and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of +derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the +locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that +had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a +wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were +ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing +to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter +and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of +passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the +operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved +in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but +those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his +death.</p> + +<p>This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to +Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it +left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt +struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself +in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind +he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and +whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real +course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide +his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If +the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that +Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all. +But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must +be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In +any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who +must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were +really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other +fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family; +he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only +thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming +a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive; +but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse +when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her +father was dead.</p> + +<p>She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they +were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell +them so.</p> + +<p>Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he +urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was +not in the accident.</p> + +<p>She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no +difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her +father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by +this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was +doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when +they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight +change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to +his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them +know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very +suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else.</p> + +<p>Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he +thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that +he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered +nothing, she did not ask him.</p> + +<p>It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that +she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she +will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a +slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline +jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes; +but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief. +She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and +she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister.</p> + +<p>Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved, +when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel +it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of +hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help +those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it; +these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their +bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude.</p> + +<p>Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to +linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell. +Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was +astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last.</p> + +<p>"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never! +Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I +wonder you could do it!"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as +well as their loss, and were of one mind about it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it—"</p> + +<p>"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because <i>you</i> would have +done it for any one! But you have done it for <i>us</i>; and as long as I +live I shall remember that! Oh"—She broke off; and dropped her face +with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he +was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after +they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of +encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had +accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be +born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make +women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his +heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity +that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from +every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from +that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He +went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned +from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was +respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was +foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for +them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he +had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it +was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair.</p> + +<p>The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away +from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and +followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the +night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all +that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him +to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick +was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his +name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all +the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he +had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his +misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal +justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his +stand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2> + + +<p>For forty-eight hours longer the fact of the defalcation was kept back; +but then, in view of the legal action urged by those who did not accept +the theory of Northwick's death, it had to come out, and it broke all +bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity.</p> + +<p>Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and it was weeks before +the editorial homilies ceased. From time to time, fresh details and +unexpected revelations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the +interest of the original fact. There were days when there was nothing +about it in the papers, and then days when it broke out in vivid +paragraphs and whole lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was +singular in its features; these were common to most of the defalcations, +great and small, which were of daily fame in the newspapers. But the +doubt as to the man's fate, and the enduring mystery of his whereabouts, +if he were still alive, were qualities that gave peculiar poignancy to +Northwick's case. Its results in the failure of people not directly +involved, were greater than could have been expected; and the sum of his +peculations mounted under investigation. It was all much worse than had +been imagined, and in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral +gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts stolen and indirectly +lost by it. There was a great deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that +the crime should have been that of a man whom no one would have dreamed +of suspecting, and there was some sufficiently ridiculous consternation +at the presence of such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial +life of Boston.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Events</i>, Pinney made his report of the affair the work of art +which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's +masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with +its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to +page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In +the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a +devotion to the interests of the <i>Events</i> and its readers. With every +hour the painful impressions of his interview with Miss Northwick grew +fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no +color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening +the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow +upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the +family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly +on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the +victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the +facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the +capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force +the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase +widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the +library into which "the <i>Events</i>' representative was politely ushered," +was furnished with "all the appliances of a cultured taste." The works +of the standard authors in costly bindings graced its shelves; +magnificent paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and +alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously received the <i>Events</i>' +reporter, was suitably enriched; her years were discounted, and her +beauty approached to the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about +Pinney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial grandeur upon the +Northwick place, outside as well as inside. He imparted a romantic +consequence to Hatboro' itself: "A thriving New England town, proud of +its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern prosperity, with a +population of some five or six thousand souls, among whose working men +and women modern ideas of the most advanced character had been realized +in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-operative kitchen and +its clientèle of intelligent members and patrons."</p> + +<p>People of all occupations became leading residents in virtue of taking +Pinney into their confidence, and "A Prominent Proletarian" achieved the +distinction of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of J. M. +Northwick's character among the working-classes. "The Consensus of +Public Feeling," in portraying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the +proprietary word he had seized, formed the subject of some dramatic +paragraphs; and the whole formed a rich and fit setting for the main +facts of Northwick's undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures +which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate.</p> + +<p>Pinney's masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could write only at that +moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the <i>Events</i> could publish +only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was +flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by +accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But +it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more +philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>The <i>Abstract</i> addressed a different class of readers, and aimed at a +different effect in its treatment of public affairs. We look upon +newspapers as having a sort of composite temperament, formed from the +temperaments of all the different men employed on them; but, as a matter +of fact, they each express the disposition and reflect the temperament +of one controlling spirit, which all the other dispositions and +temperaments yield to. This is so much the case that it is hard to +efface the influence of a strong mind from the journal it has shaped, +even when it is no longer actively present in it. A good many years +before the time of the Northwick defalcation, the <i>Events</i> had been in +the management of a journalist, once well-known in Boston, a certain +Bartley Hubbard, who had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who +had thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After he left it, the +owner tried several devices for elevating and reforming it, but failed, +partly because he was himself a man of no ideals but those of the +counting-room, and largely because the paper could not recover from the +strong slant given it without self-destruction. So the <i>Events</i> +continued what Bartley Hubbard had made it, and what the readers he had +called about it liked it to be: a journal without principles and without +convictions, but with interests only; a map of busy life, indeed, but +glaringly colored, with crude endeavors at picturesqueness, and with no +more truth to life than those railroad maps where the important centres +converge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, and leave +rival roads wriggling faintly about in uninhabited solitudes. In +Hubbard's time the <i>Abstract</i>, then the <i>Chronicle-Abstract</i>, was in +charge of the editor who had been his first friend on the Boston press, +and whom he finally quarreled with on a point which this friend +considered dishonorable to Hubbard. Ricker had not since left the paper, +and though he was called a crank by some of the more progressive and +reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal of a conscience in +journalism; he gave the Abstract a fixed character and it could no more +have changed than the <i>Events</i>, without self-destruction. The men under +him were not so many as Cæsar's soldiers, and that, perhaps, was the +reason why he knew not only their names but their qualities. When +Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which the detectives had +entrusted to him for provisional use, and asked to be assigned to the +business of working it up, Kicker consented, but he consented +reluctantly. He thought Maxwell was better for better things; he knew he +was a ravenous reader of philosophy and sociology, and he had been early +in the secret of his being a poet; it had since become an open secret +among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both honor and +dishonor.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't think you'd like to do it, Maxwell," said Ricker, kindly. +"It isn't in your line, is it? Better give it to some of the other +fellows."</p> + +<p>"It's more in my line than you suppose, Mr. Ricker," said the young +fellow. "It's a subject I've looked up a great deal lately. I once +thought"—he looked down bashfully—"of trying to write a play about a +defaulter, and I got together a good many facts about defalcation. +You've no idea how common it is; it's about the commonest fact of our +civilization."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Is that so?" asked Ricker with ironical deference to the bold +generalizer. "Who else is 'onto' this thing?"</p> + +<p>"Pinney, of the <i>Events</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, he's a dangerous rival, in some ways," said Ricker. "When it +comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for +him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker +pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his +forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and +Maxwell knew that he was authorized to do the work.</p> + +<p>He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the +affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had +expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he +worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at +theirs. He waited till the next morning to begin, however, for he was +too fagged after he came home from the Hilarys'; he rose early and got +himself a cup of tea over the gas-burner; before the house was awake he +was well on in his report. By nightfall he had finished it, and then he +carried it to Ricker. The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave +Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two +separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts +which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set +down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone +which the <i>Abstract</i> affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the +facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he +saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, +"Hello, young man! Who invited you to take the floor?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody. I found I couldn't embody my general knowledge of defalcation +in the report without impertinence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my +mind somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don't expect you to take +it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere."</p> + +<p>Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explanation. He went on reading +the manuscript, and when he ended, he took up the report again, and +compared it with the editorial in length. "If we printed these things as +they stand it would look like a case of the tail wagging the dog."</p> + +<p>Maxwell began again, "Oh, I didn't expect—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report +was at least physically inadequate."</p> + +<p>"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like +padding or faking, and I don't myself."</p> + +<p>Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now +handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do +you think you could weld these two things together?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know."</p> + +<p>"Suppose you try."</p> + +<p>"As editorial, or—"</p> + +<p>"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here."</p> + +<p>He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat +down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of +kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory +sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the +editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in +half an hour he handed the result to Ricker.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil +in his hand.</p> + +<p>Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his +article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his +pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire +paragraphs.</p> + +<p>When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it +now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I <i>must</i> +say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it."</p> + +<p>Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here, +young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying +them?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—"</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know. I know you <i>didn't</i>. Every one of them rang false. They were +there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But +by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking +them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you +ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you +didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish; +he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on: +"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have +killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have +suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out +of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique, +and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made +any secret of my belief that you have talent."</p> + +<p>"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The +surgeon's knife hurts though it cures.</p> + +<p>When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the +young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and +we're not going to have any report."</p> + +<p>"I told you it was good!"</p> + +<p>Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said, +"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue +pencil. It's perfectly dead."</p> + +<p>It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it +did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he +was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work, +and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was +not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its +symmetry and force, as he read and read it again.</p> + +<p>He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter, +and had accused the structure of society. There must be something +rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning +brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our +country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their +employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and +corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our +commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that +while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in +business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create +surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of +which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the +<i>Abstract</i> reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home, +and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was +universally believed that he had run away with other people's money +merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting +for his whereabouts.</p> + +<p>At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit +to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a +vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the +historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and +manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a +closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the +first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions +and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and +proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout +so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote +in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical +comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had +been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and +quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young +fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it +when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt +afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere +accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for +his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their +material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and +strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all +off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised +Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or +unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he +admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one +except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane +temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the +play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the +conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred +instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted +perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the +compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the +reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact +that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without +peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for +the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers, +cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the +uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They +were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune; +they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth; +they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not +belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans +they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace +the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to +make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some +shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand +their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada.</p> + +<p>In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than +to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those +cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to +observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon +the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker +employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of +almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black +pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was +adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the +leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the +listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife +and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on +his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and +in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to +come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same +crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this +soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there +nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected +to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to +business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned +that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle +for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had +opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. +The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the +same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape +the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to +consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do +without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a +paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without +such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the +semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank +socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing +sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative +shape.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h2> + + +<p>The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as they chose. When Matt +was at home, his mother and he were usually first; then his father came, +and Louise last. They took the <i>Events</i>, as many other people did, +because with all its faults it was a thorough newspaper; and they +maintained their self-respect by taking the <i>Abstract</i>. The morning that +the defalcation came out, Matt sent and got all the other papers, which +he had glanced through and talked over with his mother before his father +joined them at nine o'clock.</p> + +<p>Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of +his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's +Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it +was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers +were atrocious, but that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing +more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in that of the +directors, who gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of +publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were +fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against +his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had +suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised +the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, +even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these +blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called +him. He got through the various accounts in the various papers, by +broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these +terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he +came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over.</p> + +<p>"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final +effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered +from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort."</p> + +<p>"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to +pick yourself up."</p> + +<p>"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or +rather, at the copy of the <i>Abstract</i> which Matt was hiding behind, and +he said, "What have you got there, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most +uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!"</p> + +<p>"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently; +and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as +Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood; +its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly +refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so +enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the +writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading +was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined +Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such +cases.</p> + +<p>"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept +from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added, +"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told +them."</p> + +<p>"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't +be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them +shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers +are so bad—"</p> + +<p>"Not bad!" cried his father.</p> + +<p>"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They +probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about +the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used +to. But I wish I knew who did this <i>Abstract</i> article; I should like to +thank him."</p> + +<p>"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them +there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were +willing to have them come to us, no matter <i>what</i> happened?"</p> + +<p>"Louise and I both tried to do that," said her son, "when we were there +together; and when I reported to them after Wellwater, I told them again +and again what our wish was."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, "I am glad we have done everything we could. +At first I doubted the wisdom of your taking Louise to see them; but now +I'm satisfied that it was right. And I'm satisfied that your father did +right in getting that wretched creature the chance he abused."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Matt. "That was right. And I'm thoroughly glad he's out +of it. If he's still alive, I'm glad he's out of it."</p> + +<p>Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his various remorses and +misgivings, but now he broke out. "And I think you're talking abominable +nonsense, Matt. I didn't get Northwick given that chance to enable him +to escape the consequences of his rascality. Why shouldn't he be +punished for it?"</p> + +<p>"Because it wouldn't do the least good, to him or to any one else. It +wouldn't reform him, it wouldn't reform anything. Northwick isn't the +disease; he's merely the symptom. You can suppress him; but that won't +cure the disease. It's the whole social body that's sick, as this +article in the <i>Abstract</i> implies."</p> + +<p>"I don't see any such implication in it," his father angrily retorted. +"Your theory would form an excuse for the scoundrelism of every +scoundrel unhung. Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it +doesn't begin at home, with every man in it? I tell you, it would be a +very good thing for Northwick, and every rogue like him, if he could be +made serve his term in State's prison."</p> + +<p>The controversy raged a long time without departing from these lines of +argument on either side. Mrs. Hilary listened with the impatience women +feel at every absence from the personal ground, the only ground of +reality. When Matt had got so far from it as to be saying to his father, +"Then I understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for +his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the +same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in +upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and +wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, +who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw +that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman +always wants some one punished; some woman, first, or then some other +woman's men kindred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and Mrs. +Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk between her son and husband, +because she felt Matt to be doubly wrong.</p> + +<p>But when she spoke, her husband roared at her, "Don't interrupt, Sarah!" +and then he roared at Matt, "I tell you that the individual is not +concerned in the matter! I tell you that it is the interest, the +necessity of the community to punish A for his sins without regard to B, +and for my part, I shall leave no stone unturned till we have found +Northwick, dead or alive; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to +have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment." He shouted these +words out, and thumped the breakfast table so that the spoons clattered +in the cups, and Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was saying +just inside the door.</p> + +<p>"To see Mr. Hilary? A lady? Did she send her card?"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't give her name, ma'am; she said she didn't wish to, ma'am. +She wished to see Mr. Hilary just a moment in the reception-room."</p> + +<p>Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another bang with his fist, +but his wife succeeded in stopping him, with a repetition of Patrick's +message.</p> + +<p>"I won't see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're +in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are +claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your +sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a +brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other +letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's +little game has landed him in jail."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I admit that the A's had better suffer for their sins; but I doubt +if the punishment which a man gets against his will is the right kind of +suffering. If this man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear +the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would have been a good +thing for himself and for everybody else; it would have been a real +warning. But he ran away."</p> + +<p>"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry +come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of +your company."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, +as I've told you."</p> + +<p>"What <i>I</i> did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I +gave him a chance to make himself an honest man—"</p> + +<p>"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you <i>must</i> go and get rid of that woman, +at least; or let <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look +about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out +of the room.</p> + +<p>His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a +dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed," +before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For +the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the +apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with +the demand:</p> + +<p>"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with +her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could +say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other.</p> + +<p>"Is it true?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do +it. "Why, we hope—we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about +his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't <i>that</i>. It's worse than that. It's that other thing—that the +papers say—that he was a defaulter—dishonest. Is <i>that</i> true?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he +felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would +have been possible. "Those newspapers—confound them!—you know how they +get things all—You needn't mind what the papers say."</p> + +<p>"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when +he's—What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and +so I came to you—as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would +tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how +<i>good</i> he is! I—You know that he never wronged any one—that he +<i>couldn't</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to +me—quite right. How—how is your sister? You must stay, now—Louise +isn't down, yet—and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary +at the table. You must join us. She can assure you—Matt is quite +confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to +the—He—"</p> + +<p>Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, +and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she +dropped into a chair, and he had to stay.</p> + +<p>"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest +foundation for what the papers say this morning?"</p> + +<p>"How, foundation? My dear child—"</p> + +<p>"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?"</p> + +<p>"Well—well, there are always questions arising."</p> + +<p>"Is there any question of my father's accounts—his honesty?"</p> + +<p>"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much—want of +confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to +time."</p> + +<p>"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one +suspect him?"</p> + +<p>Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring +to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us—some of +the directors—have had doubts—"</p> + +<p>"Have <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"My dear girl—my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly +say, that when this examination—when the subject came up for discussion +at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father +should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed +that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the +girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his +part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing +for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, +and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm +is meant, and none is done—unless—unless the venture turns out +unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was +getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; +but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and +that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole +affair was very well put in the <i>Abstract</i>. Have you seen it? You must +see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. +Hilary—we have the paper—"</p> + +<p>Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has +been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?"</p> + +<p>"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point—"</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I can't say—I don't think he meant——He expected to restore it, of +course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he +thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the +company's funds in his private enterprises."</p> + +<p>"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the +room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise +coming down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms +around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a +woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and +sympathizes utterly with her.</p> + +<p>Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise."</p> + +<p>"No, no! You shan't go. I want you—you must stay with us, now. I know +Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report."</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another +report—don't you know it?—in the paper this morning." Louise tried to +look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And +your father has been saying my father is a thief."</p> + +<p>"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out.</p> + +<p>It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave +a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he +could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.</h2> + + +<p>The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to +Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any +sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and +accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, +that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to +work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to +establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could +shake.</p> + +<p>Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused +him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. +But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in +business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would +not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed +other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his +own, and could not; that was all.</p> + +<p>With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they +were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they +encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. +But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, +when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly +establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this +servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. +She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she +willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her +husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and +tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not +freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the +Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had +always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind.</p> + +<p>Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in +the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of +their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the +house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the +consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of +mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages +and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that +the next time she hoped to see him.</p> + +<p>One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her +winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, +upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she +failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with +urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second +attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of +Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity +which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. +Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished +himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the +directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband +forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief +in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused +him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the +railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came +upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced +before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick +had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in +seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was +now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', +those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty +leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to +his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and +exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But +Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. +He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing +to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive.</p> + +<p>"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to +the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance +conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, +in Boston, who has shielded and—and protected him from the start, +and—and right along. I don't know <i>why</i>; but if I was one of the +Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I <i>should</i>. I should make a point of +inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had +plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on."</p> + +<p>The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one +cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, +I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate +belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The +listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother +Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have +done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of +the soldier's monument."</p> + +<p>"I <i>never</i> wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr. +Gerrish retorted angrily.</p> + +<p>Putney's spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the +contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he +was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by +which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects +and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the +worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went +on, now: "Didn't you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl +they've got there in circus-clothes." They all laughed; Putney had a +different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier's monument +every time he spoke of it. "And it would suggest what those poor fellows +really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a +whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don't have to +be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a +necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the +courts if there were no rogues? We must <i>have</i> Northwicks. It's a pity +that the Northwicks should have families; but I don't blame the +Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure +to end in. I'm glad the roof can't be taken from over those women's +heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding +the property to them."</p> + +<p>"It's downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!" Gerrish +shouted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, it isn't, Billy. It's law. You must respect the law and the +rights of property. You'll be wanting the strikers to burn down the +shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You're getting awfully +incendiary, Billy."</p> + +<p>Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the +group, and there were many people in Hatboro', including most of the +women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with +Northwick's case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those +girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their +father's crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest +people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where +the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the +houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not +even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro' shops who +said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much +about them, and the noise of Northwick's misdeeds died first amid the +din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the +respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded +envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, +and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and +that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those +daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak +to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset +Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and +perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to +do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they +learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the +Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not +long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in +the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see +the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy +of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of +judging or of meting with the fullest measure.</p> + +<p>In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands +were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but +Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of +sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men +of Hatboro' a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded +as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, +but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be +expected of a man in Northwick's position; it happened every day +somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did +not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were +fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, +reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them +regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot +of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to +gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, +and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the +matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely +believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the +same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were +mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the +railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing +his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue's Rest, as Putney called the +Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick's +survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When +Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something +like, "Well, Joel, how's cremation, this morning?"</p> + +<p>"Just booming, Squire. That stock's coming up, right along. Bound to be +worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin', yet." This, or +something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he +asked, "Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They +say—paper does—that the reason the president hung off from making a +complaint was that he didn't rightly see how he could have the ashes +indicted. <i>He</i> believes in it, any way."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Putney, "the fathers of New England all died in the blessed +hope of infant damnation. But that didn't prove it."</p> + +<p>"That's something so, Squire. Guess you got me there," said Gates.</p> + +<p>"I can understand old Hilary's not wanting to push the thing, under the +circumstances, and I don't blame him. But the law must have its course. +Hilary's got his duty to do. <i>I</i> don't want to do it for him."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h2> + + +<p>Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he +was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the +persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was +really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as +any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the +tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But +still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was +all talked over in Hilary's family, where he was pitied and forgiven in +that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks +we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, +and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had +tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed +that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when +he did not talk of it, no one must mention it.</p> + +<p>Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly +because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. +He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business +repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the +defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the +wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed +that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a +public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that +Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice +but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could +not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick's escape.</p> + +<p>He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would +work Northwick's daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette +answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went +away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally +appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever +warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that +they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were +generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a +thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go +to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate +her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She +treated her own father's course as something above suspicion, as +something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have +returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to +her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day +his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home +where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it +from them.</p> + +<p>Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might +have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father's +regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and +she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the +sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression +in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The +sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their +forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like +compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her +will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked +and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve +themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited +wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her +mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; +she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom +the girl saw.</p> + +<p>Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did +not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of +truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the +sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started +to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go +to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take +Louise back to the station.</p> + +<p>It was a clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and +some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out +of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot.</p> + +<p>They talked at arm's length of the weather; and then Suzette said +abruptly, "Of course, Louise, your father will have to do what they want +him to, against—papa. I understand that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Sue—"</p> + +<p>"Don't! I should wish him to know that I wasn't stupid about it."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Louise adventured, "he would do anything to help you!"</p> + +<p>Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good feeling. "We don't +believe papa has done anything wrong, or anything he wouldn't have made +right if he had lived. We shall not let them take his property from us +if we can help it."</p> + +<p>"Of course not! I'm sure papa wouldn't wish you to."</p> + +<p>"It would be confessing that they were right, and we will <i>never</i> do +that. But I don't blame your father, and I want him to know it."</p> + +<p>Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it +seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had +never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a +misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people +would listen to reason.</p> + +<p>Sue released herself, and said, looking away from her friend: "It has +been hard. He is dead; but we haven't even been allowed to see him laid +in the grave."</p> + +<p>"Oh, perhaps," Louise sobbed out, "he <i>isn't</i> dead! So many people think +he isn't—"</p> + +<p>Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. "Do you think that if he +were alive he would leave us without a word—a sign?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! He couldn't be so cruel! I didn't mean that! He is dead, and I +shall always say it."</p> + +<p>They walked on without speaking, but at the gate Suzette offered to +return Louise's embrace. The tears stood in her eyes, as she said, "I +would like to send my love to your mother—if she would care for it."</p> + +<p>"Care for it!"</p> + +<p>"And tell your brother I can never forget what he did for us."</p> + +<p>"He can never forget that you let him do it," said Louise, with eager +gratitude. "He would have liked to come with me, if he hadn't thought it +might seem intrusive."</p> + +<p>"<i>Intrusive!</i> Your <i>brother</i>!" Sue spoke the words as if Matt were of +some superior order of beings.</p> + +<p>The intensity of feeling she put into her voice brought another gush of +tears into Louise's eyes. "Matt <i>is</i> good. And I will tell him what you +say. He will like to hear it." They looked down the road, but they could +not see Simpson coming yet. "Don't wait, Sue," she pleaded. "Do go back! +You will be all worn out."</p> + +<p>"No, I will stay till your carriage comes," said Suzette; and they +remained a moment silent together.</p> + +<p>Then Louise said, "Matt has got a new fad: a young man that writes on +the newspapers—"</p> + +<p>"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very +handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, +but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's +awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't +have to interview people any more—he came to interview papa, the first +time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got +some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what +he wrote about—about, your—troubles, Sue."</p> + +<p>"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel."</p> + +<p>"His wasn't cruel. It was in the <i>Abstract</i>."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered +unrelentingly.</p> + +<p>"Did he? I thought he only said <i>if</i> he did. I don't believe he said +more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad +health. But he's awfully clever."</p> + +<p>The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving +furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms +round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come +home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have +you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all +the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore +it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We +shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the +lodge here."</p> + +<p>Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would +be beautiful.</p> + +<p>"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can +move back into the house in the winter."</p> + +<p>This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, and she parted from her +friend in more comfort than she could have imagined when they met. She +carried her feeling of elation home with her, and was able to report Sue +in a state of almost smiling prosperity, and of perfect resignation, if +not acquiescence, in whatever the company should make Hilary do. She +figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of ally of the +Northwicks, and she was disappointed that he seemed to derive so little +pleasure from Sue's approval. But he generally approved of all that she +could remember to have said for him to the Northwicks, though he did not +show himself so appreciative of the situation as Matt. She told her +brother what Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to intrude +upon her, and she added that now he must certainly go to see her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h2> + + +<p>A day or two later, when Matt Hilary went to Hatboro', he found Wade in +his study at the church, and he lost no time in asking him, "Wade, what +do you know of the Miss Northwicks? Have you seen them lately?"</p> + +<p>Wade told him how little he had seen Miss Northwick, and how he had not +seen Suzette at all. Then Matt said, "I don't know why I asked you, +because I knew all this from Louise; she was up here the other day, and +they told her. What I am really trying to get at is, whether you know +anything more about how that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you +know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble about her father +came out?"</p> + +<p>Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, as usual, and it really +related so wholly to Suzette in the thoughts of both the young men, that +neither of them found it necessary to limit it explicitly.</p> + +<p>"I feel quite sure he hasn't," said Wade, "though I can't answer +positively."</p> + +<p>"Then that settles it!" Matt walked away to one of Wade's gothic +windows, and looked out. When he turned and came back to his friend, he +said, "If he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he would have +tried to see her at such a time, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine his not doing it. I never thought him a cad."</p> + +<p>"No, nor I."</p> + +<p>"He would have done it unless—unless that woman has some hold that +gives her command of him. He's shown great weakness, to say the least. +But I don't believe there's anything worse. What do the village people +believe?"</p> + +<p>"All sorts of lurid things, some of them; others believe that the affair +is neither more nor less than it appears to be. It's a thing that could +be just what it is in no other country in the world. It's the phase that +our civilization has contributed to the physiognomy of scandal, just as +the exile of the defaulter is the phase we have contributed to the +physiognomy of crime. Public opinion here isn't severe upon Mrs. +Wilmington or Mr. Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I'm not prepared to quarrel with it on that account," said Matt, with +the philosophical serenity which might easily be mistaken for irony in +him. "The book we get our religion from teaches leniency in the judgment +of others."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't teach cynical indifference," Wade suggested.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps that isn't what people feel," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Sometimes I dread to think how deeply our demoralization +goes in certain directions."</p> + +<p>Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and +Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal +ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further +considered in regard to her?"</p> + +<p>"In regard to Miss Sue Northwick? I don't know whether I quite +understand what you mean."</p> + +<p>"I mean, is it anybody's duty—yours or mine—to go to the man and find +him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make +an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's +holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he +could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be +everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely +more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman—What +do you think? He could be reparation, protection, safety, everything!"</p> + +<p>Wade shook his head. "It would be useless. Wilmington knows very well +that such a girl would never let him be anything to her now when he had +slighted her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in love with +her, which I doubt, he couldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose not," said Matt. After a little pause, he added, "Then I +must go myself."</p> + +<p>"Go, yourself? What do you mean?" Wade asked.</p> + +<p>"Some one must try to make them understand just how they are situated. I +don't think Louise did; I don't think she knew herself, how the legal +proceedings would affect them; and I think I'd better go and make it +perfectly clear."</p> + +<p>"I can imagine it won't be pleasant," said Wade.</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, "I don't expect that. But I inferred, from what she +said to Louise, that she would be willing to see me, and I think I had +better go."</p> + +<p>He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade said heartily, "Why, of +course. It's the only thing," and Matt went away with a face which was +cheerful with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure.</p> + +<p>He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, and coming forward +with the magnificent, haughty movement she had. As she caught sight of +him, she started, and then almost ran toward him. "Oh! <i>You</i>!" she said, +and she shrank back a little, and then put her hand impetuously out to +him.</p> + +<p>He took it in his two, and bubbled out, "Are you walking somewhere? Are +you well? Is your sister at home? Don't let me keep you! May I walk with +you?"</p> + +<p>Her smile clouded. "I'm only walking here in the avenue. How is Louise? +Did she get home safely? It was good of her to come here. It isn't the +place for a gay visit."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Northwick! It was good of you to see her. And we were very +happy—relieved—to find that you didn't feel aggrieved with any of <i>us</i> +for what must happen. And I hope you don't feel that I've taken an +advantage of your kindness in coming?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!"</p> + +<p>"I've just been to see Wade." Matt reddened consciously. "But it doesn't +seem quite fair to have met you where you had no choice but to receive +me!"</p> + +<p>"I walk here every morning," she returned, evasively. "I have nowhere +else. I never go out of the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, +sometimes. But I can't meet people."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Matt, with caressing sympathy; and his head swam in the +sudden desire to take her in his arms, and shelter her from that shame +and sorrow preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them that made +him ache with pity; he recognized, as he had not before, that they were +the translation in feminine terms, of her father's eyes. "Poor Wade," he +went on, without well knowing what he was saying, "told me that he—he +was very sorry he had not been able to see you—to do anything—"</p> + +<p>"What would have been the use? No one can do anything. We must bear our +burden; but we needn't add to it by seeing people who believe that—that +my father did wrong."</p> + +<p>Matt's breath almost left him. He perceived that the condition on which +she was bearing her sorrow was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it +could not have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, and it +required no effort in her to frame the theory of her father's innocence; +perhaps no other hypothesis was possible to her, and evidence had +nothing to do with the truth as she felt it.</p> + +<p>"The greatest comfort we have is that none of <i>you</i> believe it; and your +father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't +make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did. +It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that +was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I +would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is +going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have +the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I +thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his +kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us."</p> + +<p>Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust +and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her +right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her +through her love, her pride.</p> + +<p>She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her +freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our +father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every +one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be +punished as they deserve."</p> + +<p>She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the +impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it +all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last +an effort to enlighten her.</p> + +<p>"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't +be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his +solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't +allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage."</p> + +<p>She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't +cleared up?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid—I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly +understand."</p> + +<p>"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," +the girl returned.</p> + +<p>"But a lawyer—indeed you ought to see a lawyer!—could explain how such +a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case +against your father, but against <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Against us? What do they say we have done?"</p> + +<p>Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if +it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take +everything here that belonged to your father—everything on the place, +to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I +can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your +rights in the case."</p> + +<p>"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything +to us!"</p> + +<p>"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his +debts."</p> + +<p>"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have +paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed +of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one."</p> + +<p>Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was +essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure +effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much +was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to +wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred +from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have +been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face +seemed to stay her.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in +every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as +her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the +last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever +wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it."</p> + +<p>"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I <i>know</i> +what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any reassurance. I'm sorry +to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank +you very much for the kind advice you have given me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to +you—all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see +that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you +couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has +said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, +or—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we +understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I +think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, +and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained +staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She +suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say +that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you +have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these +words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then +whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h2> + + +<p>That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner +they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving +out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating +their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for +them."</p> + +<p>"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, passively. +Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her +why; each knew why the other cried.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, +that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell +some of the cattle."</p> + +<p>"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours."</p> + +<p>"Not ours?"</p> + +<p>"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over."</p> + +<p>Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which +they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to +speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when +a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, +and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, +they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but +they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning +such matters, and they did not know his name.</p> + +<p>Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept +from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister +went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and +let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had +left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given +her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said +that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely +enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces +were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her +death.</p> + +<p>Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely +village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her +heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her +mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of +his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed +that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time +she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came +to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, +and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her +against the right in her interest than a friendlier person.</p> + +<p>Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he +was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her. +"Can I see—see—see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some—some +law business?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He +led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and +placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for +her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch.</p> + +<p>"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave +him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know +what it means."</p> + +<p>"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit +against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot +sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares +him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his +debts."</p> + +<p>"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they +will suffer," cried Adeline.</p> + +<p>"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of +the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors."</p> + +<p>"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our +house—mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me +long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill.</p> + +<p>Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endorsement before +he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears +till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the +buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's +creditors can't touch them."</p> + +<p>The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair +and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, +gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?"</p> + +<p>"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers +together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an +anxiety she could not keep out of her voice.</p> + +<p>"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you +showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried +to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for +her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm not at all afraid—"</p> + +<p>"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and +plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it.</p> + +<p>Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it +seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without +help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, +early spring night.</p> + +<p>After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice +I <i>should</i> like to give you."</p> + +<p>"Well?" she quavered, meekly.</p> + +<p>"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this +case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply +involved—"</p> + +<p>"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline +hastened to put in, nervously.</p> + +<p>"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could +safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his +creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything +but the real estate."</p> + +<p>"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We +intended just to let it go."</p> + +<p>"That's the best way," Putney said.</p> + +<p>"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place +from us."</p> + +<p>"That was right, and I assure you they can't touch either. If you get +anxious, come to me again—as often as you like."</p> + +<p>"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let +him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the +house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, +with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if +she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested.</p> + +<p>"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better +act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think +just as you do, Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor.</p> + +<p>When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, +Ralph?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Ralph, what <i>do</i> you mean?"</p> + +<p>He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange +phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her +coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, +you know, Ellen."</p> + +<p>"Ralph!"</p> + +<p>"Oh. I may have spent my whole natural life in denouncing him as +demoralization incarnate, and a curse to the community, but I always +<i>liked</i> him, Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely waiting for +him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, to find out just how +<i>much</i> I loved him. I've no doubt but if we could have him among us +again, in the attractive garb of the State's-prison inmates, I should be +hand and glove with brother Northwick."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h2> + + +<p>Adeline's reasons for going to Putney in their trouble had to avail with +Suzette against the prejudice they had always felt towards him. In the +tangible and immediate pressure that now came upon them they were glad +to be guided by his counsel; they both believed it was dictated by a +knowledge of law and a respect for justice, and by no regard for them. +They had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely relied upon +it, as in some sort the advice of an honest and faithful enemy. They +remembered that the last evening he was with them, their father had +spoken leniently of Putney's infirmity, and admiringly of his wasted +ability. Now each step they took was at his suggestion. They left the +great house before the creditors were put in possession of the personal +property, and went to live in the porter's lodge at the gate of the +avenue, which they furnished with the few things they could claim for +their own out of their former belongings, and from the ready money +Suzette had remaining in her name at the bank. They abandoned everything +of value in the house they had left, even to their richer dresses and +their jewels: they preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw +that it saved them more than it cost them in their helpless pride.</p> + +<p>The Newtons continued in their quarters unmolested; the furniture was +theirs and the building belonged to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons +called them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to get going in +their new place, and Elbridge and she lived there for a few weeks with +them, till they said they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood +guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain them in the +spoliation that had to come. He locked the avenue gate against the +approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter +and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways +he rendered himself obstructive and inconvenient.</p> + +<p>His deference to the law was paid entirely through Putney, whose +smartness inspired Elbridge with a respect he felt for no other virtue +in man. Putney arranged with him to take the Northwick place and manage +it on shares for the Northwick girls; he got for him two of the old +horses which Elbridge wanted for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. +The rest of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round about, who had +fancies for costly cattle: the horses, good, bad and indifferent, were +sent to a sale-stable in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all +that was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the place, of its +former equipment, except the few farm implements, a cart or two, and an +ancient carryall that Putney bid off for Newton's use.</p> + +<p>Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house to let for a term +of years, and failing a permanent tenant before the season opened, he +rented it to an adventurous landlady, who proposed to fill it with +summer boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it monthly, in +advance, that would enable the Northwick girls to live on, in the +porter's lodge, without fear of want. For the future, Putney imagined a +scheme for selling off some of the land next the villas of South +Hatboro', in lots to suit purchasers. That summer sojourn had languished +several years in uncertainty of its own fortunes; but now, by a caprice +of the fashion which is sending people more and more to the country for +the spring and fall months, it was looking up decidedly. Property had so +rapidly appreciated there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot +for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the acre.</p> + +<p>In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of his clients, he had +to reconcile his practice with theories he had held concerning unearned +land-values; and he justified himself to his crony, Dr. Morrell, on the +ground that these might be justly taken from such rich and idle people +as wanted to spend the spring and fall at South Hatboro'. The more land +at a high price you could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro' +was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the town tax, the +better for the land that working men wanted to get a living on. In +helping the Northwick girls to keep all they could out of the clutches +of their father's creditors, he held that he was only defending their +rights; and any fight against a corporation was a kind of holy war. He +professed to be getting on very comfortably with his conscience, and he +promised that he would not let it worry other people. To Mr. Gerrish he +made excuses for taking charge of the affairs of two friendless women, +when he ought to have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their +father's sins, as any respectable man would. He asked Gerrish to +consider the sort of fellow he had always been, drinking up his own +substance, while Gerrish was thriftily devouring other people's houses, +and begged him to make allowance for him.</p> + +<p>The anomalous relation he held to the Northwicks afforded him so much +excitement and enjoyment, that he passed his devil's dividend, as he +called his quarterly spree. He kept straight longer than his fellow +citizens had known him to do for many years. But Putney was one of those +men who could not be credited by people generally with the highest +motives. He too often made a mock of what people generally regarded as +the highest motives; he puzzled and affronted them; and as none of his +most intimate friends could claim that he was respectable in the +ordinary sense of the word, people generally attributed interested +motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. Adeline Northwick profited +by a call she made upon Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to +sound him in regard to Putney's management of her affairs; and if the +doctor's powders had not so distinctly done her good, she might not have +been able to rely upon the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting +wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her sister.</p> + +<p>"He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes," she said.</p> + +<p>But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in everything, not so much +because she implicitly trusted him, as because she knew no one else to +trust. The kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the first of +their trouble, had, of course, become impossible to both the sisters. He +had, in fact, necessarily ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had +steadily rejected all the overtures Louise made her since they last met. +Louise wanted to come again to see her; but Sue evaded her proposals; at +last she would not answer her letters; and their friendship outwardly +ceased. Louise did not blame her; she accounted for her, and pitied and +forgave her; she said it was what she herself would do in Sue's place, +but probably if she had continued herself, she would not have done what +Sue did, even in Sue's place. She remembered Sue with a tender constancy +when she could no longer openly approach her without hurting more than +she helped; and before the day of the assignee's sale came, she thought +out a scheme which Wade carried into effect with Putney's help. Those +things of their own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bidden +off, and restored to them in such a way that it was not possible for +them to refuse to take back the dresses, the jewels, the particular +pieces of furniture which Louise associated with them.</p> + +<p>Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort; Adeline simply +exulted in getting her things again; Sue gave all hers into Adeline's +keeping, and bade her never let her see them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IB" id="IB"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick kept up the mental juggle he had used in getting himself away +from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he +was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. +He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his +destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he +let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset +Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in +the pretence that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, to look +after some business of his quarries. He verified his pretence by +speaking of it to the conductor who knew him; he was not a person to +take conductors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account to +the man for his apparent change of mind. He was at some trouble to make +it seem casual and insignificant, and he wondered if the conductor meant +to insinuate anything by saying in return that it was a pretty brisk day +to be knocking round much in a stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, +"It was, rather;" he watched the conductor to see if he should betray +any particular interest in the matter when he left him. But the +conductor went on punching the passengers' tickets, and seemed to forget +Northwick as soon as he left him. At the next station, Northwick +followed him out on the platform to find if he sent any telegram off. +When he had once given way to this anxiety, which he knew to be +perfectly stupid and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He +took his bag with him each time he left the car, and he meant not to go +back if he saw the conductor telegraphing. It was intensely cold, and in +spite of the fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost +gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, when it stopped and +started, as if it were crunching along on a bed of dry snow; the noises +of the wheels seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and then +Northwick held his breath for fear one of them might be broken. He had a +dread of accident such as he had never felt before; his life had never +seemed so valuable to him as now; he reflected that it was so because it +was to be devoted now to retrieving the past in a new field under new +conditions. His life, in this view, was not his own; it was a precious +trust which he held for others, first for his children, and then for +those whom he was finally to save from loss by the miscarriage of his +enterprises. He justified himself anew in what he was intending; it +presented itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he +was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was a defaulter who +had used the money in his charge, and tampered with the record so as to +cover up the fact, and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off +a large sum of money that was not morally his. At one of the stations +where he got out to see whether the conductor was telegraphing, he +noticed the conductor eyeing his bag curiously; and he knew that he +believed there was money in it. Northwick felt a thrill of gratified +cunning in realizing how mistaken the conductor was; but he was willing +the fellow should think he was carrying up money to pay off his quarry +hands.</p> + +<p>He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this conductor would leave +the train, and it would continue northward in the charge of another man; +he seldom went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new conductor +would hardly know him. He meant to go on to Blackbrook Junction, and +take the New England Central there for Montreal; but he saw the +conductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junction, and it +suddenly occurred to him that he must not go to Montreal by a route so +direct that any absconding defaulter would be expected to take it. He +had not the least proof that the conductor's dispatch had anything to do +with him; but he could not help acting as if it had. He said good-day to +the conductor as he passed him, and he went out of the station, with his +bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched till he saw the +conductor go off in another direction, and then he came back, and got +aboard the train just as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that +he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness of stealth was +such that he felt as if he were followed, and that he must act so as to +baffle and mislead pursuit.</p> + +<p>At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no +one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, +and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He +perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could +not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there +was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely +anywhere, by any road.</p> + +<p>But he had now let the New England Central train leave without him, and +it only remained for him to push on to Wellwater, where he hoped to +connect with the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Dominion +road. He remembered that this train divided at Wellwater, and certain +cars ran direct to Quebec, up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He +meant to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned whether he +had better not go straight on from Wellwater; when he recalled the long, +all-night ride without a sleeper, which he had once made on that route +many summers before, he said to himself that in his shaken condition, he +must not run the risk of such a hardship. If he were to get sick from +it, or die, it would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now made +him think of what Hilary had said; Hilary who had called him a thief. He +would show Hilary whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he would +make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary retracting and apologizing +in the presence of the whole Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and +Northwick forgave him, while it was also passing through his mind that +he must reduce the risks of railroad accident to a minimum, by +shortening the time. They reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, +by reducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the safest. If +he could get to Montreal from Wellwater in four or five hours, when it +would take him twelve hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty +to go to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of danger of +every kind. He must not even fatigue himself too much; and he decided to +telegraph on to Wellwater, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to +Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the ordinary car, and he had +found it very rough.</p> + +<p>It suddenly occurred to him that he must now assume a false name; and he +reflected that he must take one that sounded like his own, or else he +would not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose Warwick, and he +kept saying it over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the +station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the +Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his +own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he +congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of +something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did +not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like +something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. +The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if +Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the +other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his +love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, +and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the +demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his +children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint +of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight +of himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face betrayed +nothing; it looked, as it always did, like the face of a kindly, +respectable man, a financially reliable face, the face of a leading +citizen. He gathered courage and strength from it to put away the +remorse that was devouring him. If that was the way he looked that was +the way he must be; and he could only be leaving those so dear to him +for some good purpose. He recalled that his purpose was to clear the +name they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it; to rehabilitate +himself; to secure his creditors from final loss. This was a good +purpose, the best purpose that a man in his place could have; he +recollected that he was to be careful of his life and health, because he +had dedicated himself to this purpose.</p> + +<p>He determined to keep this purpose steadily in mind, not to lose thought +of it for an instant; it was his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized +him; a doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew that he had +signed that dispatch Northwick and not Warwick; he saw just how his +signature looked on the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now +he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending any dispatch. He +cursed himself under his breath, and in the same breath he humbly prayed +to God for some way of escape. His terror made it certain to him that he +would be arrested as soon as he reached Wellwater. That would be the +next stop, the conductor told him, when he halted him with the question +on his way through the cars. The conductor said they were behind time, +and Northwick knew by the frantic pull of the train that they were +running to make up the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the +car; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In his prayer he +bargained with God that if He would let him escape, he would give every +thought, every breath to making up the loss of his creditors; he half +promised to return the money he was carrying away, and trust to his own +powers, his business talent in a new field, to retrieve himself. He +resolved to hide himself as soon as he reached Wellwater; it would be +dark, and he hoped that by this understanding with Providence he could +elude the officer in getting out of the car. But if there were two, one +at each end of the car?</p> + +<p>There was none, and Northwick walked away from the station with the +other passengers, who were going to the hotel near the station for +supper. In the dim light of the failing day and the village lamps, he +saw with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the strong, still +cold of the winterland he had been journeying into. The white drifts +were everywhere; the vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from +the hotel like a sea of snow; on its edge lay the excursion steamer in +which Northwick had one summer made the tour of the lake with his +family, long ago.</p> + +<p>He was only a few miles from the Canadian frontier; with a rebound from +his anxiety, he now exulted in the safety he had already experienced. He +remained tranquilly eating after the departure of the Montreal train was +cried; and when he was left almost alone, the head-waiter came to him +and said, "Your train's just going, sir."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," he answered, "I'm going out on the Quebec line." He wanted +to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were +made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at +the next station, which was still within the American border, on that +line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half +an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch +asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in +starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and +waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long +all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to +Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his +journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal +with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any +possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had +prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, +with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every +faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that +perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he +was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed +his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer +agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him; +and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but +should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent +of others in the effort to retrieve his losses.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIB" id="IIB"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their +talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an +interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying +personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made +themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers. +They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends +were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked +freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and +they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of +them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the +Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in +Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter shocked +Northwick; it seemed immoral; he remembered that though he might seem a +defaulter, he was a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But he +listened eagerly; if their enterprise were one that approved itself to +his judgment, the chance of their discussing it before him might be a +leading of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence +had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier +safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the +agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to +study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed +first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was +the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. Gold had always +been found there, but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine it +than it was worth; but with the application of his new process of +working up the tailings, there was no doubt of the result. It was simply +wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.</p> + +<p>Northwick had heard that song before; and he fell back in his seat, with +a smile which was perhaps too cynical for a partner of Providence, but +which was natural in a man of his experience. He knew something about +processes to utilize the tailings of gold mines which would not +otherwise pay for working; he had paid enough for his knowledge: so much +that if he still had the purchase-money he need not be going into exile +now, and beginning life under a false name, in a strange land.</p> + +<p>By and by he found himself listening again, and he heard the Canadian +saying, "And there's timber enough on the tract to pay twice over what +it will cost, even if the mine wasn't worth a penny."</p> + +<p>"Well, we might go down and see the timber, any way," said one of the +party who had not yet spoken much. "And then we could take a look at +Markham's soap-mine, too. Unless," he added, "you had to tunnel under a +hundred feet of snow to get at it. A good deal like diggin' the north +pole up by the roots, wouldn't it be?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of +an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties +that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the +autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you +could in the early part of January, when I was down there."</p> + +<p>"The hole hadn't run away?"</p> + +<p>"No. It was just where we left it."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's encouragin'. But I say, Markham, how do you get down there +in the winter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. Lots of fellows in the +lumber trade do it all winter long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne's, +about twenty miles below Quebec—from Quebec you have your choice of +train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a clean thing of it, and do it all +by sleigh. I take it by easy stages, and so I take the long route: there +is a short cut, but the stops are far between. You make your twenty +miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day; eighteen to St. Joachim, the +next; thirty-nine to Baie St. Paul, the next; twenty to Malbaie, the +next; then forty to Tadoussac; then eighteen to Rivière Marguerite. You +can do something every day at that rate, even in the new snow; but on +the ice of the Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there's a pull of sixty miles; +you're at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you know it. Good +feed, and good beds, all along. You wrap up, and you don't mind. Of +course," Markham concluded, "it isn't the climate of Stanstead," as if +the climate of Stanstead were something like that of St. Augustine.</p> + +<p>"Well, it sounds a mere bagatelle," said the more talkative of the other +two, "but it takes a week of steady travel."</p> + +<p>"What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Golconda's yours when you get +there?" said Markham. "Why, Watkins, the young spruce and poplar alone +on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the whole. A +pulp-mill, which you could knock together for a few shillings, on one of +those magnificent water-powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a +single summer."</p> + +<p>"And what would it do in the winter when your magnificent water-power +was restin'?"</p> + +<p>"Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set an example of industry to +all the lazy <i>habitans</i> in the country. You could get your fuel for the +cost of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar in under your +furnace, and have it come out paper pulp at the other end of the mill."</p> + +<p>Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud haw-haws at Markham's +drolling, and Watkins said, "I say, Markham, weren't you born on the +other side of the line?"</p> + +<p>"No. But my father was; and I wish he'd stayed there till I came. Then +I'd be going round with all the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for +a chance to put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out the +knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging you not to slap your +everlasting fortune in the face."</p> + +<p>They now all roared together again, and at Sherbrooke they changed cars.</p> + +<p>Northwick had to change too, but he did not try to get into the same car +with them. He wanted to think, to elaborate in his own mind the +suggestion for his immediate and remoter future which he had got from +their talk; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly he dreaded the +misgiving, that might come from hearing more of their talk. He thought +he knew, now, just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be +swerved from it.</p> + +<p>He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. He bore very well the +long waits that he had to make both at Sherbrooke and Richmond; but when +the train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled himself in +his seat with a solider content than he had felt before, and gave +himself up to the pleasure of shaping the future, that was so obediently +plastic in his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at the end of +the car with fuel, and Northwick did not suffer from the cold that +strengthened and deepened with the passing night outside, though he was +not overcoated and booted for any such temperature as his +fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were all Canadians, and they +talked now and then in their broad-vowelled French, but their voices +were low, and they came and went quietly at the country stations. The +car was old and worn, and badly hung; but in spite of all, Northwick +drowsed in the fervor of the glowing stove, and towards morning he fell +into a long and dreamless sleep.</p> + +<p>He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that surprised him, and found +the train pulling into the station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like +a soft lamp through the thick frost on the car-window; when he emerged, +he found it a cloudless splendor on a world of snow. The vast landscape, +which he had seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty rivers +to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue distance, showed rounded +and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid +the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the +currents below. The villages of the <i>habitans</i> sparkled from tinned roof +and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a +thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping +swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and +speckled the expanse of glistening white with single figures and groups +of men and horses.</p> + +<p>It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a thrill of boyish +delight. He wondered for a moment why he had never come to Quebec in +winter before, and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut-faced +driver of one of the carrioles which waited outside the station to take +the passengers across the river, and tossed his bag into the bottom of +the little sledge. He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and +the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over the space of ice +which was kept clear of snow by diligent sweeping with fir-tree tops, +and then up the steep incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were +roadways from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels of +thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow; and the foot passengers, muffled to +the eyes against the morning cold, came and went among the vehicles in +the middle of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, to +keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight snow that slipped here +and there from the steep tin roofs.</p> + +<p>Northwick's unreasoned gladness grew with each impression of the beauty +and novelty. It quickened associations of his earliest days, and of the +winter among his native hills. He felt that life could be very pleasant +in this latitude; he relinquished the notion he had cherished at times +of going to South America with his family in case he should finally fail +to arrange with the company for his safe return home; he forecast a +future in Quebec where he could build a new home for his children, among +scenes that need not be all so alien. This did not move him from his +fixed intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the courage of +indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was bent upon the scheme he had +in mind, and as soon as he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare +for it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIIB" id="IIIB"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>The inn he had chosen was one which he remembered, from former visits to +Quebec, as having seemed a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. +He got a room, and went to it long enough to count the money he had with +him, and find it safe. Then he took one of the notes from the others, +and went to a broker's to get it changed.</p> + +<p>The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but he concerned himself +only with the genuineness of the greenback, and after a keen glance at +Northwick's unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars in +Canadian bills. "We used to make your countrymen give us something +over," he said with a smile in recognition of Northwick's nationality.</p> + +<p>"Yes; that's all changed, now," returned Northwick. "Do I look so very +American?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know that," said the broker, with an airy English +inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all +wear fur caps in such weather."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's a good idea," said Northwick. He spoke easily, but with a +nether torment of longing to look at the newspaper lying open on the +counter. He could see that it was the morning paper; there might be +something about him in it. The thought turned him faint; but he knew +that if the paper happened to have anything about him in it, any rumor +of his offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear it. He +could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to the self he had put behind +him, but he could not bear anything less. The papers seemed to thrust +themselves upon him; newsboys followed him up in the street with them; +he saw them in all the shops, where he went for the fur cap and fur +overcoat he bought, for the underclothing and changes of garments that +he had to provide; for the belt he got to put his money in. This great +sum, which he dared not bank, must be carried about with him; it must +not leave him night or day; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and +worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt was really for gold, +but the forty-two thousand-dollar notes, which were not a great bulk, +would easily go into it.</p> + +<p>He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, and put the belt on. +Then he felt easier, and he looked up the landlord to ask about the +route he wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it was one very +commonly travelled by lumber merchants going down into the woods to look +after their logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; but the +landlord said it was just as well to go by train to St. Anne, and save +that much sleighing; you would get enough of it then. Northwick thought +so too, and after the early dinner they gave him he took the cars for +St. Anne.</p> + +<p>He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and strong. He thought he +might get a nap on the way; but he remained vividly awake; and even that +night he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of his mind, as +if it were something separate from him, and were struggling to get +beyond the control of his will. The hotel in the little native village +was very good in its way; he had an excellent supper and an easy bed; +but he slept brokenly, and he was awake long before the early breakfast +which he had ordered for his start next day. The landlord wished to +persuade him that there was no need of such great haste; it was only +eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he was to make his first stop, and +the road was so good that he would get there in a few hours. He had +better stop and visit the church, and see the sick people's offerings, +which they left there every year, in gratitude to the saint for healing +them of their maladies. The landlord said it was a pity he could not +come some time at the season of the pilgrimage; his countrymen often +came then. Northwick perceived that in spite of his fur cap and +overcoat, and his great Canadian boots, he was easily recognizable for +an American to this man, though he could not definitely decide whether +his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell whether it was in +earnest or in irony that he invited him to try St. Anne for any trouble +he happened to be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, while +his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of hanging that money-belt at +her altar, and so easing himself of all his pains. He grotesquely +imagined the American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage to St. +Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral disease to her: forged notes, +bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part +of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the +gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for +himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his +own way and at his own time.</p> + +<p>In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in some ways, Northwick +found him a kindly young fellow. He treated Northwick with a young +fellow's comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped him forget +the hurts to his respectability which rankled so when he remembered +them. He explained the difference between the two routes from Malbaie +on, and advised him to take the longer, which lay through a more settled +district, where he would be safer in case of any mischance. But if he +liked to take the shorter, he told him there were good <i>campes</i>, or +log-house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he would find +excellent meals and beds, and be well cared for by people who kept them +in the winter for travellers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that +route, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were +carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers.</p> + +<p>This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in +government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he +would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a +tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to +Chicoutimi with him.</p> + +<p>After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on +runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and +back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air +which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole, +sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light +shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at +noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after +dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow +to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the +name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was +silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man +might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his +belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within +his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began, +except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin' +freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and +which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally +shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at +regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of +a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He +wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not +let him stop; he had to keep tolling.</p> + +<p>Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was +drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the +death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched +himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go +again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric +lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn +Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like +barking, and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of the +habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled +with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in +a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion.</p> + +<p>Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate +and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength +away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the +greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue +stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but +it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from +the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two +rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he +had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand +much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them +speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his +being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild +and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and +children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it.</p> + +<p>The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he +went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the +younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the +guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his +host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down +before the fire with the carriole driver.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IVB" id="IVB"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself; +and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, +but he got through without much interruption. The following day, +however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the +twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the +journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that +first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt +well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed +to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm +stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first +his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of +a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not +tell where he was going, or why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact +that he had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond pursuit, +but beyond the temptation to return voluntarily and give himself up. He +knew, in those days before the treaty, that he was safe from +extradition; but he feared that if a detective approached he would yield +to him, and go back, especially as he could not always keep before +himself the reasons for not going back. When from time to time these +reasons escaped him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in +case he went home and restored to the company the money he had brought +away. It needed a voluntary operation of logic to prove that this +partial restitution would not avail; that he would be arrested, and +convicted. He would not be allowed to go on living with his children in +his own house. He would be taken from them, and put in prison.</p> + +<p>He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wakeful night. His driver +wished to break the forty mile journey midway, but Northwick would not +consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got +through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because +it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the +river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, +and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was +twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been +nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its +summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier now than it seemed in the +summer. The lamps shone from the windows where he had seen them then, +when he walked about a little just after supper; the village store had a +group of <i>habitans</i> and half-breeds about its stove, and there was as +much show of life in the streets as there used to be at the same hour +and season in the little White Mountain village where his boyhood was +passed. It did not seem so bad; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live +there well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He imagined +bringing his family there after his mills had got successfully going; +then probably other people from the outside world would be living there.</p> + +<p>He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep well, and in the +night he was feverish. He thought how horrible it would be if he were to +fall sick there; he might die before he could get word to his children +and they reach him. He thought of going back to Quebec, and sailing for +Europe, and having his children join him there. They could sell the +place at Hatboro', and with what it brought, and with what he had, they +could live comfortably in some cheap country which had no extradition +treaty with the United States. He remembered reading of a defaulter who +went to a little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, and was +safe there; he found the President treading his own grape vats; and it +cost nothing to live there, though it was dull, and the exile became so +homesick that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered that he had +not thought of that place before; then he reflected that no ships could +make their way from Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He +would be arrested if he left any American port, or arrested as soon as +he reached England. He remembered the advertisement of a line of +steamships between Quebec and Brazil; he must wait for the St. Lawrence +to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morning must go back to Quebec.</p> + +<p>But in the morning he felt so much better that he decided to keep on to +Chicoutimi. He could not bear the thought of being found out by +detectives at Quebec, and by reporters who would fill the press with +paragraphs about him. He must die to the world, to his family, before he +could hope to revisit either.</p> + +<p>The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the glare of the snow hurt +his eyes. He went to the store to get some glasses to protect them, and +he bought some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he should be +wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha Bay, but the road on the +frozen river was good, and he could do a long stretch of it. From +Rivière Marguerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, and the +going would be smooth and easy.</p> + +<p>All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it in that far-off summer. +The tops of the interminable solitudes that walled the river in on both +sides appeared lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, but +doubtless they had grown beyond their real height in his memory. They +had lost the mystery of the summer aspect when they were dimmed with +rain or swathed in mist; all their outlines were in plain sight, and the +forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that +unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their +stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of +white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a +fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the +photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, +and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white +between the ranges of extinct volcanoes.</p> + +<p>At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for the snow to lodge +on; then their rocky faces shone harsh and stern; and sometimes the +springs that gushed from them in summer were frozen in long streams of +ice, like the tears bursting from the source of some Titanic grief. +These monstrous icicles, blearing the visage of the rock, which he +figured as nothing but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he +nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole in front of the +great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and silently pointed at them with his +whip. He had no need to name them, the fugitive would have known them in +another planet. It was growing late; the lonely day was waning to the +lonely night. While they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from +the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and repeated itself in the +echo that wandered from depth to depth of the frozen wilderness, and +seemed to die wailing away at the point where it first tore the silence.</p> + +<p>Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point or a recess where +a saw-mill stood, with a few log houses about it, and with signs of +human life in the smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their +chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the doorways as the +carriole passed. At the next of these beyond the capes, the driver +proposed to stop and pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt +worn out by his day's journey; his nerves were spent as if by a lateral +pressure of the lifeless desert he had been travelling through, and by +the stress of his thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran +back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By this time, long +before this time, they must be wild with anxiety about him; by this time +their shame must have come to poison their grief. He realized it all, +and he realized that he could not, must not help them. He must not go +back to them if ever he was to live for them again. But at last he asked +why he should live, why he should not die. There was laudanum enough in +that bottle to kill him.</p> + +<p>As he walked up from the carriole at the river's edge to the door of the +saw-miller's cabin, he drew the cork of the vial, and poured out the +poison; it followed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on the +snow, that the miller's dog smelt at and turned from in offence. That +night he could not sleep again; toward morning, when all the house was +snoring, he gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. He heard +the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in their dreams; then they +were still, and he fell into a deep sleep.</p> + +<p>They let him sleep late; and he had a dream of himself, which must have +been caused by the nascent consciousness of the going and coming around +him. People were talking of him, and one said how old he was; and +another looked at his long, white beard which flowed down over the +blanket as far as his waist. He told them that he wore it so that they +should not know him when he got home; and he showed them how he could +take it off and put it on at pleasure. He started awake, and found his +carriole driver standing over him.</p> + +<p>"You got you' sleep hout, no?"</p> + +<p>"What time is it?" said Northwick, stupidly, scanning the man to make +sure that it was he, and waiting for a full sense of the situation to +reach him.</p> + +<p>"Nine o'clock," said the man, and he turned away.</p> + +<p>Northwick got up, and found the place empty of the men and dogs. A +woman, who looked like a half-breed, brought him his breakfast of fried +venison and bean-coffee; her little one held by her skirt, and stared at +him. He thought of Elbridge's baby that he had seen die. It seemed ages +ago. He offered the child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its +mother's dress. The driver said, "'E do'n' know what money is, yet," but +the mother seemed to know; she showed her teeth, and took it for the +child. Northwick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it was not +to know what money was; it had never occurred to him before; he asked +himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to +pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have +no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of +childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for +his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You +could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and +supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went +out to see Elbridge's sick boy; when Elbridge left the dead child to +drive him to the station. It was something else that came in there; but +that thing and money were the same, after all: he had proved his love +for his children by making money for them; if he had not loved them so +much he would not have tried to get so much money, and he would not have +been where he was.</p> + +<p>His mind fought away from his control, as the sledge slipped along over +the frozen river again. It was very cold, but the full sun on his head +afflicted him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up from the +snow, too. His head felt imponderable; and yet he could not hold it up. +It was always sinking forward; and he woke from naps without being sure +that he had been asleep.</p> + +<p>He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi; but his start was so +late that it seemed to him as if they would never get to Haha Bay. When +they arrived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress thither faded +away; it was as if the starting and stopping were one, or contained in +the same impulse. It might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to +Chicoutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the beginning; the +wish could involve its accomplishment only at the end. He said to +himself that this was unreasonable; it was a poor rule that would not +work both ways.</p> + +<p>This ran through his mind in the presence of the old man who bustled out +of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger +than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered +curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in +birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which +branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his +left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face +was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition +went through Northwick. He knew the man for the talkative Canadian who +had taken him and his wife a drive over the hills around the bay, in the +morning, when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with them at +this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass of milk. Northwick's wife +liked the man, and said she would like to live in such a house in such a +place, and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her was so +terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were there; but Northwick said +to himself that he must not let the man know that he had ever seen him +before. The resolution cost him something, for he felt so broken and +weak that he would have liked to claim his kindness as an old +acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals +for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha +Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former +meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently +knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there +before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me +'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English +with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but +it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They +are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live. +No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for +you, sir."</p> + +<p>Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But +hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two +rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always +ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick +in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' +'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to +his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right."</p> + +<p>"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the +same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to +Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would +like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird—<i>Oiseau</i>? +You have been here before?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and +gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed +that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There +was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden, +with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was +the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the +frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now.</p> + +<p>He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there, +and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak; +and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the +sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his grave, and be done with +it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VB" id="VB"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the +chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I +wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff +and on. I am born at Quebec"—in his tremulous inattention, Northwick +was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years +before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon +him—"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the +Americans know me. I used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots +of bear in the bush when I first came; now they get pretty scarce. I +have the best moose-dog. But I don't care much for the hunting now; I am +too hold. That's a fact. I am sixty; and forty winters I 'ave pass at +Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I +don't hear much ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here in +the summer; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chicoutimi; and more gold in +the 'ills."</p> + +<p>He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he +knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at +once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real +motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, +and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart +from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose +he was there to look into the question of the mines; but there was +something else that seemed to go with that intention; something like a +wish to get away from the past so remotely and so completely that no +rumor of it should reach him till he was willing to let it; to be absent +from all who had known him so long that no one of them would know him if +he saw him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but to grow a +beard that should effectually disguise him. He recalled how he had +looked with that long beard in his dream; he put his hand to his chin +and felt the eight days' stubble there, and he wondered how much time it +would take to grow such a beard.</p> + +<p>Bird went on talking. "I know that Chicoutimi Company. I told Markham +about the gold when he was here for bear. He is smart; but he don't know +heverything. You think he can make it pay with that invention? I doubt, +me. There is one place in those 'ills," and Bird came closer to +Northwick, and dropped his voice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with +the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you +want capital."</p> + +<p>He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which +he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove +hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny +thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you +can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the +ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it +had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe. +Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. +But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is +to be 'omesick."</p> + +<p>The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his +consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with +self-pity.</p> + +<p>"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more. +I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down +those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep +the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead! +Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some +capital—ten, fifteen thousand dollars—I would hopen that mine, and +take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by, +Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want +nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough +there to pay, and I can hire those <i>habitans</i> cheap, like dirt. What is +their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is +the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time."</p> + +<p>Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed +aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps, +and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He +knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and +then he would not have to go.</p> + +<p>"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted."</p> + +<p>"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe +and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed.</p> + +<p>"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. He +was very gentle and light-handed, like a woman; but Northwick felt one +touch on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help.</p> + +<p>He let his host carry his two bags into the next room for him; the bag +that he had brought with the few things from home, when he pretended +that he was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that he had got in +Quebec to hold the things he had to buy there. When Bird set them down +beside his bed he could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed +it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the bed, and pulled +the bearskin robe that he found on it up over him, and fell into a thin +sleep, that was not so different from his dim waking that he was sure it +had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp.</p> + +<p>"Been 'aving a little nap?" he asked, looking gayly down on Northwick's +bewildered face. "Well, that is all right! We have supper, now, pretty +soon. You hungry? Well, in a 'alf-hour."</p> + +<p>He went out again, and Northwick, after some efforts, made out to rise. +His skull felt sore, and his arms as if they had been beaten with hard +blows. But after he had bathed his face and hands in the warm water Bird +had brought with the lamp, he found himself better, though he was still +wrapped in that cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or +waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, white walls: the Seven +Stations of the Cross, in colored prints; a lithograph of Indians +burning a Jesuit priest. Over the bed's head hung a chromo of Our Lady, +with seven swords piercing her heart; beside the bed was a Parian +crucifix, with the figure of Christ writhing on it.</p> + +<p>These things made Northwick feel very far and strange. His simple and +unimaginative nature could in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, +this alien language. He heard soft voices of women in the next room, the +first that he had heard since he last heard his daughters'. A girl's +voice singing was severed by a door that closed and then opened to let +it be heard a few notes more, and again closed.</p> + +<p>But he found Bird still alone in the next room when he returned to it. +"Well, now, we go to supper as soon as Father Étienne comes. He is our +curate—our minister—here. And he eats with me when he heat anywhere. I +tell 'im 'e hought to have my appetite, if he wants to keep up his +spiritual strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, no? Well, +you let that foundation tumble hin, and then where you got you' soul, +heigh? But Father Étienne speaks very good English. Heducate at Rome. I +am the only other educated man at Haha Bay. You don't 'appen to have +some papers in you' bag? French? English? It is the same!"</p> + +<p>"Papers? No!" said Northwick, with horror and suspicion. "What is in the +papers?"</p> + +<p>"That is what I like to find hout," said Bird, spreading his hands with +a shrug.</p> + +<p>The outer door opened, and a young man in a priest's long robe came in. +Bird introduced his guest, and Northwick shook hands with the priest, +who had a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, like a +girl's. He might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine; he had the spare +figure of a man under thirty who leads an active life; his features were +refined by study and the thought of others. When he smiled the innocence +of his face was more than girlish, it was childlike. Points of light +danced in his large, soft, dark eyes; an effect of trusting, alluring +kindness came from his whole radiant visage.</p> + +<p>Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He shrank away from the +priest, and at the table he left the talk to him and his host. They +supped in a room opening into a sort of wing; beyond it was a small +kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the dishes, and where that +girl whom he heard singing kept trilling away as if she were excited, +like a canary, by the sound of the frying meat.</p> + +<p>Bird said, by way of introduction, that the woman was his niece; but he +did not waste time on her. He began to talk up his conjecture as to +Northwick's business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained fact. +Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him to it. They discussed the +question of gold in the hills, which the young father treated as an old +story of faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor of fresh +excitement. The priest spoke of the poor return from the mines at +Chaudière, but Bird claimed that it was different here. Northwick did +not say anything: he listened and watched them, as if they were a pair +of confidence-men trying to work him. The priest seemed to be anxious to +get the question off the personal ground into the region of the +abstract, and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, a ruse +to throw him from his guard, and commit him to something. He made up his +mind to get away as early as he could in the morning; he did not think +it was a safe place.</p> + +<p>"Very well!" the priest cried, at one point. "Suppose you had the +capital you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is +there, and you were rich. What would you do?"</p> + +<p>"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay +to-morrow morning!"</p> + +<p>"And where would you go?"</p> + +<p>"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!"</p> + +<p>The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned +with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men +in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In +what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into +himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed.</p> + +<p>"Where do they live?"</p> + +<p>Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as +if to restrain a burst of information from him.</p> + +<p>"I suppose most of them live in New York."</p> + +<p>"All the time?"</p> + +<p>"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar +Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and +they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their +yachts."</p> + +<p>"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea. +My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the +advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again +in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him +lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen +it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a +moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those +rich people in Europe, by inheritance?"</p> + +<p>"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used +to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They +made it."</p> + +<p>"How? Excuse me!"</p> + +<p>"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the +rise in land-values."</p> + +<p>"What causes the land to rise in value?"</p> + +<p>"The demand for it. The necessity."</p> + +<p>"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man +loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are +the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are +miserable. Is it so?"</p> + +<p>Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these +questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion +of Bird than as an expression of his own opinions; but in his dazed +intelligence he could not find the answers.</p> + +<p>Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other +world—an angel—a mere imbecile—about business!" The priest threw +himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful +teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few +thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish +work to every man in Haha Bay—to hundreds. Are the miners more +miserable than those <i>habitans</i>, eh?"</p> + +<p>"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At +least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out. +What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile.</p> + +<p>"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Père +Étienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to +Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal—"</p> + +<p>"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling +very well—I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of +what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at +Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a +third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both.</p> + +<p>It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped +to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made +shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with +lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a +little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. +Afterwards he appeared to have come back.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIB" id="VIB"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two +Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really +leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into +that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he +could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to +decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he +pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the +reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness; +but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him.</p> + +<p>Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in +his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he +would like to have some breakfast; perhaps he would like a cup of tea +and some toast.</p> + +<p>Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in a few minutes the tea +was brought him by a young girl, whom Bird called Virginie; he said she +was his grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not disturbed the +gentleman: she always sang; one could hardly stop her; but she meant no +harm. He stayed to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to put +away the suspicion Bird's kindness roused in him. He was in such need of +kindness that he did not wish to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched +Bird narrowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he listened +warily when he began to talk of the priest and to praise him. It was a +pleasure, Bird said, for one educated man to converse with another; and +Father Étienne and he often maintained opposite sides of a question +merely for the sake of the discussion; it was like a game of cards where +there were no stakes; you exercised your mind.</p> + +<p>Northwick understood this too little to believe it; when he talked, he +talked business; even the jokes among the men he was used to meant +business.</p> + +<p>"Then you haven't really found any gold in the hills?" he asked, slyly.</p> + +<p>"My faith, yes!" said Bird. "But," he added sadly, "perhaps it would not +pay to mine it. I will show you when you get up. Better not go to +Chicoutimi to-day! It is snowing."</p> + +<p>"Snowing?" Northwick repeated. "Then I can't go!"</p> + +<p>"Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best," Bird suggested. "Try to get +some sleep. Sleep is youth. When we wake we are old again, but some of +the youth stick to our fingers. No?" He smiled gayly, and went out, +closing the door softly after him, and Northwick drowsed. In a dream +Bird came back to him with some specimens from his gold mine. Northwick +could see that the yellow metal speckling the quartz was nothing but +copper pyrites, but he thought it best to pretend that he believed it +gold; for Bird, while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was +feeling with the other for the buckle of Northwick's belt, as he sat up +in bed. He woke in fright, and the fear did not afterwards leave him in +the fever which now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was aware +that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared for, and that his host and +all his household were his devoted watchers and nurses; when he knew the +doctor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this he perceived +cloudily, and as with a thickness of some sort of stuff between him and +the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was +always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when +the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did +not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion +was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan.</p> + +<p>The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open +doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of +the men met.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not +speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not +misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then +reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick. +"You think you are among some Yankee defal<i>ca</i>tor?" he asked, for sole +resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have +imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick +man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay +across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?"</p> + +<p>Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the +thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the +pouch of the belt.</p> + +<p>"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you +see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?"</p> + +<p>Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills +made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me."</p> + +<p>"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud +air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly +confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call.</p> + +<p>Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he +could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the +air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern +land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare +hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an +illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its +first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales +sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of +his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by +that time. It was then the time of the apple-blossoms there; with his +homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops of his orchard, all +pink-white. He thought how the apples smelt when they first began to +drop in August on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It +seemed to him that if he could only be there again for a moment he would +be willing to spend the rest of his life in prison. As it was, he was in +prison; it did not matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from +his home. He hated the vastness of the half world where he could come +and go unmolested, this bondage that masked itself as such ample +freedom. To be shut out was the same as to be shut in.</p> + +<p>In the first days of his convalescence, while he was yet too weak to +leave his room, he planned and executed many returns to his home. He +went back by stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown in his +sickness, and tried to see what change had come upon it; but he could +never see it different from what it was that clear winter night when he +escaped from it. This baffled and distressed him, and strengthened the +longing at the bottom of his heart actually to return. He thought that +if he could once look on the misery he had brought upon his children he +could bear it better; he complexly flattered himself that it would not +be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Sometimes when this wish +harassed him, he said to himself, to still it, that as soon as the first +boat came up the river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and +arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and abandon the +struggle.</p> + +<p>But as he regained his health, he began to feel that this was a rash and +foolish promise: he thought he saw a better way out of his unhappiness. +It appeared a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of his. He +was restored to this feeling in part by the respect, the distinction +which he enjoyed in the little village, and which pleasantly recalled +his consequence among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was +declared out of danger he began to receive visits of polite sympathy +from the heads of families, who smoked round him in the evening, and +predicted a renewal of his youth by the fever he had come through +safely. Their prophecies were interpreted by Bird and Père Étienne, as +with one or other of these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, +the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to +furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got +ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere +Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor +render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the +treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the +priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not +the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a +great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral, +agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American +scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished +to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was +impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was +too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he +bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's +reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all +respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought +in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself +that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the +victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and +would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money +by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort +of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would +have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have +accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The +doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with +Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to +Père Étienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing +with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIB" id="VIIB"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man +of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly +decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the +things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and +purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only +the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of +money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and +from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he +was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with rare plants. But the +flowers were possessions, not passions; he did not speak of them as if +they afforded him any artistic or scientific delight. The young priest +learned that he had put a good deal of money in pictures; but then the +pictures seemed to have become investments, and of the nature of stocks +and bonds. He found that this curious American did not care to read the +English books which Bird offered to lend him out of the little store of +gifts and accidents accumulated in the course of years from bountiful or +forgetful tourists; the books in French Père Étienne proposed to him, +Northwick said he did not know how to read. He showed no liking for +music, except a little for the singing of Bird's niece, Virginie, but +when the priest thought he might care to understand that she sang the +ballads which the first voyagers had brought from France into the +wilderness, or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its hard +life, he saw that the fact said nothing to Northwick, and that it rather +embarrassed him. The American could not take part in any of those +discussions of abstract questions which the priest and the old woodsman +delighted in, and which they sometimes tried to make him share. He +apparently did not know what they meant. It was only when Père Étienne +gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly and arid to be +borne, that he began to love him as a brother; when he could make +nothing of Northwick's mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul.</p> + +<p>Père Étienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, and he had his +misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the +American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating +to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there +a pure and unworldly heart, such as Père Étienne bore in his breast, +with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of +the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious +stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he +knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that +Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of an uneasy +conscience in its possession. Why had he come to that lonely place in +midwinter with a treasure such as that; and why did he keep the money by +him, instead of putting it in a bank? Père Étienne talked these +questions over with Bird and the doctor, and he could find only one +answer to them. He wondered if he ought not to speak to Northwick, and +delicately offer him the chance to unburden his mind to such a friend as +only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any +approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the +church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and +reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy +necessary to the good which Père Étienne wished to do the lonely and +silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a piece of +writing, which he always locked carefully into his bag when he left his +room, and which he copied in part or in whole again and again, burning +the rejected drafts in the hearth-fire that had now superseded the +stove, and stirring the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was +left distinguishable on it.</p> + +<p>One day there came up the river a bateau from Tadoussac, bringing the +news that the ice was all out of the St. Lawrence. "It will not be long +time, now," said Bird, "before we begin to see you' countrymen. The +steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of June."</p> + +<p>Northwick responded to the words with no visible sensation. His +sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more and more, and intolerably deepened +the mystification of his failure to do any of the things with his +capital which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citizens. He no +longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, that was true, and there was not +the danger of his putting his money into Markham's enterprise there; but +neither did he show any interest or any curiosity concerning Bird's +discovery of the precious metal at Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as +well as Père Étienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his guest, +even with the intention of making their joint fortune.</p> + +<p>A few days later there came to Père Étienne a letter, which, when he +read it, superseded the interest in Northwick, which Bird felt gnawing +him like a perpetual hunger. It was from the curé at Rimouski, where +Père Étienne's family lived, and it brought word that his mother, who +had been in failing health all winter, could not long survive, and so +greatly desired to see him, that his correspondent had asked their +superior to allow him to replace Père Étienne at Haha Bay, while he came +to visit her. Leave had been given, and Père Étienne might expect his +friend very soon after his letter reached him.</p> + +<p>"Where is Rimouski?" Northwick asked, when he found himself alone with +the priest that evening.</p> + +<p>"It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first point where the +steamers touch in going and coming between Quebec and Liverpool." Père +Étienne had been weeping, and his heart was softened and emboldened by +the anxiety he felt. "It is my native village—where I lived till I went +to make my studies in the Laval University. It is going home for me. +Perhaps they will let me remain there." He added, by an irresistible +impulse of pity and love, "I wish you were going home, too, Mr. +Warwick!"</p> + +<p>"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't—yet."</p> + +<p>"This is a desert for you," Père Étienne pressed on. "I can see that. I +have seen how solitary you are."</p> + +<p>"Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted.</p> + +<p>"My son," said the young priest to the man who was old enough to be his +father, and he put his hand on Northwick's, where it lay on his knee, as +they sat side by side before the fire, "is there something you could +wish to say to me? Something I might do to help you?"</p> + +<p>In a moment all was open between them, and they knew each other's +meaning. "Yes," said Northwick, and he felt the wish to trust in the +priest and to be ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his +heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too innocent, too unversed +in the world and its ways to know his offence in its right proportion; +to know it as Northwick himself knew it; to be able to account for it +and condone it. The affair, if he could understand it at all, would +shock him; he must blame it as relentlessly as Northwick's own child +would if her love did not save him. With the next word he closed that +which was open between them, a rift in his clouds that heaven itself had +seemed to look through. "I have a letter—a letter that I wish you would +take and mail for me in Rimouski."</p> + +<p>"I will take it with great pleasure," said the priest, but he had the +sadness of a deep disappointment in his tone.</p> + +<p>Northwick was disappointed, too; almost injured. He had something like a +perception that if Père Étienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he +could have told him everything, and saved his own soul by the +confession.</p> + +<p>About a month after the priest's departure the first steamboat came up +the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. +Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he +would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it +should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to +the piety of the <i>habitans</i> as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to +Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity +which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye +on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps +both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps +prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave +out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his +wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it +was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon +him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the +community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at +him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he +would. Northwick could not have moved himself. He was like one benumbed. +He let the days go by, and made no attempt to realize the schemes for +the retrieval of his fortunes that had brought him to that region.</p> + +<p>The sound of the steamboat's whistle was a joyful sound to Bird. He rose +and went into Northwick's room. Northwick was awake; he had heard the +whistle, too.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you' name," said Bird, with trembling +eagerness, "that is the boat. I want you take you' money and go hout my +'ouse. Yes, sir. Now! Pack you' things. Don't wait for breakfast. You +get breakfast on board. Go!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIIB" id="VIIIB"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>The letter which Père Étienne posted for Northwick at Rimouski was +addressed to the editor of the <i>Boston Events</i>, and was published with +every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist +newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room +proofs of his efficiency in the line of the <i>Events</i>' greatest +successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands was +capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the effect was disappointing, +not only in the figure of the immediate sales, but in the cumulative +value of the recognition of the fact that the <i>Events</i> had been selected +by Northwick as the best avenue for approaching the public. The +<i>Abstract</i>, in copying and commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed +its esteemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of its prime importance +as the organ of the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after +questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as +a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many +defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the +despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several +of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the +picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an +effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his +death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it +experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter +himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public, +but his own family, concerning his fate.</p> + +<p>The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those +belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are +closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and +Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before +opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living <i>en garçon</i>. +There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to +question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its +absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his +guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the +beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man +and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It +isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. +Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of +other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that +he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was +found out, and ran away. That's all."</p> + +<p>"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression +that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was <i>not</i> one of your +most remarkable men."</p> + +<p>Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our +<i>least</i> remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which +we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman, +he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made +man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands +of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and now by this +unconsciously hypocritical and nauseous letter. He's what the +commonplace American egotist must come to more and more in finance, now +that he is abandoning the career of politics, and wants to be rich +instead of great."</p> + +<p>"Really?" said the Englishman.</p> + +<p>Among Hilary's guests was Charles Bellingham, a bachelor of pronounced +baldness, who said he would come to meet Hilary's belated Englishman, in +quality of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Corey, a +society veteran of that period when even the swell in Boston must be an +intellectual man. He was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom +left town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner whenever he was +asked. Bellingham came to the rescue of the national repute in his own +fashion. "I can't account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, +when you invited me, unless you knew where you could steal some more."</p> + +<p>"Ah, it isn't quite like a gentleman's stealing a few spoons," old Corey +began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary +sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more +heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as +something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so +does birth; but they're not commonplace."</p> + +<p>"They're not so frequent as defalcation with us, quite—especially +birth," suggested Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"No," Corey went on, "every fact of this sort is preceded by the slow +and long decay of a moral nature, and that is of the most eternal and +tragical interest; and"—here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, +whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him—"if it's very common with +us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we +excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed +moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that +it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our +bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world; our habit of +defalcation hasn't resulted yet in any ethical compensation. Sewell, +here, used to preach about such things, but I'll venture to say we shall +have no homily on Northwick from him next Sunday."</p> + +<p>The Rev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. "What is the use?" +he asked, with a certain sadness. "The preacher's voice is lost in his +sounding-board nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are crying aloud +from twenty-eight pages illustrated."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps <i>they</i> are our moralists," Corey suggested.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," Sewell assented.</p> + +<p>"By the way, Hilary," said Bellingham, "did you ever know who wrote that +article in the <i>Abstract</i>, when Northwick's crookedness first appeared?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary. "It was a young fellow of twenty-four or five."</p> + +<p>"Come off!" said Bellingham, in a slang phrase then making its way into +merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like +it in the <i>Abstract</i>."</p> + +<p>"No, and I'm afraid you're not likely to. The fellow was a reporter on +the paper at the time; but he happened to have looked up the literature +of defalcation, and they let him say his say."</p> + +<p>"It was a very good say."</p> + +<p>"Better than any other he had in him. They let him try again on +different things, but he wasn't up to the work. So the managing editor +said—and he was a friend of the fellow's. He was too literary, I +believe."</p> + +<p>"And what's become of him?" asked Corey.</p> + +<p>"You might get <i>him</i> to read to you," said Bellingham to the old man. He +added to the company, "Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. +He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds their society +oppressive."</p> + +<p>"Why," Hilary answered with a little hesitation, "he was out of health, +and Matt had him up to his farm."</p> + +<p>"Is he Matt's only beneficiary?" Corey asked, with a certain tone of +tolerant liking for Matt. "I thought he usually had a larger colony at +Vardley."</p> + +<p>"Well, he has," said Hilary. "But when his mother and sister are +visiting him, he has to reduce their numbers. He can't very well turn +his family away."</p> + +<p>"He might board them out," said Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose," asked Sewell, as if he had not noticed the turn the +talk had taken, "that Northwick has gone to Europe?"</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt he wishes me to suppose so," said Hilary, "and of course +we've had to cable the authorities to look out for him at Moville and +Liverpool, but I feel perfectly sure he's still in Canada, and expects +to make terms for getting home again. He must be horribly homesick."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Sewell suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Not because he's a man of any delicacy of feeling, or much real +affection for his family. I've no doubt he's fond of them, in a way, but +he's fonder of himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he's +trying to make interest for himself, and that he's quite willing to use +his children if it will tell on the public sympathies. He knows very +well that they're provided for. They own the place at Hatboro'; he +deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known to have begun; +and his creditors couldn't touch it if they wished to. If he had really +that fatherly affection for them, which he appeals to in others, he +wouldn't have left them in doubt whether he was alive or dead for four +or five months, and then dragged them into an open letter asking +forbearance in their name, and promising, for their sake, to right those +he had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent."</p> + +<p>Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond +question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to +him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp +rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which +he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for +him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, +Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out +of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got +to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to +remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay +the people he had defrauded."</p> + +<p>"Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell.</p> + +<p>"No? Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep +up."</p> + +<p>"He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said +Hilary.</p> + +<p>"That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. +"Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the +newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays."</p> + +<p>"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village +down the St. Lawrence—"</p> + +<p>"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite +different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the +wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to +leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save +their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; +a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false."</p> + +<p>"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they +all laughed.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. +You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to +principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless +creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he +can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, +but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would +come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in +greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!"</p> + +<p>"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that +Northwick is cracked."</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every +wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the +last state of the wicked."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to +have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"What a question!" said Hilary. "You're <i>as</i> bad as my daughter. She +asked me the same thing."</p> + +<p>"I wish I were no worse," said the old man.</p> + +<p>"You speak of his children," said the Englishman. "Hasn't he a wife?"</p> + +<p>"No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the other a young girl, whom my +daughter knew at school," Hilary answered.</p> + +<p>"I saw the young lady at your house once," said Bellingham, in a certain +way.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She's been here a good deal, first and last."</p> + +<p>"Rather a high-stepping young person, I thought," said Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"She is a proud girl," Hilary admitted. "Rather imperious, in fact."</p> + +<p>"Ah, what's the pride of a young girl?" said Corey. "Something that +comes from her love and goes to it; no separable quality; nothing that's +for herself."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not sure of that," said Hilary. "In this case it seems to +have served her own turn. It's enabled her simply and honestly to deny +the fact that her father ever did anything wrong."</p> + +<p>"That's rather fine," Corey remarked, as if tasting it.</p> + +<p>"And what will it enable her to do, now that he's come out and confessed +the frauds himself?" the Englishman asked.</p> + +<p>Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Bellingham, "Charles, I want you +to try some of these crabs. I got them for you."</p> + +<p>"Why, this is touching, Hilary," said Bellingham, getting his fat head +round with difficulty to look at them in the dish the man was bringing +to his side. "But I don't know that I should have refused them, even if +they had been got for Corey."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IXB" id="IXB"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in +Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the +stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a +part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the +provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death. +He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such +a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their +doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that +they had <i>never</i> believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who +acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to +cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his +faith restored him to the esteem of many.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said +Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of +his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an +early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public +opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public +confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good +intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no +question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions—if you will +excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for +repentance—when he makes the first payment to his creditors—I will +believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not <i>till</i> then."</p> + +<p>"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to +say to all this. Can he feel that <i>his</i> skirts are quite clean, acting +that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to +say against him?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on +the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr. +Putney on any subject."</p> + +<p>In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not +discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their +father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through +Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's +character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack +Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not +obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it."</p> + +<p>"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used +to say against Mr. Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington.</p> + +<p>"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger +appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery +of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in +it.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?"</p> + +<p>"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> don't know. What do <i>you</i> think, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who +avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a +look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too.</p> + +<p>"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on. +"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved +in Hatboro'—not among the ladies at least."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's +the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men +in my family to say a word against her."</p> + +<p>Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. +Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul +of a man."</p> + +<p>"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that +they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," +Mrs. Wilmington teased.</p> + +<p>"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. +Munger alone to his aunt.</p> + +<p>"<i>Do</i> you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, +with cosey confidentiality.</p> + +<p>"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very +poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to +her?"</p> + +<p>"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do <i>like</i> a manly man!"</p> + +<p>She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a +further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one +she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of +the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road +so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it.</p> + +<p>"Doctor," she called out, "what <i>do</i> you think of this extraordinary +letter of Mr. Northwick's?"</p> + +<p>Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the +<i>Events</i>? Do you think Northwick wrote it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, don't <i>you</i>, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal +grievance in her voice.</p> + +<p>"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he <i>did</i> +write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood +you thought he was burned in that accident last winter."</p> + +<p>"Now, <i>doctor</i>!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said +always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I +know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. <i>She</i> +will tell me what you think."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all +well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though, +with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr. +Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself +to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it +be romantic?"</p> + +<p>"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to +see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. +He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by."</p> + +<p>She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South +Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, +where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely +drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs. +Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and +in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own +emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South +Hatboro'.</p> + +<p>Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat +crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door +that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her +hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter +in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be +crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, +who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he +had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us, +and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead, +long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's +just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell +us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything +we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do +it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't +complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, +what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that +he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he +didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you +think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and +tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one +where he was? That <i>shows</i> he's out of his mind. I always thought that +if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied +about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that +was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that +we trusted so much, had broken his word to <i>us</i>. That is what kills me."</p> + +<p>The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at +dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, +as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief +responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if +her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs.</p> + +<p>Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it +of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. +"We must give it up!"</p> + +<p>"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back.</p> + +<p>"The house—and the farm—and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours."</p> + +<p>"Not ours?"</p> + +<p>"No. That letter makes it theirs—the people's whose money he took. We +must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know +how."</p> + +<p>Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but +Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!"</p> + +<p>"That was <i>before</i>. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we +should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give +it to us when he did?"</p> + +<p>"Suzette!"</p> + +<p>"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to +go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because +he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it +up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my +father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to +me, <i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such +natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about +father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his +mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away +because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him +that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to +blame himself. That's the way I look at it."</p> + +<p>"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You +<i>know</i> you don't believe that!"</p> + +<p>Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist +in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's +confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at +last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it, +Suzette; and I have a right."</p> + +<p>"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't +belong to us till father comes back to prove it."</p> + +<p>"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!"</p> + +<p>"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he +isn't—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Don't you dare!"</p> + +<p>"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong +to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be +seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole +world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if +we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look <i>you</i> in the +face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either +of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room.</p> + +<p>"Wait! I can't let you—yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline.</p> + +<p>"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat +in her rocking-chair.</p> + +<p>"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering +strength of resistance in her heart. "Because <i>you've</i> been thinking of +it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was +mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for +both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did +use their money—and I don't believe he did—I don't see why I should +give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said, +"And I won't."</p> + +<p>"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr. +Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves +on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so +terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send +Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any +squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the +property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you +don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I +will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to +you. Do you promise?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of +tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give +it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall +never say that I wanted you should do it."</p> + +<p>"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you +say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft +throat. "<i>I</i> do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I +care as much for them as you do."</p> + +<p>In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive +whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession +of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it," +she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep +it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up."</p> + +<p>Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had +been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained, +"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they +have on my house and lot?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I don't care for the law."</p> + +<p>"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father +is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions +made in the letter he has published."</p> + +<p>"I understand that," said the girl.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the +bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing +to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property."</p> + +<p>He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and +Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the +property, they'd let father come back?"</p> + +<p>Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have +got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been +indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There +can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial."</p> + +<p>"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would +make them easier with him?"</p> + +<p>"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't +like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless +you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property."</p> + +<p>"And do you think it has a moral claim?"</p> + +<p>Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked +his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some +peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing +company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a +sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it +makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who +buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns +its bread by the sweat of its capital—neither better nor worse." +Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from +the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative +economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the +Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral +obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a +clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold +on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a +body that hadn't a soul for that purpose."</p> + +<p>Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then +recollected himself, and put it back.</p> + +<p>"There, Suzette!" said Adeline.</p> + +<p>Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with +her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that. +I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the +company, and if you would do it for me at once."</p> + +<p>"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow +morning and see their attorney."</p> + +<p>"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary."</p> + +<p>"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, +if you wish."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the +company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr. +Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my +sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks +you. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, +I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole +place must be sold?"</p> + +<p>Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place +sold?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?"</p> + +<p>"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm."</p> + +<p>Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the +world. I—" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on +piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But +I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, +need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw +up the writings."</p> + +<p>"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; if you wish."</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"It won't be necessary."</p> + +<p>"I wish it."</p> + +<p>Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt +justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl +freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of +course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of +conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought +to make any one else obey one's conscience?"</p> + +<p>"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why +should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the +frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just +as it does?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood."</p> + +<p>"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of +pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the +right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. +She would do anything for that. She's as <i>hard</i>!"</p> + +<p>"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XB" id="XB"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. +"I haven't slept all night—I don't see how <i>you</i> could—and I want you +shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I +want to think it over, first."</p> + +<p>"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first +word.</p> + +<p>Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing +to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. +Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the +writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. +I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like."</p> + +<p>"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated.</p> + +<p>"<i>No</i>, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's +right; and I want to do what <i>I</i> think is right. I'm almost sick. I want +Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She +broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! <i>Do</i> give me a little +more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do—"</p> + +<p>They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and +they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, +as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. +Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on +her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him +hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't +agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. +Putney from writing till you think as <i>I</i> do. But be still, now!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with +you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me! +And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down +sick."</p> + +<p>She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, +dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, +now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up +and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not +slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened +her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a +bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in +it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the +day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very +difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to +compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world +where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from +thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till +now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for +the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser +wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly +within herself before she spoke with Adeline again.</p> + +<p>That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found +as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over +Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; +heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most +pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely. +But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to +excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade +asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is +something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this +letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you +once about Jack Wilmington—"</p> + +<p>Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm +sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have +shown it long ago!"</p> + +<p>"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if +it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a +time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried +tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her +so much more than I; and I didn't know—Is it possible—Perhaps I ought +to ask if <i>you</i> are at all—if <i>you</i> care for her?"</p> + +<p>"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! <i>Why</i> do +you ask?"</p> + +<p>"Because <i>I</i> do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that +when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a +wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength +between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind +made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a +hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him +from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I +thought—I thought that if you, old fellow—But now, it's all right—all +right—"</p> + +<p>Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A +great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their +way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a +cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and +which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow +when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was +scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he +could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no +more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by +his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick +was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants +often find themselves in, but his final perception of his +impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's +hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the +purpose when another wishes to do the talking.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got +anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my +way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and +can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere +bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he +walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of +anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for +the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted +sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I +don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; +summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, +anything like <i>this</i>. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad +to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good +sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization." +He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor +father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him."</p> + +<p>Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the +thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he +must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all +rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile +for the purpose of this question.</p> + +<p>"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it +must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise +and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever +been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, +though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," +Matt ended, philosophically.</p> + +<p>Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your +family, do they know of your—feeling?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like +a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added, +despondently.</p> + +<p>Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the +aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to +share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said, +presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation +to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it +very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think +there are very few men like my father?"</p> + +<p>"There are none, Matt!" said Wade.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of +them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered +man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever +loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can."</p> + +<p>"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!"</p> + +<p>"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said +Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I +couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that +she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her +of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I +think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up +altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have +her to <i>give</i> up. Then it's an easy sacrifice."</p> + +<p>"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's +self-satire.</p> + +<p>Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and +looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk. +"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once—to leave her to suffer +it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No +real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might +gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to +think she had given herself through that need—No, it wouldn't do! My +father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and +Louise can be her friend—What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle +it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather +cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I +suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all +the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't +bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I +think I ought to wait."</p> + +<p>"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's +a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and +Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation.</p> + +<p>"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid +it might look calculating and self-interested—"</p> + +<p>"You self-interested, Matt!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little? +If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and +mother, brother and sister, before all the world?"</p> + +<p>"If you are sure she loves you, yes."</p> + +<p>Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little +condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now. +I've just run over from the farm to see you—"</p> + +<p>"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the +rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly +improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were +immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of +yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as +yourself, to take time before speaking."</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade +of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I +should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in +adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much +obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and +helping me to see it in the right light."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation.</p> + +<p>"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think +you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article +on the defalcation in the <i>Boston Abstract</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it, +very humanely—too humanely, perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of +that article—a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds +with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no +health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily +newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the +time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who +recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell—that's the fellow's name—and +since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But +he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's +out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative +friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of +the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type—the artistic type +cynicised by the hard conditions of life—newspaper conditions, and then +economic conditions."</p> + +<p>Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful +formulation of Maxwell.</p> + +<p>Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any +use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon +Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he +said, "I think you've decided <i>so</i> wisely, Matt; and justly and +unselfishly."</p> + +<p>"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said +Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of +his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think +it would seem unfeeling—or out of taste, at all—if I went to see her +at such a time?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I can't imagine <i>your</i> doing anything out of taste, Matt."</p> + +<p>"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some +messages by me to her. Will you take them, or—"</p> + +<p>"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's +messages yourself."</p> + +<p>"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIB" id="XIB"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>Matt took the lower road that wound away from Wade's church toward the +Northwick place; but as he went, he kept thinking that he must not +really try to see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time; out of +all propriety, of all decency; it would be taking advantage of her +helplessness to intrude upon her the offer of help and of kindness which +every instinct of her nature must revolt from. There was only one thing +that could justify his coming, and that was impossible. Unless he came +to tell her that he loved her, and to ask her to let him take her burden +upon him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love's sake, he had +no right to see her. At moments it seemed as if that were right and he +could do it, no matter how impossible, and then he almost ran forward; +but only to check himself, to stop short, and doubt whether not to turn +back altogether. By such faltering progresses, he found himself in the +Northwick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from the mansion, +which the farm road had brought him to, until he reached the cottage at +the avenue gate. On the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set +his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and he floundered +on till he made out that this languid figure was Adeline. He could have +laughed at the irony, the mockery of the anti-climax, if it had not been +for the face that the old maid turned upon him at the approach of his +footfalls, and the pleasure that lighted up its pathos when she +recognized him.</p> + +<p>"<i>Oh</i>, Mr. Hilary!" she said; and then she could not speak, for the +twitching of her lips and the trembling of her chin.</p> + +<p>He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural for him to do that +reverent and tender thing which is no longer a part of our custom; he +bent over it and kissed the chill, bony knuckles.</p> + +<p>She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief and wipe her tears. "I +suppose you've come to see Suzette; but she's gone up to the village to +talk with Mr. Putney; he's our lawyer."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I presume I don't need to talk to you about that—letter. I think,—and +I believe Suzette will think so too in the end,—that his mind is +affected, and he just accuses himself of all these things because +they've been burnt into it so. How are your father and mother? And your +sister?"</p> + +<p>She broke off with these questions, he could see, to stay herself in +what she wished to say. "They are all well. Father is still in Boston; +but mother and Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their love, and +they are anxious to know if there is anything—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you. Will you sit down here? It's so close indoors." She made +room for him on the threshold, but he took the step below.</p> + +<p>"I hope Miss Suzette is well?"</p> + +<p>"Why, thank you, not very well. There isn't anything really the matter; +but we didn't either of us sleep very well last night; we were excited. +I don't know as I ought to tell you," she began. "I don't suppose it's a +thing you would know about, any way; but I've got to talk to somebody—"</p> + +<p>"Miss Northwick," said Matt, "if there is anything in the world that I +can do for you, or that you even hope I can do, I <i>beg</i> you to let me +hear it. I should be glad beyond all words to help you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know as anything can be done," she began, after the fresh +gush of tears which were her thanks, "but Suzette and I have been +talking it over a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your +father about it. You see, Suzette can't feel right about our keeping the +place here, if father's really done what he says he's done. We don't +believe he has; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, and +made to give up the money he says he has got. Suzette thinks we ought to +give up the money we have got in the bank—fifteen hundred or two +thousand dollars—and she wanted I should let her give up her half of +the place, here; and at first I <i>did</i> say she might. But come to find +out from Mr. Putney, the whole place would have to be sold before it +could be divided, and I couldn't seem to let it. That was what +we—disputed about. Yes! We had a dispute; but it's all right now, or it +will be, when we get the company to say they will stop the lawsuit +against father, if he will give up the money he's got, and we will give +up the place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company couldn't stop it; +but I don't see why a rich corporation like that couldn't do almost +anything it wanted to with its money."</p> + +<p>Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor her scheme for defeating +justice; but he smiled forlornly at the hopelessness of it. "I'm afraid +Mr. Putney is right." He was silent, and then at the despair that came +into her face, he hurried on to say, "but I will see my father, Miss +Northwick; I will go down to see him at once; and if anything can be +honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am sure he will try to +do it for your sake. But don't expect anything," he said, getting to his +feet and putting out his hand to her.</p> + +<p>"No, no; I won't," she said, with gratitude that wrung his heart. +"And—won't you wait and see Suzette?"</p> + +<p>Matt reddened. "No; I think not now. But, perhaps, I will come back; +and—and—I will come soon again. Good-by!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary!" she called after him. He ran back to her. "If—if your +father don't think anything can be done, I don't want he should say +anything about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; certainly not."</p> + +<p>"And, Mr. Hilary! Don't <i>you</i> let Suzette know I spoke to you. <i>I'll</i> +tell her."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course."</p> + +<p>On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less and less impossible +to Matt; but he really knew nothing of the legal complications; and when +he proposed it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. "I don't +believe it could be done. The man's regularly indicted, and he's in +contempt of court as long as he doesn't present himself for trial. +That's the way I understand it. But I'll see our counsel. Whose scheme +is this?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Miss Northwick told me of it; but I fancied Miss +Suzette—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary. "It must have cost her almost her life to give up +her faith in that pitiful rascal."</p> + +<p>"But after she had done that, it would cost her nothing to give up the +property, and as I understood Miss Northwick, that was her sister's +first impulse. She wished to give up her half of the estate +unconditionally; but Miss Northwick wouldn't consent, and they +compromised on the conditions she told me of."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Hilary, "I think Miss Northwick showed the most sense. But +of course, Sue's a noble girl. She almost transfigures that old +scoundrel of a father of hers. That fellow—Jack Wilmington—ought to +come forward now and show himself a man, if he <i>is</i> one. <i>Any</i> man might +be proud of such a girl's love—and they say she was in love with him. +But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his uncle's wife. He +isn't good enough for her, and probably he always knew it."</p> + +<p>Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his father, to go and +look at the picture over the mantel. It was not a new picture; but he +did not feel that he was using his father quite frankly; and he kept +looking at it for that reason.</p> + +<p>"If those poor creatures gave up their property, what would they do? +They've absolutely nothing else in the world!"</p> + +<p>"I fancy," said Matt, "that isn't a consideration that would weigh with +Suzette Northwick."</p> + +<p>"No. If there's anything in heredity, the father of such a girl must +have some good in him. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to suffer."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that the company would regard the fact that it had no legal +claim on the property, and would recognize it in their behalf?"</p> + +<p>"The company!" Hilary roared. "The company has <i>no</i> right to that +property, moral <i>or</i> legal. But we should act as if we had. If it were +unconditionally offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of +charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man Jack of us would +hold out for a right to it that didn't exist, and we should take it as +part of our due; and I should be such a coward that I couldn't tell the +Board what I thought of our pusillanimity."</p> + +<p>"It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously in a corporate +capacity, or even humanely," said Matt. "But I don't know but there +would be an obscure and negative justice in such action. It would be +right for the company to accept the property, if it was right for +Northwick's daughter to offer it, and I think it is most unquestionably +right for her to do that."</p> + +<p>"Do you, Matt? Well, well," said Hilary, willing to be comforted, +"perhaps you're right. You must send Louise and your mother over to see +her."</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps not just now. She's proud and sensitive, and perhaps it +might seem intrusive, at this juncture?"</p> + +<p>"Intrusive? Nonsense! She'll be glad to see them. Send them right over!"</p> + +<p>Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went +away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of +till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain +the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own +children.</p> + +<p>What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave his love for her +unconscious approval; but at the same time it created a sort of comedy +situation, and Matt was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from +the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going direct to her, he +hated to be going, like the hero of a novel, to offer himself to the +heroine at the moment her fortunes were darkest; but he knew that he was +only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and humbly her lover, +who wished in any way or any measure he might, to be her friend and +helper. He thought he might put his offer in some such form as would +leave her free to avail herself a little if not much of his longing to +comfort and support her in her trial. But at last he saw that he could +do nothing for the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to +give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend. He did not go +back to Hatboro', as he longed to do. He went back to his farm, and +possessed his soul in such patience as he could.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIIB" id="XIIB"></a>XII.</h2> + + +<p>Suzette came back from Putney's office with such a disheartened look +that Adeline had not the courage to tell her of Matt's visit and the +errand he had undertaken for her. The lawyer had said no more than that +he did not believe anything could be done. He was glad they had decided +not to transfer their property to the company, without first trying to +make interest for their father with it; that was their right, and their +duty; and he would try what could be done; but he warned Suzette that he +should probably fail.</p> + +<p>"And then what did he think we ought to do?" Adeline asked.</p> + +<p>"He didn't say," Suzette answered.</p> + +<p>"I presume," Adeline went on, after a little pause, "that you would like +to give up the property, anyway. Well, you can do it, Suzette." The joy +she might have expected did not show itself in her sister's face, and +she added, "I've thought it all over, and I see it as you do, now. +Only," she quavered, "I do want to do all I can for poor father, first."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Suzette, spiritlessly, "Mr. Putney said we ought."</p> + +<p>"Sue," said Adeline, after another little pause, "I don't know what +you'll think of me, for what I've done. Mr. Hilary has been here—"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He came over from his farm—"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I thought you meant his father." The color began to mount into the +girl's cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they all want to do +anything they can; and—and I told Mr. Hilary what we were going to try; +and—he said he would speak to his father about it; and—Oh, Suzette, +I'm afraid I've done more than I ought!"</p> + +<p>Suzette was silent, and then, "No," she said, "I can't see what harm +there could be in it."</p> + +<p>"He said," Adeline pursued with joyful relief, "he wouldn't let his +father speak to the rest about it, till we were ready; and I know he'll +do all he can for us. Don't you?"</p> + +<p>Sue answered, "I don't see what harm it can do for him to speak to his +father. I hope, Adeline," she added, with the severity Adeline had +dreaded, "you didn't ask it as a favor from him?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I didn't indeed, Sue! It came naturally. He offered to do it."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and she fell back in +the chair where she had been sitting.</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Adeline, with an anxious look at the girl's worn +face, "but what we'd both better have the doctor."</p> + +<p>"Ah, the doctor!" cried Suzette. "What can the doctor do for troubles +like ours?" She put up her hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, +and sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the worst had come +upon them.</p> + +<p>The company's counsel submitted Putney's overtures, as he expected, to +the State's attorney, in the hypothetical form, and the State's +attorney, as Putney expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that +when Northwick's friends communicated with him and ascertained his +readiness to surrender the money he had with him, and to make +restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a <i>nolle +prosequi</i>. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt +of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the +chance of a merciful sentence.</p> + +<p>There could be no other answer, he said, and he could give none for +Putney to carry back to the defaulter's daughters.</p> + +<p>Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved herself up to bear +it so. Adeline had faltered between her hopes and fears, but she had +apparently decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst came.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she said, "we must give up the place. You can get the +papers ready, Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>"I will do whatever you say, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my +doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it +all the same."</p> + +<p>Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with +the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see +Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family +that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his +clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed +circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end.</p> + +<p>Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his +mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes +burn on Matt's kindly face.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," he said, "what do <i>you</i> think can be done for two women, +brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?"</p> + +<p>"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make +their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company—"</p> + +<p>"But I thought—I thought they might have something +besides—something—"</p> + +<p>"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to +their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay +that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with +it—or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it."</p> + +<p>"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the +predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just +nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he +proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to +death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking +down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either."</p> + +<p>Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before +him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, +and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her +father's shame.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said, "they mustn't be allowed to suffer. We shall count +upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive +somehow not to let them know that they are destitute."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its +seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer +in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, +who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I +mean by every step I take? You're acquainted with Miss Suzette, I +suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt, consciously.</p> + +<p>"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her +mind to starve, wouldn't know what you were up to if you pretended to +have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?"</p> + +<p>"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no +claim on the property, none whatever!"</p> + +<p>"Now you're shouting." Putney put a comfortable mass of tobacco in his +mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it.</p> + +<p>"They mustn't take it—they won't take it!" cried Matt.</p> + +<p>Putney laughed scornfully.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIIIB" id="XIIIB"></a>XIII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous +railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape +the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not +go to see them, and find out some way to help them.</p> + +<p>Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the noble +action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is noble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn't do +it."</p> + +<p>"Why, mamma?"</p> + +<p>"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well +as they were; and the company doesn't need it; but now where will they +go? What will become of them?"</p> + +<p>Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they +are, for the present, and that they won't be actually houseless. But +they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their +support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself +that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live +on."</p> + +<p>"I <i>knew</i> Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came +out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But +that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no +peace till she had given up everything—everything!"</p> + +<p>"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they—has Suzette—any +plans?"</p> + +<p>"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the +bank," said Matt, forlornly.</p> + +<p>"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, +"they've all managed as badly as they could."</p> + +<p>"Well, mother, they hadn't a very hopeful case, to begin with," said +Matt, and Louise smiled.</p> + +<p>"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs. +Hilary pursued.</p> + +<p>"He was annoyed, but I couldn't see that he had lost his appetite. I +don't think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, +though."</p> + +<p>"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don't know +just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and +see them. They don't seem to have any one else. It is very strange that +they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated +upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try +what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment's pause.</p> + +<p>They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the +end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I +shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the +shore."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I don't like his being in town so late."</p> + +<p>"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don't you get +him to come up here?"</p> + +<p>"He's been asked," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise assented. She rose and went +to the glass door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was +filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think +what we can do for Suzette."</p> + +<p>Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and +listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two +voices retreated together, and Louise's laugh made itself heard farther +off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light +nature himself at that moment. "But I don't know that there is anything +wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she +is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I'm +afraid she doesn't feel things deeply. Matt, I don't believe I like this +protégé of yours."</p> + +<p>"Maxwell?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He's too intense."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don't like +Louise's lightness, and you don't like Maxwell's intensity. I think +he'll get over that. He's sick, poor fellow; he won't be so intense when +he gets better."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, +abruptly, "I hope Louise's sympathies will be concentrated on Sue +Northwick for awhile, now."'</p> + +<p>"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I'm sure Louise has +shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I +hadn't supposed she was so attached to her—so constant—"</p> + +<p>"She's romantic; but she's worldly; she likes the world and its ways. +There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of +the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out +of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe. +Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, +because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize. +But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away +she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!" +Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be <i>entirely</i> worldly, it +wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes +in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask +her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly +not a simple character—like Sue Northwick, for instance."</p> + +<p>Matt now roused himself. "Is <i>she</i> a simple character?" he asked, with a +show of indifference.</p> + +<p>"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains +everything she does."</p> + +<p>"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in +openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived +himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with +something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine +her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a +wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her +with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now."</p> + +<p>"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than +could have been expected of her father's daughter."</p> + +<p>Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to +answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of +the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick +with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me +that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall +find it difficult to discharge with delicacy."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property +which she is going to give up."</p> + +<p>"We are not the company."</p> + +<p>"Father is the president."</p> + +<p>"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused +it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why +should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do +what is right and proper—even what is delicate—with Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that."</p> + +<p>"You said something like it, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her +alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that <i>we</i> +realize all that she is doing."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite +frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and +I wished she wouldn't do it."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIVB" id="XIVB"></a>XIV.</h2> + + +<p>The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June +day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in +his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, +and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, +with a cushion clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was +pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his +thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted +herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent +gaze.</p> + +<p>"Have you got through?"</p> + +<p>"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to +the camp."</p> + +<p>"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the +importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick +man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her.</p> + +<p>"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But +I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?"</p> + +<p>"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor +and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his +shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly +across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about +the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun +struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their +needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and +through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of +a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place +was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just +beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it.</p> + +<p>Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and +high boots, and his cork helmet topping all.</p> + +<p>"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, +Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?"</p> + +<p>Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up +from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell—"</p> + +<p>"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the +camp."</p> + +<p>"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you +think he is, this morning?"</p> + +<p>"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast."</p> + +<p>"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere +out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a +girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at +such a time as this?"</p> + +<p>"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. +"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't +know what she <i>will</i> do. If Jack Wilmington—but he never really cared +for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be."</p> + +<p>"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now."</p> + +<p>Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she +still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know +that he cared for her."</p> + +<p>"But her pride—wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal +terms—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a +person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a +thing as that there <i>is</i> no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are +just alike—like cats in the dark."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting +to them before, came into his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i> so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington +still—"</p> + +<p>"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston +to-morrow, and see father—Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow +evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it."</p> + +<p>Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine +before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters.</p> + +<p>"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm +at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that +I thought perhaps you might want to see at once."</p> + +<p>He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. +"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse +me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when +he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; +but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to +feel like work, for the first time since I came up here."</p> + +<p>"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the +board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the +hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. +You must stay the whole summer."</p> + +<p>"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his +side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like."</p> + +<p>"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they +will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly +well?"</p> + +<p>"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one +thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the +light and shade flecks on her face and figure.</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i> you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted.</p> + +<p>"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor +people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a +caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility."</p> + +<p>"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse +than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will +let you help them."</p> + +<p>"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if +you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're +surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if +you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor +folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to +do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of +riches."</p> + +<p>"You would make me hateful."</p> + +<p>"I would make you charming."</p> + +<p>"Well, do me, then!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, you wouldn't like it."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because—I found it out in my newspaper work, when I had to interview +people and write them up—people don't like to have the good points they +have, recognized; they want you to celebrate the good points they +haven't got. If a man is amiable and kind and has something about him +that wins everybody's heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very +dignified and commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and +indomitable will."</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Louise, "why you think I'm weak, and low-minded, and +undignified."</p> + +<p>Maxwell laughed. "Did I say something of that kind?"</p> + +<p>"You meant it."</p> + +<p>"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of +apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound +knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the +most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you +like that?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be +interviewed."</p> + +<p>"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if +I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I +shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the +<i>Abstract</i>. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be +read for me."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up +newspaper work altogether."</p> + +<p>"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal +sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much +would you get for your play?"</p> + +<p>"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six +thousand dollars a year."</p> + +<p>"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness.</p> + +<p>He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and +asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this +time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I +should <i>like</i> to."</p> + +<p>Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't +humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your +imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough."</p> + +<p>"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. +"But <i>I</i> know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give +up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he +had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at +all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her +sister will have nothing to live on. And they <i>won't</i> let themselves be +helped—any more than—than—<i>you</i> will!"</p> + +<p>"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them. +Don't they know where their father is?"</p> + +<p>"No. But of course they must, now, before long."</p> + +<p>Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like +to have a peep into that man's soul."</p> + +<p>"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise.</p> + +<p>"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children—"</p> + +<p>"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he +always made me feel creepy."</p> + +<p>"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and +to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you +could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on +them, and forced them to beggar themselves—it would be a tremendous +situation."</p> + +<p>"But I shouldn't <i>like</i> to see him at such a time. It seems to me, +that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell."</p> + +<p>There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt. +It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the +artistic point of view."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be +about any such thing as that—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic +motive."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not +know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, +but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the +letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you +want this?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, +"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want +the <i>true</i> artistic point of view."</p> + +<p>"Is he a literary man?"</p> + +<p>"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the +<i>Events</i>—when it first came out? All illustrations?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That?</i> I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps +he's your friend—"</p> + +<p>"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. +"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood +frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss +Hilary, though he <i>is</i> a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good +material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has +only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his +generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five +minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't +keep still."</p> + +<p>"I should think she would detest him."</p> + +<p>"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's +affecting to witness their devotion—or it would be if it were not such +a bore."</p> + +<p>"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVB" id="XVB"></a>XV.</h2> + + +<p>Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found +himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the +back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had +the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he +pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, +though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were +never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they +liked Matt.</p> + +<p>Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. +"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Where is Maxwell?"</p> + +<p>"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the +ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees.</p> + +<p>Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the +hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall.</p> + +<p>"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of +the good comradeship he felt for all living things.</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of +the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard."</p> + +<p>"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is."</p> + +<p>"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it."</p> + +<p>"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that +probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he +wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but +somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against +odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the +chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But +I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself."</p> + +<p>"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he +doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even +as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, +smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; +he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now."</p> + +<p>"He's older than I am!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>"He hasn't seen so much of the world."</p> + +<p>"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice +as we supposed. I should call him dangerous."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shouldn't say <i>that</i>, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly +hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long +tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her +lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you +suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn.</p> + +<p>Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem +which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl +lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not +know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe +Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging +over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still +opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion +of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've +the time."</p> + +<p>"Well, after dinner," said Matt.</p> + +<p>Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long +slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully +folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the +language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he +usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper.</p> + +<p>"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The +<i>Events</i> is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which +meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and +have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the +change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social +science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing +that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of +belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up +in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got +a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That +letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and +I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. +Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe—of course he +didn't!—but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't +believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business +with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his +investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with +him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am +not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a +detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over +the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends +of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but +I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, +and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, +while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I +shall need active help.</p> + +<p>"Now, I liked some things in that <i>Abstract</i> article of yours; it was +snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. +It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that +could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So +I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into +the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My +idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we +have not only got to get <i>at</i> him, but we have got to <i>get</i> him; and get +him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral +suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect +will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you +believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and +spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously +work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a +great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have +our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, +whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the +fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in +all eternity.</p> + +<p>"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my +wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. <i>I want you, +old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you.</i> If this thing goes through, I +shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the <i>Events</i>. I +expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall +secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. +Maxwell, and don't you forget it.</p> + +<p>"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got +to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let +the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a +lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work +him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a +bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and +show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward +virtue."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIB" id="XVIB"></a>XVI.</h2> + + +<p>Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney +was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for <i>The Events</i>. +He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you +would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my +silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Matt. "Then I suppose his proposal doesn't tempt you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I should like such an +adventure well enough, because it would give me a glimpse of life and +character that I should like to know something about. But the reporter +business and the detective business wouldn't attract me."</p> + +<p>"No, I should suppose not," said Matt. "What sort of fellow, personally, +is this—Pinney?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he isn't bad. He is a regular type," said Maxwell, with tacit +enjoyment of the typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in +the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They +don't know much in the <i>Events</i> office; but they do know Pinney. He's a +great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities +of private life than—Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn +his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very +domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby +now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always +advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most +harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite +soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make +copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a +newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't +the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that +I wanted to guard; and I thought Pinney was on the scent of it, I +shouldn't have any more scruple in setting my foot on him than I would +on that snake."</p> + +<p>A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had crept out of the +stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes +at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous +scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and +ground it into the earth.</p> + +<p>Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and writhing thing. "Ah, I +don't think I should have killed it!"</p> + +<p>"I should," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Then you think one couldn't trust him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it +there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have +room to wriggle."</p> + +<p>They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the image of the tormented +snake in his mind; it somehow mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and +unconsciously softened him toward the reporter.</p> + +<p>"Would there be any harm," he asked, after a while, "in my acting on a +knowledge of this letter in behalf of Mr. Northwick's family?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit," said Maxwell. "I make you perfectly free of it, as far as +I'm concerned; and it can't hurt Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. +<i>He</i> wouldn't spare <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Matt, "that I could justify myself in hurting him +on that ground. I shall be careful about him. I don't at all know that I +shall want to use it; but it has just struck me that perhaps—But I +don't know! I should have to talk with their attorney—I will see about +it! And I thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell."</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mr. Hilary!" said Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and +all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any +harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any +harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and +yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very elect. +Good heavens!" cried Maxwell, "if I could get such a character as +Pinney's into a story or a play, I wouldn't take odds from any man +living!"</p> + +<p>His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so that he waited more and +more impatiently for his mother's return, in order to act upon it. When +she did get back to the farm she could only report from the Northwicks +that she had said pretty much what she thought she would like to say to +Suzette concerning her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up +her property; but Matt inferred that she had at the same time been able +to infuse so much motherly comfort into her scolding that it had left +the girl consoled and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline that +their great distress was not knowing yet where their father was. +Apparently he thought that his published letter was sufficient +reassurance for the time being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at +him in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any appeal from +them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly believed, his mind had been warped by +his suffering—he must have suffered greatly—and he was not able to +reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hilary spoke of the +dignity and strength which both the sisters showed in their trial and +present stress. She praised Suzette, especially; she said her trouble +seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was really a noble girl, +and she had sent her love to Louise; they had both wished to be +remembered to every one. "Adeline, especially, wished to be remembered +to you, Matt; she said they should never forget your kindness."</p> + +<p>Matt got over to Hatboro' the next day, and went to see Putney, who +received him with some ironical politeness, when Matt said he had come +hoping to be useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks.</p> + +<p>"Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. Hilary. You were here on +a mission of that kind before. But may I ask why you think I should +believe you wish to be useful to them?"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Your father is the president of the company Mr. Northwick had his +little embarrassment with, and the natural presumption would be that you +could not really be friendly toward his family."</p> + +<p>"But we <i>are</i> friendly! All of us! My father would do them any service +in his power, consistent with his duty to—to—his business associates."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's just the point. And you would all do anything you could for +them, consistent with your duty to him. That's perfectly +right—perfectly natural. But you must see that it doesn't form a ground +of common interest for us. I talked with you about the Miss Northwicks' +affairs the other day—too much, I think. But I can't to-day. I shall be +glad to converse with you on any other topic—discuss the ways of God to +man, or any little interest of that kind. But unless I can see my way +clearer to confidence between us in regard to my clients' affairs than I +do at present, I must avoid them."</p> + +<p>It was absurd; but in his high good-will toward Adeline, and in his +latent tenderness for Suzette, Matt was hurt by the lawyer's distrust, +somewhat as you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns over +your check and says you must bring some one to recognize you. It cost +Matt a pang; it took him a moment to own that Putney was right. Then he +said, "Of course, I must offer you proof somehow that I've come to you +in good faith. I don't know exactly how I shall be able to do it. Would +the assurance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. Michael's—"</p> + +<p>The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly; he smiled, and then he +said, "Brother Wade is a good man, and his words usually carry +conviction, but this is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary." He laughed, and +concluded earnestly, "You <i>must</i> know that I can't talk with you on any +such authority. I couldn't talk with Mr. Wade himself."</p> + +<p>"No, no; of course not," Matt assented; and he took himself off +crestfallen, ashamed of his own short-sightedness.</p> + +<p>There was only one way out of the trouble, and now he blamed himself for +not having tried to take that way at the outset. He had justified +himself in shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he could +justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feeling compelled, as it were, +to take it. At least, now, he should not be acting from any selfish +impulse, and if there were anything unseemly in what he was going to do, +he should have no regrets on that score, even in the shame of failure.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIIB" id="XVIIB"></a>XVII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the Northwick place, or at +least as much time as would pass between walking and driving, but that +was because he was impatient, and his own going seemed faster to his +nerves than that of the swiftest horse could have seemed. At the crest +of the upland which divides Hatboro' from South Hatboro', and just +beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell's house, he met Sue Northwick; +she was walking quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put aside +her long, crape veil, and she came towards him with her proud face +framed in the black, and looking the paler for it; a little of her +yellow hair showed under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt was +afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of her. She seemed not to +know him at first, or rather not to realize that it was he; when she +did, a joyful light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed +over her visage; and "Mr. Hilary!" she said as simply and hospitably as +if their last parting had not been on terms of enmity that nothing could +clear up or explain away.</p> + +<p>He ran forward and caught her hand. "Oh, I am so glad," he said. "I was +going out to see you about something—very important; and I might have +missed you."</p> + +<p>"No. I was just coming to the doctor's, and then I was going back. My +sister isn't at all well, and I thought she'd better see the doctor."</p> + +<p>"It's nothing serious, I hope?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. I think she's a little worn out."'</p> + +<p>"I know!" said Matt, with intelligence, and nothing more was said +between them as to the cause or nature of Adeline's sickness. Matt asked +if he might go up the doctor's avenue with her, and they walked along +together under the mingling elm and maple tops, but he deferred the +matter he wished to speak of. They found a little girl playing in the +road near the house, and Sue asked, "Is your father at home, Idella?"</p> + +<p>"Mamma is at home," said the child. She ran forward, calling toward the +open doors and windows, "Mamma! Mamma! Here's a lady!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't their child," Sue explained. "It's the daughter of the +minister who was killed on the railroad, here, a year or two ago—a very +strange man, Mr. Peck."</p> + +<p>"I have heard Wade speak of him," said Matt.</p> + +<p>A handsome and very happy looking woman came to the door, and stilled +the little one's boisterous proclamation to the hoarse whisper of, "A +lady! A lady!" as she took her hand; but she did not rebuke or correct +her.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Mrs. Morrell," said Suzette, with rather a haughty +distance; but Matt felt that she kept aloof with the pride of a person +who comes from an infected house, and will not put herself at the risk +of avoidance. "I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my sister. She isn't +well. Will you kindly ask him to call?"</p> + +<p>"I will send him as soon as he comes," said Mrs. Morrell, giving Matt +that glance of liking which no good woman could withhold. "Unless," she +added, "you would like to come in and wait for him."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, no," said Suzette. "I must go back to her. Good-by."</p> + +<p>"Good-by!" said Mrs. Morrell.</p> + +<p>Matt raised his hat and silently bowed; but as they turned away, he said +to Suzette, "What a happy face! What a lovely face! What a <i>good</i> face!"</p> + +<p>"She is a very good woman," said the girl. "She has been very kind to +us. But so has everybody. I couldn't have believed it." In fact, it was +only the kindness of their neighbors that had come near the defaulter's +daughters; the harshness and the hate had kept away.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't they be kind?" Matt demanded, with his heart instantly in +his throat. "I can't imagine—at such a time—Don't you know that I love +you?" he entreated, as if that exactly followed; there was, perhaps, a +subtle spiritual sequence, transcending all order of logic in the +expression of his passion.</p> + +<p>She looked at him over her shoulder as he walked by her side, and said, +with neither surprise nor joy, "How can you say such a thing to me?"</p> + +<p>"Because it is true! Because I can't help it! Because I wish to be +everything to you, and I have to begin by saying that. But don't answer +me now; you need never answer me. I only wish you to use me as you would +use some one who loved you beyond anything on earth,—as freely as that, +and yet not be bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do that? I +mean, can you feel, 'This is my best friend, the truest friend that any +one can have, and I will let him do anything and everything he wishes +for me.' Can you do that,—say that?"</p> + +<p>"But how could I do that? I don't understand you!" she said, faintly.</p> + +<p>"Don't you? I am so glad you don't drive me from you—"</p> + +<p>"I? <i>You!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I was afraid—But now we can speak reasonably about it; I don't see why +people shouldn't. I know it's shocking to speak to you of such a thing +at such a time. It's dreadful; and yet I can't feel wrong to have done +it! No! If it's as sacred as it seems to me when I think of it, then it +couldn't be wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you; and I +want you some day for my wife. Yes! But don't answer that now! If you +never answer me, or if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me +be your true lover, while I can, and to do everything that your accepted +lover could, whether you ever look at me again or not. Couldn't you do +that?"</p> + +<p>"You know I couldn't," she answered, simply.</p> + +<p>"Couldn't you?" he asked, and he fell into a forlorn silence, as if he +could not say anything more. He forced her to take the word by asking, +"Then you are offended with me?"</p> + +<p>"How could I be?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—"</p> + +<p>"It's what any girl might be glad of—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my—"</p> + +<p>"And I am not so silly as to think there can be a wrong time for it. If +there were, you would make it right, if you chose it. You couldn't do +anything I should think wrong. And I—I—love you, too—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Suzette!" he called wildly, as if she were a great way off. It +seemed to him his heart would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and +tried to seize her hand.</p> + +<p>She slipped by him, with a pathetic "Don't! But you know I never could +be your wife. You <i>know</i> that."</p> + +<p>"I don't know it. Why shouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Because I couldn't bring my father's shame on my husband."</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't touch me, any more than it touches you!"</p> + +<p>"It would touch your father and mother—and Louise."</p> + +<p>"They all admire you and honor you. They think you're everything that's +true and grand."</p> + +<p>"Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to myself. I know how; +and I shall not give way. Don't think it!"</p> + +<p>"You will do what is right. I shall think that."</p> + +<p>"Don't praise me! I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>"But I love you, and how can I help praising you? And if you love me—"</p> + +<p>"I do. I do, with all my heart." She turned and gave him an impassioned +look from the height of her inapproachability.</p> + +<p>"Then I won't ask you to be my wife, Suzette! I know how you feel; I +won't be such a liar as to pretend I don't. And I will respect your +feeling, as the holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, we will be +engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall promise nothing but to +let me help you all I can, for our love's sake, and I will promise never +to speak to you of our love again. That shall be our secret—our +engagement. Will you promise?"</p> + +<p>"It will be hard for you," she said, with a pitying look, which perhaps +tried him as sorely as anything could.</p> + +<p>"Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you."</p> + +<p>They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, that he knew had +tears in them, "I promise."</p> + +<p>"And I promise, too," he said.</p> + +<p>She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, and he held its slim +fingers in his right a moment, and then let it drop. They both honestly +thought they had got the better of that which laughs from its +innumerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices to escape it.</p> + +<p>"And now," he said, "I want to talk to you about what brought me over +here to-day. I thought at first that I was only going to see your +lawyer."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIIIB" id="XVIIIB"></a>XVIII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt felt that he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking +to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. +Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust +established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was +any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater +forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing +as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both +insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the +fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for +otherwise unaccountable things.</p> + +<p>"It is what my sister has always said," Sue eagerly assented to his +suggestion of this theory. "I suppose it's what I've always believed, +too, somehow, or I couldn't have lived."</p> + +<p>"Yes; yes, it <i>must</i> be so," Matt insisted. "But now the question is how +to reach him, and make some beginning of the end with him. I suppose +it's the suspense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister +down?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—that and what we ought to do about giving up the property. +We—quarrelled about that at first; we couldn't see it alike; but now +I've yielded; we've both yielded; and we don't know what to do."</p> + +<p>"We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in connection with +something I've just heard of." He told her of Pinney's scheme, and he +said, "We must see if we can't turn it to account."</p> + +<p>They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, but she began it +herself. She looked very old and frail, as she sat nervously rocking +herself in a corner of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, +anxious note. "What I think is, that now we know father is alive, we +oughtn't to do anything about the property without hearing from him. It +stands to reason, don't you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he would +know better than anybody else, what we ought to do. Any rate, I think we +ought to wait and consult with him about it, and see what he says. The +property belonged to mother in the first place, and he mightn't like to +have us part with it."</p> + +<p>"I don't think you need trouble about that, now, Miss Northwick," said +Matt. "Nothing need be done about the property at present."</p> + +<p>"But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what Sue thinks is right, +and to see it just in the light she does; and I've told her I would do +exactly as she said about it; but now she won't say; and so I think +we've got to wait and hear from father. Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, till you hear from +him," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I knew you would," said the old maid, "and if Sue will be ruled by me, +she'll see that it will all turn out right. I know father, and I know +he'll want to do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. He is +a person who could never bear to wrong any one out of a cent."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Sue, "we will do what Mr. Hilary says; and now, try not to +worry about it any more," she coaxed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! It's well enough to say not to worry <i>now</i>, when my mind's got +going on it," said the old maid, querulously; she flung her weak frame +against the chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. "But +if you'd agreed with me in the first place, it wouldn't have come to +this. Now I'm all broken down, and I don't know <i>when</i> I shall be well +again."</p> + +<p>It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted the cushion to her +sister's shoulders, while Adeline's tongue ran helplessly on. "You were +so headstrong and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were just +like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces against you, and you +wouldn't move."</p> + +<p>"I was wrong," said the proud girl, meekly.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Adeline whimpered, "I hate to make an exhibition before Mr. +Hilary, as much as any one, but I can't help it; no, I can't. My nerves +are <i>all</i> gone."</p> + +<p>The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of doors, to leave her, for +the first few confidential moments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, +alone with the physician. There was a little sequestered space among the +avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward which he led the way, +but the girl would not sit down. She stood with her arms fallen at her +side, and looked him steadily in the face.</p> + +<p>"It's all true that she said of me. I set myself like a rock against +her. I have made her sick, and if she died, I should be her murderer!"</p> + +<p>He put his arms round her, and folded her to his heart. "Oh, my love, my +love, my love!" he lamented and exulted over her.</p> + +<p>She did not try to resist; she let her arms hang at her side; she said, +"Is <i>this</i> the way we keep our word?—Already!"</p> + +<p>"Our word was made to be broken; we must have meant it so. I'm glad we +could break it so soon. Now I can truly help you; now that you are to be +my wife."</p> + +<p>She did not gainsay him, but she asked, "What will you think when you +know—you must have known that I used to care for some else; but he +never cared for me? It ought to make you despise me; it made me despise +myself! But it is true. I did care all the world for him, once. <i>Now</i> +will you say—"</p> + +<p>"Now, more than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his +own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from +under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them in +mid-heaven.</p> + +<p>"Suzette!" Adeline's voice called from within. "Suzette! Where are you?"</p> + +<p>Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She came out again in a +little while, and said that the doctor thought Adeline had better go to +bed for a day or two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all +excitement. "We mustn't talk before her any more, and you mustn't stay +any longer."</p> + +<p>He accepted the authority she instinctively assumed over him, and found +his dismissal already of the order of things. He said, "Yes, I'll go at +once. But about—"</p> + +<p>She put a card into his hand. "You can see Mr. Putney, and whatever you +and he think best, will <i>be</i> best. Haven't you been our good angel ever +since—Oh, I'm not half good enough for you, and I shouldn't be, even if +there were no stain—"</p> + +<p>"Stop!" he said; he caught her hand, and pulled her toward him.</p> + +<p>The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, "There's nothing to be +anxious about, but she really must have quiet. I'll send Mrs. Morrell +down to see you, after tea. She's quiet itself."</p> + +<p>Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again in parting.</p> + +<p>"Will you give me a lift, doctor, if you're going toward town?"</p> + +<p>"Get in," said the doctor.</p> + +<p>Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off together.</p> + +<p>Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read: "Mr. Putney: Please talk +to Mr. Hilary as you would to my sister or me." Suzette's printed name +served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket-book, and then he +said, "What sort of man is Mr. Putney, doctor?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney," said the doctor, with a twinkle of his blue eyes, "is one +of those uncommon people who have enemies. He has a good many because +he's a man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But he's his own +worst enemy, because from time to time he gets drunk."</p> + +<p>"A character," said Matt. "Do you think he's a safe one? Doesn't his +getting drunk from time to time interfere with his usefulness?"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said the doctor. "It's bad for him; but I think it's +slowly getting better. Yes, decidedly. It's very extraordinary, but ever +since he's been in charge of the Miss Northwicks' interests—"</p> + +<p>"Yes; <i>that's</i> what I was thinking of."</p> + +<p>"He's kept perfectly straight. It's as if the responsibilities had +steadied him."</p> + +<p>"But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge of one that's +gathering violence from its postponement," Matt suggested.</p> + +<p>"I think not," said the doctor after a moment. "But of course I can't +tell."</p> + +<p>"They trust him so implicitly," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I know," said the doctor. "And I know that he's entirely devoted to +them. The fact is, Putney's a very dear friend of mine."</p> + +<p>"Oh, excuse me—"</p> + +<p>"No, no!" The doctor stayed Matt's apologies. "I understand just what +you mean. He disliked their father very much. He was principled against +him as a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the imaginations +of all the poor people about him who wanted to be like him—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's rather good," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" asked the doctor, looking round at him. "Well! I +supposed you would be all the other way. Well! What I was saying was +that Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father's chief victims. +I think he was touched by their coming to him, and has pitied them. The +impression is that he's managed their affairs very well; I don't know +about such things; but I know he's managed them honorably; I would stake +my life on it; and I believe he'll hold out straight to the last. I +suppose," the doctor conjectured, at the end, "that they will try to get +at Northwick now, and arrange with his creditors for his return."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind telling you," said Matt, "that it's been tried and failed. +The State's attorney insists that he shall come back and stand his +trial, first of all."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said the doctor.</p> + +<p>"Of course, that's right from the legal point of view. But in the +meantime, nobody knows where Mr. Northwick is."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said the doctor, "it would have been better for him not to +have written that letter."</p> + +<p>"It's hard to say," Matt answered. "I thought so, too, at first. I +thought it was cowardly and selfish of him to take away his children's +superstition about his honesty. You knew that they held to that through +all?"</p> + +<p>"Most touching thing in the world," said the doctor, leaning forward to +push a fly off his horse with the limp point of his whip. "That poor old +maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it myself."</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I should hold him severely accountable. And I'm not +sure now that I should condemn him for writing that letter. It must have +been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say he <i>had</i> to do it. +It's conceivable that if he had kept it on his mind any longer, his mind +would have given way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another +superstition—if it is a superstition. What do you think, doctor? Do you +believe that there was a mental twist in him?"</p> + +<p>"There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. What they do is so +senseless—so insane. I suppose that's the true theory of all crime. But +it won't do to act upon it, yet awhile."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of enjoyment at the +notion. "Above all, it won't do to let the defaulters act upon that +theory, and apply for admission to the insane asylums instead of taking +the express for Canada, when they're found out."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Matt. He wondered at himself for being able to analyze +the offence of Suzette's father so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could +not relate the thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all; +he could only realize their kindred in her share of his suffering.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIXB" id="XIXB"></a>XIX.</h2> + + +<p>Putney accepted Suzette's authorization of Matt with apparent +unconsciousness of anything but its immediate meaning, and they talked +Pinney's scheme intimately over together. In the end, it still remained +a question whether the energies of such an investigator could be +confined to the discovery of Northwick's whereabouts; whether his +newspaper instincts would not be too strong for any sense of personal +advantage that could be appealed to in him. They both believed that it +would not be long before Northwick followed up the publication of his +letter by some communication with his family.</p> + +<p>But time began to go by again, and Northwick made no further sign; the +flurry of activity which his letter had called out in the detectives +came to nothing. Their search was not very strenuous; Northwick's +creditors were of various minds as to the amount of money he had carried +away with him. Every one knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he +could not be molested there; and it seemed very improbable that he could +be persuaded to put himself within reach of the law. The law had no +terms to offer him, and there was really nothing to be done.</p> + +<p>Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when he held that they +must wait Northwick's motion. He professed himself willing to wait as +long as Northwick chose, though he thought they would not have to wait +long, and he contended for a theory of the man's whole performance which +he said he should like to have tested before a jury.</p> + +<p>Matt could not make out how much he really meant by saying that +Northwick could be defended very fairly on the ground of insanity; and +that he would enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common thing to +show that a murderer was insane; why not a defaulter? Tilted back in his +chair, with one leg over the corner of his table, and changing the +tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, the +lawyer outlined the argument which he said could be made very effective. +There was the fact to begin with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, +and had no need of more money when he began to speculate; Putney held +that this want of motive could be made a strong point; and that the +reckless, almost open, way in which Northwick used the company's money, +when he began to borrow, was proof in itself of unsound mind: apparently +he had no sense whatever of <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>, especially <i>tuum</i>. Then, +the total collapse of the man when he was found out; his flight without +an effort to retrieve himself, although his shortage was by no means +hopelessly vast, and could have been almost made up by skilful use of +the credit that Northwick could command, was another evidence of shaken +reason. But besides all this, there was his behavior since he left home. +He had been absent nearly five months, and in that time he had made no +attempt whatever to communicate with his family, although he must have +known that it was perfectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who +was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singularly attached to his +home; yet he had remained all that time in voluntary exile, and he had +left them in entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they +could accept the probability of his death by a horrible casualty. This +inversion of the natural character of a man was one of the most striking +phenomena of insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, +maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously with a jury.</p> + +<p>Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with +Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. +Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every +wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of the +fact.</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though I think I could make +out a strong case for Brother Northwick," said Putney. He seemed to +enter into it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of +Matt's uneasiness, and chose to torment him; but then apparently he +changed his mind, and dealt with other aspects of their common interest +so seriously and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with a +regret that he could not remove the last barrier between them, and tell +the lawyer that he concerned himself so anxiously in the affairs of that +wretched defaulter because his dearest hope was that the daughter of the +criminal would some day be his wife.</p> + +<p>But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to those who were +nearest him; and how to shape it in terms that would convey the fact and +yet hide the repulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased +him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome riddle. He +understood why his love for Suzette Northwick must be grievous to his +father and mother; how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in +some sort disastrous; and yet he felt that if there was anything more +sacred than another in the world for him, it was that love, he must be +true to it at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must begin by +being perfectly frank with those whom it would afflict, and confessing +to himself all its difficulties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of +dealing with his father; they were both men, and they could look at it +from the man's point of view. Besides, his father really cared little +what people would say; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not +change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see so much good in it +that he would be promptly and finally reconciled.</p> + +<p>But Matt knew that his mother was of another make, and that the blow +would be much harder for her to bear; his problem was how to lighten it. +Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten it, but let it +fall at once, and trust to her affection and good sense for the rest. +But when he found himself alone with her that night, he began by making +play and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in this perverse +effort that he was not aware of some such effort on her part, till she +suddenly dropped it, and said, "Matt, there is something I wish to speak +to you about—very seriously."</p> + +<p>His heart jumped into his throat, but he said "Well?" and she went on.</p> + +<p>"Louise tells me that you think of bringing this young man down to the +shore with you when you come to see us next week."</p> + +<p>"Maxwell? I thought the change might do him good; yes," said Matt, with +a cowardly joy in his escape from the worst he feared. He thought she +was going to speak to him of Suzette.</p> + +<p>She said, "I don't wish you to bring him. I don't wish Louise to see him +again after she leaves this place—ever again. She is fascinated with +him."</p> + +<p>"Fascinated?"</p> + +<p>"I can't call it anything else. I don't say that she's in love; but +there's no question but she's allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her +fancy to be taken; the two strongest things in her—in most girls. I +want to break it all up."</p> + +<p>"But do you think—"</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i>. It isn't that she's with him at every moment, but that her +thoughts are with him when they're apart. He puzzles her; he piques her; +she's always talking and asking about him. It's their difference in +everything that does it. I don't mean to say that her heart is touched, +and I don't intend it shall be. So, you mustn't ask him to the shore +with you, and if you've asked him already, you must get out of it. If +you think he needs sea air, you can get him board at some of the +resorts. But not near us." She asked, in default of any response from +her son, "You <i>don't</i> think, Matt, it would be well for the acquaintance +to go on?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't mother; you're quite right as to that," said Matt, "if +you're not mistaken in supposing—"</p> + +<p>"I'm not; you may depend upon it. And I'm glad you can see the matter +from my point of view. It is all very well for you to have your queer +opinions, and even to live them. I think it's all ridiculous; but your +father and I both respect you for your sincerity, though your course has +been a great disappointment to us."</p> + +<p>"I know that, mother," said Matt, groaning in spirit to think how much +worse the disappointment he was meditating must be, and feeling himself +dishonest and cowardly, through and through.</p> + +<p>"But I feel sure," Mrs. Hilary went on, "that when it's a question of +your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, +and in the surroundings she had always been used to."</p> + +<p>"I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise's ideas," +said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface.</p> + +<p>"Ideas!" cried his mother. "She <i>has</i> no ideas. She merely has impulses, +and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and +breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she +would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each +other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, +and all that; and I shouldn't at all mind his being poor. I never minded +Cyril Wade's being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because +he was one of ourselves; and this young man—Matt, you <i>can't</i> pretend, +that with all his intellectual qualities, he's what one calls a +gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all +his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn't be; and +Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have +all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don't deny that he +has—"</p> + +<p>"He has some very serious faults," Matt interrupted.</p> + +<p>"We all have," said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. "But he might be a perfect +saint—a hero—a martyr, and if he wasn't what one calls a gentleman, +don't you see? We can't be frank about such things, here, because we +live in a republic; but—"</p> + +<p>"We get there, just the same," said Matt, with unwonted slang.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said his mother. "That is what I mean."</p> + +<p>"And you're quite right, as to the facts, mother." He got up, and began +to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were +sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting +to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber +where Maxwell was probably writing. "The self-made man can never be the +society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more +money, more virtue, but he's a kind of inferior, and he betrays his +inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he's successful, he's so +because he's been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of +life. That's one reason why I say that there oughtn't to <i>be</i> any battle +of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages—I see that. He's +often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his +bread. He isn't Louise's social equal; I quite agree with you there, +mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in +danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. +I'm sorry for Maxwell, but I don't pity him, especially. He bears the +penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him +stand it! But there are others—weaker, unhappier—Mother! You haven't +asked me yet about—the Northwicks." Matt stopped in front of her chair, +and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his +acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her +perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She +was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more +and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure +to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an +expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts +and theories.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "I expected to do that. You know I've seen them so very +lately, and with this about Louise on my mind—How are they? That poor +Adeline—I'm afraid it's killing her. Were you able to do anything for +them?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I don't know," the young man sighed. "They have to suffer for their +misfortunes, too."</p> + +<p>"It seems to be the order of Providence," said Mrs. Hilary, with the +resignation of the philosophical spectator.</p> + +<p>"No!" Matt protested. "It's the disorder of improvidence. There's +nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. +Those women are perfectly innocent; they've only wished to do right, and +tried to do it; but they're under a ban the same as if they had shared +their father's guilt. They have no friends—"</p> + +<p>"Well, Matt," said his mother, with dignity, "I think you can hardly say +that. I'm sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to +reproach ourselves with. I think we've gone to the extreme to show our +good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don't like +your saying this!"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon. I certainly don't blame you, or Louise, or father. I +blame myself—for cowardice—for—for unworthiness in being afraid to +say—to tell you—Mother," he burst out suddenly, after a halt, "I've +asked Suzette Northwick to marry me."</p> + +<p>Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the +effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing +presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and +now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and +Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, +so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed +wholly incredible.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXB" id="XXB"></a>XX.</h2> + + +<p>The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary +heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in +making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the +affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, +and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a +personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she +liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and +similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest +kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them +to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had +them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was +more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her +husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she +had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun +to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial +slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer +him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal +tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts +as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of +doctrine.</p> + +<p>"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his +mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know +that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected +her to refuse me."</p> + +<p>"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I +can't imagine it."</p> + +<p>"Can't imagine it? <i>I</i> can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother +did not seem to notice his resentment.</p> + +<p>"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?"</p> + +<p>"I wish you to say everything, mother—all that you feel and +think—about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think—I +can't <i>let</i> you think—that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed +me to suppose that my offer would be welcome."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for +that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he +allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no +doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride."</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself. +But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I +know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it +can't be helped."</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always +imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur +of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people +who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted.</p> + +<p>"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family +connections that every one else has—"</p> + +<p>"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a +smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was +making.</p> + +<p>"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to +see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the +princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent +creature."</p> + +<p>Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly +reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to +overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled:</p> + +<p>"She is—she <i>is</i>—angelically!"</p> + +<p>"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a +good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more +to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about +their property, than for wishing to give it up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully.</p> + +<p>"But there, <i>there</i> is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the +highest position. But her father! What will people say?"</p> + +<p>"Need we mind that, mother?"</p> + +<p>"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were—if he had +never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do +next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!"</p> + +<p>"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately.</p> + +<p>"Matt!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength +for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I +should be glad to stand by him!"</p> + +<p>"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel +about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer +anything more on that wretch's account?"</p> + +<p>"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my +engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass +him—compromise him, even—"</p> + +<p>"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know +best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or +mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I +feel—"</p> + +<p>"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe +he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to +make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into +State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your +marriage."</p> + +<p>Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not +perceive so keenly.</p> + +<p>"I don't intend that, exactly."</p> + +<p>"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing +is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone."</p> + +<p>"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it +up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the +matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to +face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette +see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is +guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But +he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to +be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, +his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether +he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty—"</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious +than a self-confessed defaulter's."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't say—"</p> + +<p>"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty +with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, +though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very +differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, +nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father +was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him."</p> + +<p>Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world +enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She +will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of +what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way."</p> + +<p>"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose +it <i>is</i> here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you +hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point +Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail +for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you +here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you +marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father +into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home."</p> + +<p>"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her +to run from it."</p> + +<p>"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, +if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he +dies. Good-night."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had +sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved +one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not +rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in +dazzling illusions.</p> + +<p>The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; +he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew +how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his +father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt +instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more +unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.</p> + +<p>But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all +his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of +meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had +done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said +it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he +said, "I shall have to take some action about it."</p> + +<p>"How, action?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes +known—and you wish it to be known, of course—"</p> + +<p>"Of course!"</p> + +<p>"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"As president of the Board, I'm <i>ex officio</i> his enemy and persecutor. +It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that +after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It +wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board +altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a +cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty."</p> + +<p>"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position +so much."</p> + +<p>Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we +discovered Northwick's obliquities—excuse me!"</p> + +<p>Matt blushed. "Oh, I know he's oblique, as such things go."</p> + +<p>"In fact," his father resumed, "I shall be glad to be out of it, and I +don't think there'll be much opposition to my going out; I know that +there's a growing feeling against me in the Board. I <i>have</i> tried to +carry water on both shoulders. I've made the effort honestly; but the +effect hasn't been good. I couldn't keep my heart out of it; from the +very first I pitied that poor devil's children so that I got him and +gave him all the chance I could."</p> + +<p>"That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like—"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he +might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I'm +afraid this is what I've hoped, in spite of myself," said Hilary.</p> + +<p>This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. +He could only say, "I don't believe you've ever allowed that hope to +interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment."</p> + +<p>"No; but I've had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I've +had it. I've felt that; and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm not +ashamed of your choice, Matt; I'm proud of it. The thing gave me a shock +at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she's all +kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why +she hasn't done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don't believe +people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. +But if they do, they may do it, and be damned."</p> + +<p>Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, +upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure +that he exchanged with his son.</p> + +<p>"We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by +that—We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion +where he is than we have."</p> + +<p>"No; not the least," said Matt. "I think it's the uncertainty that's +preying upon Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"The man's behaving like a confounded lunatic," said Hilary.</p> + +<p>The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, "That's their lawyer's +theory of him—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you've <i>seen</i> him, have you? Odd chap."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after—after—at the request of +Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell's heard +of from a brother reporter," and Matt now unfolded Pinney's plan to his +father, and showed his letter.</p> + +<p>Hilary looked from it at his son. "You don't mean that this is the +blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the <i>Events</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; the same fellow. But as to blackguard—"</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it +would be a kind of insult to those poor girls."</p> + +<p>"I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, I don't think he +knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself. Maxwell says he +wouldn't know. And besides, we can't help ourselves. If he doesn't go +for us, he will go for himself. We <i>must</i> employ him. He's a species of +<i>condottiere</i>; we can buy his allegiance with his service: and we must +forego the sentimental objection. I've gone all over it, and that's the +only conclusion."</p> + +<p>Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help +themselves, that they could not do better. He asked, "And what did their +lawyer think of it?"</p> + +<p>"He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better +wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his +family."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure of that," said Hilary. "If this fellow is such a fellow +as you say, I don't see why we shouldn't make use of him at once."</p> + +<p>"Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?" said Matt. "I think it +would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily—"</p> + +<p>"Come back?" said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than +this. "Nonsense! And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I +mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out +just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in +order to make up his shortage."</p> + +<p>Matt now perceived the extent of his father's purpose, and on its plane +he honored it.</p> + +<p>"Father, you're splendid!"</p> + +<p>"Stuff! I'm in a corner. What else is there to do? What less could we +do? What's the money for, if it isn't to—" Hilary choked with the +emotion that filled him at the sight of his son's face.</p> + +<p>Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is +the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a +daughter's faith in him; for a son <i>knows</i> whether his father is good or +not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son's opinion +than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary +valued his judgment as something ideal.</p> + +<p>After a moment he asked, "Can this fellow be got at?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I imagine very readily."</p> + +<p>"What did Maxwell say about him, generally?"</p> + +<p>"Generally, that he's not at all a bad kind of fellow. He's a reporter +by nature, and he's a detective upon instinct. He's done some amateur +detective work, as many reporters do—according to Maxwell's account. +The two things run together—and he's very shrewd and capable in his +way. He's going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to +be worth his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion +is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of +control. He's a mixture, like everybody else. He's devotedly fond of his +wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air—"</p> + +<p>"My idea," Hilary interrupted, "would be not to wait for the Social +Science Convention, but to send this—"</p> + +<p>"Pinney."</p> + +<p>"Pinney at once. Will you see him?"</p> + +<p>"If you have made up your mind."</p> + +<p>"I've made up my mind. But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven's +sake bind him by all that's sacred—if there's anything sacred to +him—not to give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and offer him a +pension for his widow afterwards."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIB" id="XXIB"></a>XXI.</h2> + + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, the prophecy in +amplitude of what her son might come to be if he did not carry the +activities of youth into his later life. She, for her part, was long +past such activities; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass grow +upon any path she had taken. She appointed the afternoon of the day +following her talk with Matt for leaving the farm and going to the +shore; Louise was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it best +to tell her why, when the girl came to say good-night, and to announce +that her packing was finished.</p> + +<p>"But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, mamma, all of a +sudden?"</p> + +<p>"We are in a hurry because—don't you really know, Louise?—because in +the crazy atmosphere of this house, one loses the sense of—of +proportion—of differences."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you rather—Emersonian, mamma?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think so, my dear? Matt's queer notions infect everybody; I +don't blame <i>you</i>, particularly; and the simple life he makes people +lead—by leading it himself, more than anything else—makes you think +that you could keep on living just as simply if you wished, everywhere."</p> + +<p>"It's very sweet—it's so restful," sighed the girl. "It makes you sick +of dinners and ashamed of dances."</p> + +<p>"But you must go back to them; you must go back to the world you belong +to; and you'd better not carry any queer habits back with you."</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> rather sphinx-like, mamma! Such habits, for instance, as?"</p> + +<p>"As Mr. Maxwell." The girl's face changed; her mother had touched the +quick. She went on, looking steadily at her daughter, "You know he +wouldn't do, there."</p> + +<p>"No; he wouldn't," said Louise, promptly; so mournfully, though, that +her mother's heart relented.</p> + +<p>"I've seen that you've become interested in him, Louise; that your fancy +is excited; he stimulates your curiosity. I don't wonder at it! He <i>is</i> +very interesting. He makes you feel his power more than any other young +man I've met. He charms your imagination even when he shocks your +taste."</p> + +<p>"Yes; all that," said Louise, desolately.</p> + +<p>"But he does shock your taste?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes—not always."</p> + +<p>"Often enough, though, to make the difference that I'm afraid you'll +lose the sense of. Louise, I should be very sorry if I thought you were +at all—in love with that young man!"</p> + +<p>It seemed a question; Louise let her head droop, and answered with +another. "How should I know? He hasn't asked me."</p> + +<p>This vexed her mother. "Don't be trivial, don't be childish, my dear. +You don't need to be asked, though I'm exceedingly glad he <i>hasn't</i> +asked you, for now you can get away with a good conscience."</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure yet that I want to get away," said the girl, dreamily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are, my dear!" her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do +at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money +enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little +nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be +different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in +as different a world from yours as if it were another planet—I want you +to think over all the girls you know—all the <i>people</i> you know—and see +how many of them have married out of their own set, their own circle—we +might almost say, their own family. There isn't one!"</p> + +<p>"I've not said I wished to marry him, mamma."</p> + +<p>"No. But I wish you to realize just what it would be."</p> + +<p>"It would be something rather distinguished, if his dreams came true," +Louise suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," Mrs. Hilary admitted. She wished to be very, very +reasonable; very, very just; it was the only thing with a girl like +Louise; perhaps with any girl. "It would be distinguished, in a way. But +it wouldn't be distinguished in the society way; the only way you've +professed to care for. I know that we've always been an intellectual +community, and New-Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess +to think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We do invite them +somewhat, but I pass whole seasons without meeting them; and I don't +know that you could say that they are <i>of</i> society, even when they are +<i>in</i> it. If such a man has society connections, he's in society; but +he's there on account of his connections, not on account of his +achievements. This young man may become very distinguished, but he'll +always be rather queer; and he would put a society girl at odds with +society. His distinction would be public; it wouldn't be social."</p> + +<p>"Matt doesn't think society is worth minding," Louise said, casually.</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> do," returned her mother. "And Matt says that a man of this +young man's traditions might mortify you before society people."</p> + +<p>"Did Matt say that?" Louise demanded, angrily. "I will <i>speak</i> to Matt +about that! I should like to know what he means by it. I should like to +hear what he would say."</p> + +<p>"Very likely he would say that the society people were not worth +minding. You know his nonsense. If you agree with Matt, I've nothing +more to say, Louise; not a word. You can marry a mechanic or a +day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self-respect. I've only been +talking to you on the plane where I've always understood you wished to +be taken. But if you don't, then I can't help it. You must understand, +though, and understand distinctly, that you can't live on two levels; +the world won't let you. Either you must be in the world and of it +entirely; or you must discard its criterions, and form your own, and +hover about in a sort of Bohemian limbo on its outskirts; or you must +give it up altogether." Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where she had +been sitting, and said, "Now I'm going to bed. And I want you to think +this all carefully over, Louise. I don't blame you for it: and I wish +nothing but your good and happiness—yours and Matt's, both. But I must +say you've been pretty difficult children to provide for. Do you know +what Matt has been doing?" Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, but +she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last.</p> + +<p>"Something new about the Northwicks?"</p> + +<p>"Very decidedly—or about one of them. He's offered himself to Suzette."</p> + +<p>"How grand! How perfectly magnificent! Then she can give up her property +at once, and Matt can take care of her and Adeline both."</p> + +<p>"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a +capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to +live here on the farm with him."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could +she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people +thought?"</p> + +<p>"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it +comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much +what her father had been—that is, society people wouldn't, <i>as</i> society +people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and +she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be +talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived +down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage +of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us +off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some +farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say +'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is +indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must +confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged."</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>were</i> you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along +that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy +would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And +then, Suzette <i>is</i> a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's +just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of <i>course</i> he would be taken with +her. I'm not a <i>bit</i> surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the +world."</p> + +<p>"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has +seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. +Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year."</p> + +<p>Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing.</p> + +<p>"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in +chains, long enough to give away the bride?"</p> + +<p>"Louise!" said her mother.</p> + +<p>Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, +"for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's +money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no +matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society +man—"</p> + +<p>"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. +Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell—"</p> + +<p>"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite +rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, +which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. +She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the +light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated +it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the +moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor.</p> + +<p>After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell +waiting for her on the piazza.</p> + +<p>"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon +train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed +with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go +over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, +for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any +reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with +her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to +speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and +tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, +"Will you?"</p> + +<p>"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing."</p> + +<p>"Well, you ought to like this."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating."</p> + +<p>They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture +and the pines.</p> + +<p>"Before I say it, you must <i>promise</i> to take it in the right way," she +said.</p> + +<p>He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?"</p> + +<p>"Because—because I wish you to so much!"</p> + +<p>"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to +behave myself, under ordinary provocation?"</p> + +<p>"You may think the provocation is extraordinary."</p> + +<p>"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to +scramble after him.</p> + +<p>She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he +would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, +rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care +for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman +could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not +go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as +Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. +She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit +beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock +swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs +over them.</p> + +<p>"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence.</p> + +<p>"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for +you."</p> + +<p>"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when +we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?"</p> + +<p>"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that."</p> + +<p>"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were."</p> + +<p>"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Because—because you seemed very worldly."</p> + +<p>"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with +his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I +take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm +going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss +Hilary."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of +life Matt's trying to live is better?"</p> + +<p>"Your brother is the best man I ever knew—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!"</p> + +<p>"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means +business."</p> + +<p>"And can't you think—can't you wish—for anything better than the life +that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you +ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away +from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't +you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?"</p> + +<p>"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy +godmother?" asked Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. +"You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile.</p> + +<p>"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile +that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if +I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen +what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in +the summer."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go +and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell"—she mechanically +gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to +the world again."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going +to make of my patience, my docility—"</p> + +<p>She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. +Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house +with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the +hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength +for the battle of life as fast as you can."</p> + +<p>She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, +felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that +she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, +and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her +capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping +meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell +her his love.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; +but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IC" id="IC"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and +possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really +expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper +sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the +interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he +said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and +he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving +that his account of the defalcation in the <i>Events</i> could have been +displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He +referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly +agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object.</p> + +<p>It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to +Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney +was disappointed in the <i>Events'</i> people; they had not seen his proposed +excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an +enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to +invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. +This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another +calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some +minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with +gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who +attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a +partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, +though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for +it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and +which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most +valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she +did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she +believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she +would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were +lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long +run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that +she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to +look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That +would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better +than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much +good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay +quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that +was necessary.</p> + +<p>"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get +him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both +sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as +a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies—"</p> + +<p>"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked +thing! So dishonorable!"</p> + +<p>"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney.</p> + +<p>"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I <i>won't</i>. But +if you go as a detective, <i>go</i> as a detective; and if you go as their +friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try +to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with +you; so there!"</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you +needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for +practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter +line. You won't object to that?"</p> + +<p>"No; I won't object to that."</p> + +<p>They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they +were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had +seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At +Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick +had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him +in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search +in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not +only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he +could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went +about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not +wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the +<i>Events</i>. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie +with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on +his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local +press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of +newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the +leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material +relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a +sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came +to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but +it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very +well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not +in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned +that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because +they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at +home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence +in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by +their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had +fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a +different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who +had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no +domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. +These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too +proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study +in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They +did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed +to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in +tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the +confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent +temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes +in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said +they had no statement to make.</p> + +<p>It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man +he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, +and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, +Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice +of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather +comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the +local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it +was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like +himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest +defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should +be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if +at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he +did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but +he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his +way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the <i>Events</i> was posted. +This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone +unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he +came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such +friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, +that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to +feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them +behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing +what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an +English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down +the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in +compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by +any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the +baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting +into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the +calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through +the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as +soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, +and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, +and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole +enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had +said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means +of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it +the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he +could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish +view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and +nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only +right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the +Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; +good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which +he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and +thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only +to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found +it in lasting prosperity.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIC" id="IIC"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left +his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number +of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had +already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not +playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale +straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal +speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were +Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was +national as well as what was individual in his talk.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that +fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his +soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip +out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got +tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the +spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to +go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; +but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall +into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. +Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'"</p> + +<p>One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to +invest."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of +thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old +Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and <i>he</i> would +be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, +and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him."</p> + +<p>"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even +go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of +the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might +have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, +and the thousand-dollar bills—there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau +says—were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had +no faith in Oiseau—knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just +putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left +him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. +Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind +of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them +must bring money away with them, and there are business openings +everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here."</p> + +<p>"That <i>is</i> odd," said the Canadian.</p> + +<p>"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't +know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, +except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the +only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was +a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes +to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply +rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a +safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's +business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been +able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and +he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just +<i>couldn't</i>. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend +to respect it. I can imagine just how the man <i>trembled</i> to go into some +speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. +But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he +gets away with it, and he can't risk it."</p> + +<p>"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you +could have got at him," said the Canadian.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock +in England."</p> + +<p>Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for +a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the +request as an overture to his acquaintance.</p> + +<p>"Brother Yank?" he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Boston."</p> + +<p>"Going over?"</p> + +<p>"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, +do you?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't," said Markham.</p> + +<p>"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney.</p> + +<p>Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But +I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little +article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's +Pinney."</p> + +<p>"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, +going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But +don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine."</p> + +<p>"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a +much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the +American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing +soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely +conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, +and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and +address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was +about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half +of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then +he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission +concerning Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash +off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted +acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt +the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire +in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who +knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish +now—yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me—at Rimouski. You'd better +look him up."</p> + +<p>"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'll <i>live</i> with him before +I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds."</p> + +<p>He had no trouble in finding Père Étienne, but after the first hopeful +encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found +him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at +Haha Bay. It became evident that Père Étienne took Pinney for a +detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for +Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he +was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison.</p> + +<p>Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's +caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his +authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's +acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their +parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after +several weeks, and Père Étienne knew where he was then living. But he +was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him +as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the +learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the +largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at +Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, +that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished +him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile.</p> + +<p>Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. André, +and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in +finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's +spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized +toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père +Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to +him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at +the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at +the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. +Northwick, I believe."</p> + +<p>It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since +Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when +he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was +suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much +so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face.</p> + +<p>"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of +taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and +of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. +Northwick, you won't open the letter."</p> + +<p>He handed him, not the letter which Père Étienne had given him, but the +letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he +recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter +tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched +it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of +the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," +he said, kindly, and turned away.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIIC" id="IIIC"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still +holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a +kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint.</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If +it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me +at once?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than +Pinney had expected to find him. "But—are they well? Is it—bad news?"</p> + +<p>"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read +the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it +was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring +him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by +the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and +built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain +nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, +seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, +apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a +little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his +wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she +said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he +unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look +sick."</p> + +<p>"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the +bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he +would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it +but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety +of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that +he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy +only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done +so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would +write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that +for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better +and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him.</p> + +<p>When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter +open in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that +had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the +hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully +established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant +to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people +ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city.</p> + +<p>Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of +the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to +take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir."</p> + +<p>Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting +mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to +speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how +Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, +and now he gave him the letter of Père Étienne, with a eulogy of the +priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how +Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly +recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the +postmark on his letter to the <i>Events</i> that gave him the notion of going +to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect +of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him +ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and +he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." +The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, +"I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different +way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I +believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never +believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable +he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he +went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that +you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a +little."</p> + +<p>As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his +wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not +help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with +Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral +suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the +conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the +making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of +those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a +reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one +of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his +best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his +promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with +accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this +matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own.</p> + +<p>"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and +he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter +as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's +nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but +he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew +just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect +for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing +to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make +out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a +growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and +conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by +the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression +concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's +opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work +exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault +in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the +situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight +were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was +concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary +machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came +within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had +been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no +light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love +from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had +not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and +anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about +them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, +and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive +circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. +The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not +broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary +criticised for it, and he told Northwick so.</p> + +<p>"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he +consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he +expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and +talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added.</p> + +<p>Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the +fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't +know anything about the way they're living?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they +were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what +they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. +My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as +they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in +the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of +yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in +that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home."</p> + +<p>Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a +name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not +in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch +engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick—"</p> + +<p>"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real +name!"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, +when he first takes another. It's natural."</p> + +<p>"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; +and then I was sick—They must have believed I was dead!"</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and +myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it +was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a +friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand +how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that +they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of +the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about +it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor +there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all +theories to the contrary—though <i>they</i> must have been pretty well +exploded by your letter to the <i>Events</i>—and the question is what answer +are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some +word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I +won't. But if I was in your place, I know what <i>I</i> should do."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep +silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face +became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is +doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute +misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer +soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a +quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must +have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly +because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which +he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his +guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, +Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between +them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for +nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself +and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to +perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in +this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain +amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not +misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them."</p> + +<p>"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter +despair, and an openness that he had not shown before.</p> + +<p>Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, +Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, +joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you +believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in +good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your +daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got +to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you +just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. But <i>I</i> think +you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for +nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all +you've brought with you,"—Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for +the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added—"and +more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when +it's needed. I can't say <i>how</i> I know it, for I don't exactly <i>know</i> how +I know it. But I do know it; and you know that <i>it's</i> for you to take +the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and +where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, +with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred +to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again."</p> + +<p>Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought +upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as +it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, +bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, +with a kind of severity.</p> + +<p>"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate +it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped—"</p> + +<p>"Then I <i>was</i> the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly +reflected—</p> + +<p>"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a +place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you +can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, +I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four +hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, +I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for +you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your +distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a +candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's +this?"</p> + +<p>A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly +approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur."</p> + +<p>"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to +join me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They +had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was +an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, +what's this?"</p> + +<p>"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't +been here for several years."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in +the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly +established in him.</p> + +<p>"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with +unresentful dignity.</p> + +<p>"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a +little English, after all the French you have around."</p> + +<p>"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father +Étienne."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and +weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did +not resent the help offered him.</p> + +<p>"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he +explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal."</p> + +<p>"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney.</p> + +<p>"No," said Northwick, briefly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IVC" id="IVC"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the +local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more +freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up +toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque +details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under +attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney +with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he +took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him +that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be +both fortune and fame to him.</p> + +<p>They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. +"What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?"</p> + +<p>Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the +time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour +each day came and went.</p> + +<p>"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still +looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I +to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off +suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as +safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts +are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they +can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you +say?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you."</p> + +<p>"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your +traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much +interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a +great deal better,—get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little +nurse in <i>this</i> world; and, as you <i>say</i>, you don't seem over and above +strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's +the <i>best</i> baby! I've heard that child cry just <i>once</i> since it was +born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of +tears; I believe we all do that; but <i>our</i> baby finished up the whole +crying-business on that occasion."</p> + +<p>With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed +Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with +himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services +to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his +helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it +a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney +could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his +things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making +interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to +describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in +Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk +gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied +it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, +and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. +Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; +Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when +he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick +man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him +comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were +closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and +there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer +yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went +and came so softly Pinney could not hear it.</p> + +<p>Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a +prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of +him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. +They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and +Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed +up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when +it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. +He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home +for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked +Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing.</p> + +<p>Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so +deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost +the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a +fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, +with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine +emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be +fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life +he needed it.</p> + +<p>"And I don't believe but what it <i>could</i> be fixed," he said. "I don't +know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the +friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume +there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those +things can always be appealed and continued and <i>nolle prossed</i>, and all +that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would +have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. +But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the +whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski +hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. +No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends +stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a +mere nominal sentence, if you got that."</p> + +<p>Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having +weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept +the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says +there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, +public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people +get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going +to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper +experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public +opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact +is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. +Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to +fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that +was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're +pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's +pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the +paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The +worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion +are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations +are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about +it, if you ain't too sleepy?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> rather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. +My! It don't seem as I <i>was</i> going back to my wife and baby. It seems +too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't +get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and +I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet."</p> + +<p>Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over +Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. +Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made +him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, +after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, +good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a +light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower +berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; +but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some +medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was +easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one +of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his +breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his +berth, and fell heavily asleep.</p> + +<p>He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be +lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying +down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled +the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick +lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned +courage to look, he found the berth empty.</p> + +<p>He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his +clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's +travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He +rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every +part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be +seen.</p> + +<p>He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said +since six o'clock. It was then eight.</p> + +<p>Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed +disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last +resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him +a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager.</p> + +<p>It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as +Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery.</p> + +<p>"Did you say anything about his going back?"</p> + +<p>"Why—in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully.</p> + +<p>"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, +and it's served you right."</p> + +<p>His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said +it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he +had better go out and get a doctor.</p> + +<p>It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could +be.</p> + +<p>"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was +putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior.</p> + +<p>"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, +coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, <i>do</i> go for the doctor!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VC" id="VC"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent +avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily +began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and +waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a +wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he +was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety +of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through +and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the +night.</p> + +<p>A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to +him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and +stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at +the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were +open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck +a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this +faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he +had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He +tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring +at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had +stolen out of it.</p> + +<p>One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he +stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the +change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and +he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every +detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, +and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the +desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the +doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and +hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the +stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself +that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic +expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was +nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search +of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might +well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of +risk to himself.</p> + +<p>He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of +the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured +face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last +night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it +gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze +his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper +die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, +and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns +showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the +coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment +through the window, and then vanished.</p> + +<p>Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some +homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his +confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps +sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind +reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come +and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the +action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer +before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; +it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless +charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against +him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family +one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of +them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door +without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and +looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the +bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair +which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him.</p> + +<p>It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a +lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his +children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and +he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone +again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to +light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window +he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on +the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man.</p> + +<p>"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, +anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, +'Lectra."</p> + +<p>Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known +Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman +beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. +Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the +least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, +especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and +deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a +knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for +mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did +not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for +a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick +felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. +Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be +dumned," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you +going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not +present; he stood so dumb and impassive.</p> + +<p>"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar +complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the +probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't +you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, +"lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, +and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, +anyhow?"</p> + +<p>Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him +carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his +stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, +anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this +because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to +another.</p> + +<p>His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the +piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to +speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he +stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to +make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, +"You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've +got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, +silently obeyed.</p> + +<p>"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence +which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I +blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be +afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you +against your will, you know."</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>guess</i> not," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. +"If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face +first. Bring him along, Elbridge."</p> + +<p>As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and +helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, +tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and +pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate.</p> + +<p>Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret +purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; +but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached +the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, +while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and +Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss +Northwick. If you're sure you're awake—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!"</p> + +<p>"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. +Don't call out—don't speak loud. There's somebody here—Come down, and +let him in."</p> + +<p>Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs +inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with +choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! +Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?"</p> + +<p>She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was +shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they +understood.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIC" id="VIC"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned +up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he +gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?"</p> + +<p>"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did +for them when their little boy died, if <i>he</i> has, and I <i>guess</i> he +hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?"</p> + +<p>"In the house. I was there."</p> + +<p>"But how did he know it?"</p> + +<p>"I had to have a light to see by."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what I +<i>should</i> have done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!"</p> + +<p>"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any +longer, when that fellow came with your letter."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he <i>found</i> you," she cried, joyfully. "I <i>knew</i> he would find you, +and I said so—Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a +cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it +always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise +Hilary bought it at the sale—I know she bought it—and gave it to me. +It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give +it up to the company."</p> + +<p>He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her +piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about +that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I—"</p> + +<p>"No! Of <i>course</i> you didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you +suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, +through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I +knew you were just overwrought."</p> + +<p>Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came +closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll +of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always +kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of +it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they <i>won't</i> let you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the +court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will +put you in prison."</p> + +<p>Northwick mechanically put the money back.</p> + +<p>"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I +have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that +there's never been any disgrace on!"</p> + +<p>"What—what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps +overhead.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, +breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and +called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, +come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be +hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; +the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you +be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton +comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we +don't mind it a bit, being alone here. I <i>did</i> want to go into the +farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right +in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than +being afraid; but we haven't <i>been</i> afraid; and the Newtons come all the +time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back—" She +stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, +as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, +lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to +let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what +Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and +glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary—oh, he's the +<i>best</i> young man!—and I guess they're going to be married just as soon +as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came +down."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not +appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll +speak to me?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Speak</i> to you!"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the +money, all but the little I've had to use—"</p> + +<p>There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in +the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she +flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and +kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with +a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not +simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them.</p> + +<p>Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over +her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their +lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity.</p> + +<p>Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed +to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She +praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for +advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that +last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She +praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for +doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the +Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and +she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there +never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she +wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. +He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and +Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!"</p> + +<p>"Go?" Adeline echoed.</p> + +<p>"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him.</p> + +<p>They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the +face.</p> + +<p>Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her +words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's <i>got</i> to go! Oh, Suzette, +let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!"</p> + +<p>"It's prison <i>there</i>" said Northwick. "Let me stay!"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What +makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as +anything, I do it."</p> + +<p>"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, +or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I +won't <i>let</i> you think of me!"</p> + +<p>"But what would they say—Mr. Hilary say—if they sent father to +prison?"</p> + +<p>Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trust +<i>him</i>, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes +to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make +him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, +that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what +they please."</p> + +<p>Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, +as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when +Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking +about! Father, tell her you don't <i>wish</i> to stay!"</p> + +<p>"I must go, Suzette; I had better go—"</p> + +<p>"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." +Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through +all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say +good-by! You've got to go, now—yes, you've <i>got</i> to!—but it won't be +for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and +now we can write—be sure you write, father, when you get back there; +or, you'd better telegraph—and we can arrange—I know we can—for you +to come home, and stay home."</p> + +<p>"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured.</p> + +<p>"It seems as if he wanted to <i>kill</i> me!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. +She took them away. "Well, <i>stay</i>, then!" she said.</p> + +<p>"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's +all right—all for the best. I'll go—"</p> + +<p>"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" +said Adeline.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will."</p> + +<p>"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together +in Canada, as well as here."</p> + +<p>Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; +their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any +of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And—and I want +to get back into our place."</p> + +<p>He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final +conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline +would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way +of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to +be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my +goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start +from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What +shall we do?"</p> + +<p>"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going +back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, +and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in +words.</p> + +<p>"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in +the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come +for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away."</p> + +<p>"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!"</p> + +<p>Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the +dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black +Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light.</p> + +<p>"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's +head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the +carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we <i>did</i>!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, +now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! +Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, +Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the +shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you—"</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped +up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going +to get the black colt's time out of the old mare."</p> + +<p>"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIC" id="VIIC"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some +anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was +safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for +himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He +had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in +helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put +himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the +stable after the horse was stolen.</p> + +<p>He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as +Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument +before breakfast.</p> + +<p>Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential +voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, +to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be +li'ble?"</p> + +<p>"Why?" asked Putney.</p> + +<p>"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately.</p> + +<p>"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought +his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and +you didn't let me know?"</p> + +<p>"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged.</p> + +<p>"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars +to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about +it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: +"Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place +myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!"</p> + +<p>Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was +besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours +he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had +learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, +though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held +out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat +hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that +those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him +soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she +was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if +he gave way now.</p> + +<p>When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew +that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and +made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he +boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the +Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, +and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards +the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the +mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, +as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were +both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit +reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for +some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to +serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and +since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking +for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not +because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly +to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests +of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked +over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some +virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a +sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of +exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so +strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own +usefulness.</p> + +<p>He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now +dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he +turned to go into the house.</p> + +<p>"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after +him.</p> + +<p>"Say?"</p> + +<p>"You know: about what I done."</p> + +<p>"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you +sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do."</p> + +<p>Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, +already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the +strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast +down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at +breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, +Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIIC" id="VIIIC"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. +She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she +said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old +mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the +sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so +as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they +brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time +she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back +alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected +they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette +tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild +upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her +father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please +the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was +perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had +come over her.</p> + +<p>Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came +back. Then he walked to the lodge to report.</p> + +<p>"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him +before he could get a word out.</p> + +<p>"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on +his way back to Canady, again."</p> + +<p>"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his +home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! <i>Send</i> for him! +Bring him <i>back</i>, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him +I said to come back! What are you standing there for?"</p> + +<p>She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her +bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for +the doctor.</p> + +<p>Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he +walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He +found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," +said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. +I shall come again later in the day."</p> + +<p>Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and +knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched +it.</p> + +<p>"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her +almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble +of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to +quiet her, broke in upon their talk.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should +come back, no matter what happens?"</p> + +<p>"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said."</p> + +<p>"And you would not care if they put him in prison?"</p> + +<p>"I should care very much."</p> + +<p>"You would be ashamed of me!"</p> + +<p>"No! Never! What has it to do with you?"</p> + +<p>"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed +all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an +intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have +done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how +inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come +back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if +something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay +because—because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be +ashamed—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you +let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while +they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. +Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go +down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor +said; and if you try to stop me—" She came clattering down the stairs +in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed +her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. +Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask +him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes +back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can +take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as +long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll +say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. +Will you go?"</p> + +<p>"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" +Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child.</p> + +<p>"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm +perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my +mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what +Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father +back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs +some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon +as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want +Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon +as father is. Will you go?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to +Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to +save your father any further suffering, or yourself—"</p> + +<p>"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young +and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about."</p> + +<p>She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he +walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with +Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the +case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There +seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick +to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences +together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to +take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places +and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One +might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the +fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a +deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in +the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, +and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever +might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and +enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and +then, who should gainsay him?</p> + +<p>Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question +before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no +one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could +forbid him."</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have +a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest +thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that <i>true</i> +love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our +impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone +knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the +higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it +won't satisfy?"</p> + +<p>For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of +arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house +that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them +to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt +explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic +demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be +done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding +any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; +if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, +but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You +know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily +submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the +greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined +life."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and +perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the +divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God +for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could +not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure +the shame of his penalty with him—"</p> + +<p>"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned +to endure?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, +yourself, Matt; your family—"</p> + +<p>Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no +question of <i>me</i>. And if <i>they</i> could not endure their portion,—the +mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar +people,—I should be ashamed of them."</p> + +<p>"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide +you!" added the priest.</p> + +<p>The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at +his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his +gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's +happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered +every point? Isn't there some chance—"</p> + +<p>Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he +began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, +and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his +escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He +supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been +willing to accept something short of it.</p> + +<p>"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have +kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved +off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we +could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." +Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that +he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered +with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel +sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show +it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to +convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be +a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a +retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges +against him."</p> + +<p>Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious +discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added +seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is +the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly +and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation +came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I +know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in +court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit +here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time +he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while +before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at +last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it +will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced +him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. +But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a +full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to +find him in Canada?"</p> + +<p>"He promised to let them know."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. +The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts—the perfectly needless and +motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned—would be a +strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the +thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our +life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no +reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The +conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply +incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the +fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for +money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the +accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?"</p> + +<p>Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, +whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went +back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting +her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the +assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted +if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this +notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he +permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at +last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, +before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She +did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get +home without her; and Suzette must come, too.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IXC" id="IXC"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at +Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, +he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the +troubled dream he had waked from.</p> + +<p>"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have <i>you</i> been?" he +demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood.</p> + +<p>A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. +"I've been at home—at Hatboro'."</p> + +<p>"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference +he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at +him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could +only have it for a scoop—"</p> + +<p>Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and +fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney +listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest +thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it +leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent +of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and +given the whole thing away, <i>I</i> can't ask anything for my services."</p> + +<p>Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had +worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked +Pinney.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Only—don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence.</p> + +<p>"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He +took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to +Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He +counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he +called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay +it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it."</p> + +<p>Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own +wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby +got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established +with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's +filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; +and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of +his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; +but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters +when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. +Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but +was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy +confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with +the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her +to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She +asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his +answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his +farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; +and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not +thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she +began to sink rapidly.</p> + +<p>In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had +dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come +back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. +The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, +if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about +it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know +there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he +ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside +her mother.</p> + +<p>The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last +words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, +whimpered too.</p> + +<p>"I believe he <i>could</i> be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, +in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his +own room.</p> + +<p>The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in +Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, +but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a +course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his +ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he +suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he +could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. +Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business +view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great +tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both +took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms +round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good +care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his +hand at the last moment.</p> + +<p>Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after +these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his +own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had +with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's +forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she +proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her +undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for +a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved +of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to +Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, +recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and +expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. +If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told +heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, +it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert +might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of +Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct +in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances +which he really was.</p> + +<p>Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of +their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the +parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old +Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile +frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the +admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your +enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have +been more of a Roman father."</p> + +<p>"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper +to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over +to Rome for the winter."</p> + +<p>"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would +take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will +end by killing me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XC" id="XC"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved +only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the +offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who +pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home +again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business +life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had +operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He +felt himself too old to begin life over; his energies were spent. Such +as he had been, he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in +familiar conditions; he had never been a man of business dash, and he +could not pick himself up and launch himself in a new career, as a man +of different make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps there had +been some lesion of the will in that fever of his at Haha Bay, which +disabled him from forming any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry +out any such purpose as he did form. Perhaps he was, in his +helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile moulds men to: a +thing of memories and hopes, without definite aims or plans.</p> + +<p>As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams +and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had +seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the +sentence of the law, and then go to live again in the place which, in +spite of his senses, he could only imagine clothed in the comfort and +state that had been stripped from it. Elbridge's talk, on the way to +West Hatboro', about the sale, and what had become of the horses and +cattle, and the plants, went for no more than the evidence of his own +eyes that they were all gone. He did not realize, except in the shocks +that the fact imparted at times, that death as well as disaster had +invaded his home. Adeline was, for the most part, still alive: in his +fond reveries she was present, and part of that home as she had always +been.</p> + +<p>He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that +compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; +he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence +that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some +punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were +all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest +could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it +was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should +seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt +guilty of wrong.</p> + +<p>It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were +so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came +and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems +certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home +a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be +suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought +that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in +accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might +be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first +met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation +of his action.</p> + +<p>In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the +chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness +to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted +him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney's +fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long +journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney's society. He liked +Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. +He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself +to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul +that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come +for him, and he was impatient till he came.</p> + +<p>Pinney started the instant he received Northwick's telegram, and met him +with an enthusiasm of congratulation. "Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a +great thing. It's the right thing, and it's the wise thing. It's going +to have a tremendous effect. I suppose," he added, a little tremulously, +"that you've thought it all thoroughly over?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I'm prepared for the worst," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there won't be any <i>worst</i>," Pinney returned gayly. "There'll be +legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he +can't, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought +into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through +with the forms, and it'll be all over before anybody knows anything +about it. I'll see that there's no <i>interviewing</i>, and that there are no +reporters present. There'll probably be a brief announcement among the +cases in court; but there won't be anything painful. You needn't be +afraid. But what I'm anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to +bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn't urge you, and I won't; I know +I'm a little optimistic, and if you don't see this thing exactly +<i>couleur de rose</i>, don't you do it from anything <i>I</i> say." Pinney +apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out.</p> + +<p>"I've looked it in the face," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"And your friends know you're coming back?"</p> + +<p>"They expect me at any time. You can notify them."</p> + +<p>Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. "Well," he said, with a sort of +desperation, "then I don't see why we don't start at once."</p> + +<p>"Have you got your papers all right?" Northwick asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Pinney, with a blush. "But you know," he added, +respectfully, "I can't touch you till we get over the line, Mr. +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I understand that. Let me see your warrant."</p> + +<p>Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully +over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope +from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. "Here +is the money I brought with me."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every +confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, +and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean +business—"</p> + +<p>"I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it."</p> + +<p>Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six +hundred and forty."</p> + +<p>"That is right," said Northwick. "Now, another matter. Have you got +handcuffs?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?" demanded Pinney. "I'd as +soon put them on my own father."</p> + +<p>"I want you to put them on <i>me</i>," said Northwick. "I intend to go back +as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate"—and he seemed to +indulge a question of the fact for the last time—"I want the atonement +to begin as soon as possible. If you haven't brought those things with +you, you'd better go out to the police station and get them, while I +attend to the tickets."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I needn't go," said Pinney, and his face burned.</p> + +<p>He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the +journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the +first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed +to have fallen.</p> + +<p>"By George!" said Pinney, when they started, "anybody to see us would +think <i>you</i> were taking <i>me</i> back." He was tenderly watchful of +Northwick's comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; +from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but +Northwick said he did not care to eat.</p> + +<p>They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper +on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked +Pinney what the next station was.</p> + +<p>Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession +of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept.</p> + +<p>"I haven't slept," said Northwick. "I suppose I'm rather excited. My +nerves seem disordered."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly.</p> + +<p>They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, "What did you say +the next station was?"</p> + +<p>"I'll ask the brakeman." They could see the brakeman on the platform. +Pinney went out to him, and returned. "It's Wellwater, he says. We get +breakfast there."</p> + +<p>"Then we're over the line, now," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, +"You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I'm ready to meet it +half way." He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. "If I should happen +to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your +mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents +happen, and—" Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. "Or if +you don't feel quite able to travel—"</p> + +<p>"Let me see your warrant again," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick +read it all once more. "I'm your prisoner," he said, returning the +paper. "You can put the handcuffs on me now."</p> + +<p>"No, no, Mr. Northwick!" Pinney pleaded. "I don't want to do that. I'm +not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn't necessary +between gentlemen."</p> + +<p>Northwick held out his wrists. "Put them on, please."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, if I <i>must</i>!" protested Pinney. "But I <i>swear</i> I won't lock +'em." He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were +noticing. "You can slip 'em off whenever you get tired of 'em." He +pushed Northwick's sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. +"Don't let people see the damned things, for God's sake!'"</p> + +<p>"That's good!" murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased +him.</p> + +<p>The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of +the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation +with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he +left him. His head had fallen on his breast. "Poor old fellow, he's +asleep," Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick's shoulder. +"I'll have to wake you here," he said. "We'll be in, now, in a minute."</p> + +<p>Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the +neck, and lifted his face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my God! He's dead!"</p> + +<p>The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIC" id="XIC"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and +it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given +up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her +father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had +made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the +sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering +from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she +was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her +own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case +forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his +last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had +committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his +creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself +to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was +dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty +in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather +a joyful relief.</p> + +<p>Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the +narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow +conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they +had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had +everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left +her incalculably rich.</p> + +<p>Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept +himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the +comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far +as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's +estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness +to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the +money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in +the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more +for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow +Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic +theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be +said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that +in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its +pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them.</p> + +<p>The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment +of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they +had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked +at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former +owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view +of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had +remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no +account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the +owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in +surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to +suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she +conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the +commonwealth.</p> + +<p>"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part +of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. +Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first +duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to +turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It +appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset +dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their +interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's +this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last +that he intended to do; and, of course, the <i>he</i> in question is a <i>she</i>. +'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole +affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing, +beginning with my own. <i>I</i> can look back to the time when I meant to +have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years, +waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected +somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to +justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's +counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of +grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I +wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send +him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off +on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a +little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and +against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The +directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign +from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand, +considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living, +and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope +of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the +money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. +Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William +B. Gerrish,—couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick +himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, +after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to +fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing +he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let +him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed <i>her</i>. +Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first +thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way +with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There +wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's +much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of—incident; and a pretty +common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances—like the rest of +us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. +Sometimes I think there <i>was</i> nothing to Northwick, except what happened +to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we +fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, +and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where +it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I +suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few æons of eternal +punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate."</p> + +<p>"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and +seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll +split the difference with you and call it Mercy."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS" id="WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS"></a>WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S NOVELS.</h2> + + +<h3>THE QUALITY OF MERCY.</h3> + +<h3>AN IMPERATIVE DUTY.</h3> + +<h3>A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.</h3> + +<h3>THE SHADOW OF A DREAM.</h3> + +<h3>ANNIE KILBURN.</h3> + +<h3>APRIL HOPES.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER" id="BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER"></a>BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.</h2> + + +<h3>AS WE WERE SAYING.</h3> + +<h3>With Portrait, and Illustrated by <span class="smcap">H.W. McVickar</span> and Others.</h3> + +<p>So dainty and delightsome a little book may it be everybody's good hap +to possess.—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<h3>OUR ITALY.</h3> + +<p>In this book are a little history, a little property, a few fascinating +statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and +abundant humor and charm—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<h3>A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD.</h3> + +<h3>A Novel.</h3> + +<p>The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not +its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, +possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.—<span class="smcap">George William Curtis.</span></p> + +<p>A powerful picture of that phase of modern life in which unscrupulously +acquired capital is the chief agent.—<i>Boston Post.</i></p> + +<h3>STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, with Comments on Canada.</h3> + +<p>Perhaps the most accurate and graphic account of these portions of the +country that has appeared, taken all in all.... A book most charming—a +book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly +prize.—<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p> + +<h3>THEIR PILGRIMAGE.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of +the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities +peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are +as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of +the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the +brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he +mingles.—<i>Christian Union</i>, N. Y.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON" id="BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON"></a>BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">JUPITER LIGHTS.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">EAST ANGELS.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">ANNE.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">FOR THE MAJOR.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">CASTLE NOWHERE.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">RODMAN THE KEEPER.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is a certain bright cheerfulness in Miss Woolson's writing which +invests all her characters with lovable qualities.—<i>Jewish Advocate</i>, +N. Y.</p> + +<p>Miss Woolson is among our few successful writers of interesting magazine +stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of +her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local +life.—<i>Jewish Messenger</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>Constance Fentmore Woolson may easily become the novelist +laureate.—<i>Boston Globe.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and +conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the development of a +story is very remarkable.—<i>London Life.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox +novelist, but strikes a new and richly-loaded vein, which so far is all +her own; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh +sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant +task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to +her in very pleasant places; or she has, perhaps, within herself the +wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all she +writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of the +day—a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time.—<i>Whitehall Review</i>, +London.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_MARY_E_WILKINS" id="BY_MARY_E_WILKINS"></a>BY MARY E. WILKINS.</h2> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">A New England Nun</span>, and Other Stories.</h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">A Humble Romance</span>, and Other Stories.</h3> + +<p>Only an artistic hand could have written these stories, and they will +make delightful reading.—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of those stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.—<i>Literary World</i>, +Boston.</p> + +<p>The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's +worth in every one of the delightful stories.—<i>Chicago Journal.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Wilkins is a writer who has a gift for the rare art of creating the +short story which shall be a character study and a bit of graphic +picturing in one; and all who enjoy the bright and fascinating short +story will welcome this volume.—<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p> + +<p>The author has the unusual gift of writing a short story which is +complete in itself, having a real beginning, a middle, and an end. The +volume is an excellent one.—<i>Observer</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>A gallery of striking studies in the humblest quarters of American +country life. No one has dealt with this kind of life better than Miss +Wilkins. Nowhere are there to be found such faithful, delicately drawn, +sympathetic, tenderly humorous pictures.—<i>N. Y. Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + +<p>There is no attempt at fine writing or structural effect, but the tender +treatment of the sympathies, emotions, and passions of no very +extraordinary people gives to these little stories a pathos and human +feeling quite their own.—<i>N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.</i></p> + +<p>The author has given us studies from real life which must be the result +of a lifetime of patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the +same kind of work so lovingly and so well.—<i>Christian Register</i>, +Boston.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_LEW_WALLACE" id="By_LEW_WALLACE"></a>By LEW. WALLACE</h2> + + +<h3>BEN-HUR:<br /> +<span class="smcap">A Tale of the Christ.</span></h3> + +<p>Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of +this romance does not often appear in works of notion.... Some of Mr. +Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes +described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of +an accomplished master of style.—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p> + +<p>Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at +the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and +brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we +witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman +galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the +tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman +youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of +exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing.—<i>N. Y. +Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and +there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., +to greatly strengthen the semblance.—<i>Boston Commonwealth.</i></p> + +<p>"Ben-Hur" is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. +Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is +laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to +realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman +life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.—<i>Examiner</i>, N.Y.</p> + +<p>The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted +interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel and +romance.—<i>Boston Journal.</i></p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30108 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f09223a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #30108 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30108) diff --git a/old/30108-8.txt b/old/30108-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c1b967 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/30108-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13175 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quality of Mercy + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: September 27, 2009 [EBook #30108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUALITY OF MERCY *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from scans of public domain material +produced by Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.) + + + + + + + + + + THE QUALITY OF MERCY + + A NOVEL + + BY W. D. HOWELLS + +AUTHOR OF "AN IMPERATIVE DUTY" "ANNIE KILBURN" "A HAZARD OF NEW +FORTUNES" ETC. + +NEW YORK +HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE +1892 + + + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + + + + +PART FIRST. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick's man met him at the station with the cutter. The train was a +little late, and Elbridge was a little early; after a few moments of +formal waiting, he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the +street. As they walked they sent those quivers and thrills over their +thin coats which horses can give at will; they moved their heads up and +down, slowly and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; +the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous pace died back in +showers and falling drops of music. All the time Elbridge swore at them +affectionately, with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee +whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the halts he made at each +return to the station, he let his blasphemies bubble sociably from him +in response to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other +drivers who were waiting for the train; they had apparently no other +parlance. The drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon +were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every +other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the +merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless +maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as +he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the +professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them +with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally +speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and +skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against +counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore +a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold; +its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his +head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had +on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain +coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a +closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have +done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick +in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in +any other quality. + +"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked +the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been +half a mile off instead of half a rod. + +"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you ---- ---- old fool, +you?" asked Elbridge in his turn. + +The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the +sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and +said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any +way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full +readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him. + +No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most +remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same +train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed +to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, +and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While +Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove +away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the +highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line +cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid +crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment, +but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the +accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced +it and shone quivering through. The shortest days were past, but in the +first week of February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to a +finer perception there was the promise of release from the winter dark, +if not from the winter cold. It was not far from six o'clock when +Northwick mounted the southward rise of the street; it was still almost +light enough to read; and the little slender black figure of a man that +started up in the middle of the road, as if it had risen out of the +ground, had an even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in the +snow; the horses crouched back with a sudden recoil, as if he had struck +them back with his arm, and plunged the runners of the cutter into the +deeper snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight pause, long enough +to give Northwick a contemptuous glance, and then continued along the +road at a leisurely pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next +house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as Northwick had in +quieting his horses, and getting underway again. He said nothing, and +Northwick did not speak; Elbridge growled, "He's on one of his tears +again," and the horses dashed forward with a shriek of all their bells. +Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that +led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the +snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts. + +"What's the matter with the colt?" he asked. + +"I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I +guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge. + +"Better look after it." + +Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the cutter at the +flight of granite steps which rose to the ground-floor of his wooden +palace. Broad levels of piazza stretched away from the entrance under a +portico of that carpentry which so often passes with us for +architecture. In spite of the effect of organic flimsiness in every +wooden structure but a log cabin, or a fisherman's cottage shingled to +the ground, the house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There were +double windows on all round the piazzas; a mellow glow from the +incandescent electrics penetrated to the outer dusk from them; when the +door was opened to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together with +the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner. + +"Dinner is just served, sir," said the inside man, disposing of +Northwick's overcoat and hat on the hall table with respectful scruple. + +Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, and vaguely held his +hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes +below. + +"The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn't be home till the next +train," the man suggested, at the sound of voices from the dining-room. + +"They have some one with them?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes, sir. The rector, sir; Mr. Wade, sir." + +"I'll come down by and by," Northwick said, turning to the stairs. "Say +I had a late lunch before I left town." + +"Yes, sir," said the man. + +Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed by the thickly-padded +thick carpet, and turned into the sort of study that opened out of his +bedroom. It had been his wife's parlor during the few years of her life +in the house which he had built for her, and which they had planned to +spend their old age in together. It faced southward, and looked out over +the greenhouses and the gardens, that stretched behind the house to the +bulk of woods, shutting out the stage-picturesqueness of the summer +settlement of South Hatboro'. She had herself put the rocking-chair in +the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not allowed it to be disturbed +there since her death. In an alcove at one side he had made a place for +the safe where he kept his papers; his wife had intended to keep their +silver in it, but she had been scared by the notion of having burglars +so close to them in the night, and had always left the silver in the +safe in the dining-room. + +She was all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had +seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, +hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the +painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and +had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive +of his own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. She was +really one of those hen-minded women, who are so common in all walks of +life, and are made up of only one aim at a time, and of manifold +anxieties at all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the days +of struggle in which she had joined it to Northwick's instinct for +getting; she lived and died in the hope, if not the belief, that she had +contributed to his prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of +valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively happy with her; since +her death, he had allowed her to return much into his thoughts, from +which her troublesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in +important matters had obliged him to push her while she lived. He often +had times when it seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, and +then he found he had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, +he realized that he missed her; but perhaps the wound was to habit +rather than affection. He now sat down in his swivel-chair and turned it +from the writing-desk which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and +looked up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intangible +presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest his soul against hers. +She was the only one who could have seen him in his wish to have not +been what he was; she would have denied it to his face, if he had told +her he was a thief; and as he meant to make himself more and more a +thief, her love would have eased the way by full acceptance of the +theories that ran along with his intentions and covered them with +pretences of necessity. He thought how even his own mother could not +have been so much comfort to him; she would have had the mercy, but she +would not have had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under all +his pretences, Northwick knew that it was not mercy which would help +him; but he wanted it, as we all want what is comfortable and bad for us +at times. With the performance and purpose of a thief in his heart, he +turned to the pictured face of his dead wife as his refuge from the face +of all living. It could not look at him as if he were a thief. + +The word so filled his mind that it seemed always about to slip from his +tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the +fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so +distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal +instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The +other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they +hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not +supplied them with the emotional materials for making one. The +president, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced upon +Northwick. "What does all this mean, sir? I'll tell you what it means. +It means that you're a thief, sir; the same as if you had picked my +pocket, or stolen my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall." + +He shook his clenched fist in Northwick's face, and seemed about to take +him by the throat. Afterwards he inclined more to mercy than the others; +it was he who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three days' +grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the directors the proof +that he had ample means, as he maintained, to meet the shortage in the +accounts. "I wish you well out of it, for your family's sake," he said +at parting; "but all the same, sir, you are a thief." + +He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when some others +meaninglessly shook hands with Northwick, at parting, as Northwick +himself might have shaken hands with another in his place; and he +brushed by him out of the door without looking at him. He came suddenly +back to say, "If it were a question of you alone, I would cheerfully +lose something more than you've robbed me of for the pleasure of seeing +you handcuffed in this room and led to jail through the street by a +constable. No honest man, no man who was not always a rogue at heart, +could have done what you've done; juggled with the books for years, and +bewitched the record so by your infernal craft, that it was never +suspected till now. You've given _mind_ to your scoundrelly work, sir; +all the mind you had; for if you hadn't been so anxious to steal +successfully, you'd have given more mind to the use of your stealings. +You _may_ have some of them left, but it looks as if you'd made ducks +and drakes of them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Employees' +Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe you're of about the intellectual +calibre of that sort of thief. I can't respect you even on your own +ground. But I'm willing to give you the chance you ask, for your +daughter's sake. She's been in and out of my house with my girl like one +of my own children, and I won't send her father to jail if I can help +it. Understand! I haven't any sentiment for _you_, Northwick. You're the +kind of rogue I'd like to see in a convict's jacket, learning to make +shoe-brushes. But you shall have your chance to go home and see if you +can pay up somehow, and you sha'n't be shadowed while you're at it. You +shall keep your outside to the world three days longer, you whited +sepulchre; but if you want to know, I think the best thing that could +happen to you on your way home would be a good railroad accident." + +The man's words and looks were burnt into Northwick's memory, which now +seemed to have the faculty of simultaneously reproducing them all. +Northwick remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, and the +swing of his large stomach, and just how it struck against the jamb as +he whirled a second time out of the door. The other directors, some of +them, stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their hats on, +and a sort of stunned aspect; some held their hats in their hands, and +looked down into them with a decorous absence of expression, as people +do at a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer's private +room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey rugs, leathern +arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors standing one on each side of the +hearth where a fire of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a +subdued and respectful flicker. + + + + +II. + + +If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of the president, +Northwick might have come away from the meeting, after the exposure of +his defalcations, with an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he +felt curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing habit of his +mind enabled him to piece himself together again and resume his former +size and shape. This happened very quickly; he had conceived of himself +so long as a man employing funds in his charge in speculations sometimes +successful and sometimes not, but at all times secured by his personal +probity and reliability. He had in fact more than once restored all that +he had taken, and he had come to trust himself in the course of these +transactions as fully as he was trusted by the men who were ignorant of +his irregularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete confidence +they reposed in him, though he really felt it to be no more than his +due; he had always merited and received the confidence of men associated +with him in business, and he had come to regard the funds of the +corporation as practically his own. In the early days of his connection +with the company, it largely owed its prosperity to his wise and careful +management; one might say that it was not until the last, when he got so +badly caught by that drop in railroads, that he had felt anything wrong +in his convertible use of its money. It was an informality; he would not +have denied that, but it was merely an informality. Then his losses +suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the +first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which +the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he +considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties +which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other +operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he +dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, +especially of late, he easily satisfied them as to the nature of his +motives and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their attention to +these successful deals, and to the probability, the entire probability, +that he could be at any moment in a position to repay all he had +borrowed of the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long habit +of making himself these loans and returning them, he had come to have a +sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was +almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first +intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness +that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose +discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's +paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the +papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some +novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the +presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but +after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He +was like those fools, exactly like them, in what they had done, and in +the way of doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. All of +them had used others' money in speculation, expecting to replace it, and +then had not been able to replace it, and then had skipped, as the +newspapers said. + +Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, too, was a point +which he had not yet acknowledged to himself that he had decided. He +never had believed that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when +the president said he could wish him nothing better on his way home than +a good railroad accident, it flashed upon him that one of the three +alternatives before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill himself, +which was supposed to be the gentlemanly way out of his difficulties, +and would leave his family unstained by his crime; that matter had +sometimes been discussed in his presence, and every one had agreed that +it was the only thing for a gentleman to do after he had pilfered people +of money he could not pay back. There was something else that a man of +other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that was to stand his +trial for embezzlement, and take his punishment. Or a man, if he was +that kind of a man, could skip. The question with Northwick was whether +he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he would be that +kind of man; whether the skipping would make him that kind of man. + +The question was a cruel one for the self-respect which he had so +curiously kept intact. He had been respectable ever since he was born; +if he was born with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, +the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was all the stronger in +him, because his father had never had it; perhaps an hereditary trait +found expression in him after passing over one generation; perhaps an +antenatal influence formed him to that type. His mother was always +striving to keep the man she had married worthy of her choice in the +eyes of her neighbors; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had +been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine; in carrying on the +drug and book business of the village, he cared much more for the +literary than the pharmaceutical side of it; he liked to have a circle +of cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, and discuss +morals and religion with them; and one night, when denying the plenary +inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an +ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his +mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he +lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a +total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his +son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain +sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always +disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he +said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in +Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material +success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few +people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer +of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a +man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. +They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there +a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come +back to the village. But he had not. He had, as they had all heard, that +splendid summer place at Hatboro', where he spent his time when he was +not at his house in Boston; and when they verified the fact of his +immense prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who knew him +or knew about him, they were obscurely flattered by the fact; just as +many of us are proud of belonging to a nation in which we are enriched +by the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. They did not +blame Northwick for never coming to see his father, or for never having +him home on a visit; they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how +little he was fitted for the society of a man whose respectability, even +as it was reflected upon them, was so dazzling. Old Northwick had never +done anything for Milt; he had never even got along with him; the fellow +had left him, and made his own way; and the old man had no right to +talk; if Milt was ever of a mind to cut off his rations, the old man +would soon see. + + + + +III. + + +The local opinion scarcely did justice to old Northwick's imperfect +discharge of a father's duties; his critics could not have realized how +much some capacities, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, +contributed to that very effect of respectability which they revered. +The early range of books, the familiarity with the mere exterior of +literature, restricted as it was, helped Northwick later to pass for a +man of education, if not of reading, with men who were themselves less +read than educated. The people whom his ability threw him with in Boston +were all Harvard men, and they could not well conceive of an +acquaintance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was not college +bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which we carry through life, they knew +he was from the country, and they attributed him to a freshwater +college. They said, "You're a Dartmouth man, Northwick, I believe," or, +"I think you're from Williams," and when Northwick said no, they forgot +it, and thought that he was a Bowdoin man; the impression gradually +fixed itself that he was from one or other of those colleges. It was +believed in like manner, partly on account of his name, that he was from +one of those old ministerial families that you find up in the hills, +where the whole brood study Greek while they are sugaring off in the +spring; and that his own mother had fitted him for college. There was, +in fact, something clerical in Northwick's bearing; and it was felt by +some that he had studied for the ministry, but had gone into business to +help his family. The literary phase of the superstition concerning him +was humored by the library which formed such a striking feature of his +house in Boston, as well as his house in Hatboro'; at Hatboro' it was +really vast, and was so charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea +of a cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and rarely used +the drawing-room, which was much smaller, and was a gold and white +sanctuary on the north side of the house, only opened when there was a +large party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and went without +seeing it, and it remained shut up, as much a conjecture as the memory +of Northwick's wife. She was supposed to have been taken from him early, +to save him and his children from the mortifying consequences of one of +those romantic love-affairs in which a conscientious man had sacrificed +himself to a girl he was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that +his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she brought him, and upon +the stay her belief in him had always been. She was a church-member, as +such women usually are, but Northwick was really her religion; and as +there is nothing that does so much to sanctify a deity as the blind +devotion of its worshippers, Northwick was rendered at times worthy of +her faith by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her love; he +was not the kind of man whose affections are apt to wander, perhaps +because they were few and easily kept together; perhaps because he was +really principled against letting them go astray. He was not merely true +in a passive way, but he was constant in the more positive fashion. When +they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him +into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her +shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to +them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his +experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that +sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and +qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his +knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, +and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his +money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he +began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his +children; for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his wife's +memory, and apparently never imagined such a thing as marrying again. + +He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up into her pictured +face, and went to open the safe near the window. But he stopped in +stooping over to work the combination, and glanced out across his +shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the scene tempted him to +the window for what, all at once, he felt might be his last look, though +the next instant he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his +meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval and honorable +return. He must have been thinking there before the fire a long time, +for now the moon had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the +southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These were in a sort the +mechanism that transacted the life of his house, ministering to all its +necessities and pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long +stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was +the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy +mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a +ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and +dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the +hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; +in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the +coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the +dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's +business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than +half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial +consequence with regard to his place. It was really a farm in extent, +and it was mostly a grazing farm; his cattle were in the herd-books, and +he raised horses, which he would sell now and then to a friend; they +were so distinctly varied from the original stock as to form almost a +breed of themselves; they numbered scores in his stalls and pastures. +The whole group of the buildings was so great that it was like a sort of +communal village. In the silent moonlight Northwick looked at it as if +it were an expansion or extension of himself, so personally did it seem +to represent his tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of +his whole life; he realized that it would be like literally tearing +himself from it, when he should leave it. That would be the real pang; +his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded +himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate +himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he +was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the +meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was +that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the +full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a +perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must +go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,--all but +the furniture and pictures,--were the children's and could not be +touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and +cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he +must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could. + +After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If +he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed +himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else +of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the +forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself +possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to +be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the +very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it +to have gone with. + +Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his +reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a +duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured, +if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means +of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left +providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it +would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope +of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word +again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of +his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane +necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a +sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took +a turn about the room. + +He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised +him to find in himself, he was laboring under some strong inward stress, +and he must have relief from it if he was to carry this business +through. He threw up the window and stood with his hand on the sash, +quivering in the strong in-rush of the freezing air. But it strengthened +him, and when he put down the window after a few moments, his faintness +passed altogether. Still, he thought he would not go through that +business at once; there was time enough; he would see his girls and tell +them that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the morning. + +He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and his house-coat, and +went to the stair-landing outside, and listened to the voices in the +library below. He could hear only women's voices, and he inferred that +the young man who had been dining with his daughters was gone. He went +back into his bedroom, and looked at the face of an unmasked thief in +his glass. It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that he +looked; it was to see if he was pale or would seem ill to his children. + + + + +IV. + + +Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative +in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more +urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the +elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and +remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she +watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him +and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too; +and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin +and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking +frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of +circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her +parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she +preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight, +bony fingers she wore a good many rings. + +Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that +name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow +suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its +suggestion of coquettishness. + +She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he +stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she +seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to +leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her +so. + +"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down +before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where +the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of +the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the +face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, +he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the +morning, and I still have some things to put in shape." + +"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had +resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her +head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary +beauty, as a stranger might have had. + +"Trouble?" he echoed. + +"With the hands." + +"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick, +rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question, +to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an +instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor +trouble. + +"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all +sorts of reports." + +"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said +Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground." + +"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the +girl, "without wearing your own life out about it." + +"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to +acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well, +that--" + +He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter +said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought +to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge +told James that you almost drove over him, coming up." + +"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the +horses' feet." + +"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of +awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women +often feel. + +"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his +family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to +himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as +possible." + +Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the +inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard +him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home +would be a good railroad accident." + +He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't +for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of +others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a +very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest. +He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish +to judge him. He may have"--Northwick sighed again, and ended +vaguely--"his reasons." + +Suzette laughed. "How moderate you always are, papa! And how tolerant!" + +"I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he's got to deal with, and +that he's safe in abusing you all he likes," said Adeline. "But I don't +see how such respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell can +tolerate him. I've no patience with Dr. Morrell, or his wife, either. To +be sure, they tolerate Mrs. Wilmington, too." + +Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. "Well, I'm going to bed, +papa. If you'd wanted more of my society you ought to have come down +sooner. I suppose I sha'n't see you in the morning; so it's good-bye as +well as good-night. When will you be home?" + +"Not for some days, perhaps," said the unhappy man. + +"How doleful! Are you always so homesick when you go away?" + +"Not always; no." + +"Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you have to be gone a +great while, send for me, won't you?" + +"Yes, yes; I will," said Northwick. The girl gave his head a hug, and +then glided out of the room. She stopped to throw him a kiss from the +door. + +"There!" said Adeline. "I didn't mean to let Mrs. Wilmington slip out; +she can't bear the name, and I _know_ it drove her away. But you mustn't +let it worry you, father. I guess it's all going well, now." + +"What's going well?" Northwick asked, vaguely. + +"The Jack Wilmington business. I know she's really given him up at last; +and we can't be too thankful for that much, if it's no more. I don't +believe he's bad, for all the talk about him, but he's been weak, and +that's a thing she couldn't forgive in a man; she's so strong herself." + +Northwick did not think of Wilmington; he thought of himself, and in the +depths of his guilty soul, in those secret places underneath all his +pretences, where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered if his +child's strength would be against her forgiving his weakness. What we +greatly dread we most unquestioningly believe; and it did not occur to +him to ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary inference +from strength. He only knew himself to be miserably weak. + +He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his impassive, handsome +face turned toward his daughter as if he were going to speak to her. He +was a tall man, rather thin; he was clean shaven, except for the grayish +whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line with them; he had a +regular profile, which was more attractive than the expression of his +direct regard. He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and +looked into it as if he were reading his future in its lucid depths, and +then put it down again, with an effect of helplessness. When he spoke, +it was not in connection with what his daughter had been talking about. +He said almost dryly, "I think I will go up and look over some papers I +have to take with me, and then try to get a little sleep before I +start." + +"And when shall we expect you back?" asked his daughter, submissively +accepting his silence concerning her sister's love affairs. She knew +that it meant acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought best. + +"I don't know, exactly; I can't say, now. Good-night." + +To her surprise he came up and kissed her; his caresses were for Sue, +and she expected them no more than she invited them. "Why, father!" she +said in a pleased voice. + +"Let James pack the small bag for me, and send Elbridge to me in about +an hour," he said, as he went out into the hall. + + + + +V. + + +Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this +age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of +the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. +He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which +would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or +would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. +The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the +fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the +reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but +evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This was the doctrine +which framed the man's intention if not his conduct of life, and +continued to shape it years after experience of the world, and +especially of the business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great +many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its +reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad +behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any +discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it +was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still +intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and +improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his +principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong +before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him. + +But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery +of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all +the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had +tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a +dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish +exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made +him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The +people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of +Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it +seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those +things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of +the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been +quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower +than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man. +Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it +was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression; +his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it +most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically +strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the +need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was +forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the +beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, +to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom +his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame +and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant +censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had +become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if +by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, impulses, fantasies, in +which he swiftly dreamed renunciation of escape. Then he knew that it +would not avail anything to remain; it would not avail anything even to +die; nothing could avail anything at once, but in the end, his going +would avail most. He must go; it would break the child's heart to face +his shame, and she must face it. He did not think of his eldest +daughter, except to think that the impending disaster could not affect +her so ruinously. + +"My God, my God!" he groaned, as he went up stairs. Adeline called from +the room he had left, "Did you speak, father?" + +He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience which becomes so active +in times of great moral obliquity, against telling a little lie, and +saying he had not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering +anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, of feeling himself +an old man forced from his home, and he had a blind reasonless +resentment of the behavior of the men who were driving him away, and +whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful of. But he threw +off this mood when he entered his room, and settled himself to business. +There was a good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for his +indefinite absence, and he used the same care in providing for some +minor contingencies in the company's affairs as in leaving instructions +to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. +Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among +those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality +of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general +conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an +interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts +which persisted at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have +been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives. + +The question was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it +appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful +of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it +further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of +money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider +that this money necessarily belonged to the company, any more than his +daughters' house and farm belonged to it. To be sure it was the fruit of +money he had borrowed or taken from the company and had used in an +enormously successful deal; but the company had not earned it, and in +driving him into a corner, in forcing him to make instant restitution of +all its involuntary loans, it was justifying him in withholding this +part of them. Northwick was a man of too much sense to reason explicitly +to this effect, but there was a sophistry, tacitly at work in him to +this effect, which made it possible for him to go on and steal more +where he had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the further +theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to +nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed +his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to +that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He +contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, +with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most +fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his +broker sent him that large check for his winnings in stocks the day +before, but Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the check, and +put the money in his safe instead of banking it. Now he could perceive a +leading in the whole matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant +defiance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. He seemed to +himself like a burglar, when he had locked the doors and pulled down the +curtains, and stood before the safe working the combination. He +trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a +slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the +same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out +in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: +"Hello! Who's there? What is it?" + +"It's me," said Elbridge. + +"Oh, yes! Well! All right! Hold on, a minute! Ah--you can come back in +ten or fifteen minutes. I'm not quite ready for you, yet." Northwick +spoke the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood in a +frenzy of dismay; the more collected words were uttered from his desk, +where he ran to get his pistol. He did not know why he thought Elbridge +might try to force his way in; perhaps it was because any presence on +the outside of the door would have terrified him. He had time to +recognize that he was not afraid for the money, but that he was afraid +for himself in the act of taking it. + +Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, and said with a +little hesitation, "All right," and Northwick heard him tramp away, and +go down stairs. + +He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy door, whose +resistance helped him shake off his nervousness. Then he took the money +from the drawer where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the +inner pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He shut the +safe and locked it. The succession of these habitual acts calmed him +more and more, and after he had struck a match and kindled the fire on +his hearth, which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle again +to his preparations in writing. + + + + +VI. + + +When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went +and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said, +carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?" + +"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got +to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a +strong smell of stable through the hot room. + +"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the +morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick +satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula; +and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the +management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his +pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said, +"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine. +You can drive me up with the black mare." + +"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of +reluctance that did not escape Northwick. + +"Anything the matter?" he asked. + +"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well." + +"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for +him to feel. + +"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the +membranous crou--" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped +it down. + +"Oh, I _hope_ not," said Northwick. + +"He's comin' back again--he had to go off to another place--but I could +see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got +himself in hand again, and spoke clearly. + +Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow +thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the +earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must +telephone Simpson to come for me." + +"All right." Elbridge took himself away. + +Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the +coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the +windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck +a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have +been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought +he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people; +but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the +useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His +thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had +lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash +into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his +family ought to feel in the matter. + +No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found +his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. +The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his +arms thrown wildly about. + +"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the +mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him, +save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him +suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's +hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was +suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What +are you big, strong men good for, any--" She looked down at the child's +face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild +screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment. + +It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless +there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to +go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her +coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he +heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue. + +The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had +been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love +with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since +their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of +exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put +Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the +will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the +little boy who had just died. + +He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full +outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given +him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the +company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses +he must meet at such a time. + +Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out +to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have +liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case +Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this +possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of +Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells +before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his +bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, +but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of +that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out. +He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried +down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on +the threshold, and took his bag from him. + +"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?" + +"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and +gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I +thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for +the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the +broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the +booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin' +to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway." + +The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank +you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted +to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his +house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to +be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with +himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to +Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving +home--at such a time--when you've--" + +"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested. + +"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously +warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly +lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the +door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on +the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been +some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they +did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and +fixed him severely with his eye. + +"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?" + +Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing +look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I +didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses--" + +"It was the LAW you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with +a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! +You can't drive over the Law, _yet_--you haven't quite millions enough +for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of +asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it. + +Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set +off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and +Northwick went out and got aboard. + + + + +VII. + + +The president of the Board, who had called Northwick a thief, and yet +had got him a chance to make himself an honest man, was awake at the +hour the defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a night. +He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to forget Northwick, but he +seemed to be eating and drinking him at every course. When he came home +toward eleven o'clock, he went to his library and sat down before the +fire. His wife had gone to bed, and his son and daughter were at a ball; +and he sat there alone, smoking impatiently. + +He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted anything that he might +go to bed; he need not sit up for the young people. Hilary had that kind +of consideration for servants, and he liked to practise it; he liked to +realize that he was practising it now, in a moment when every habit of +his life might very well yield to the great and varying anxieties which +beset him. + +He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from him to himself, as a +gentleman and a citizen, and he could not conceal from himself that he +had been mainly instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, when +he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. His ideals had not hitherto +stood in the way of his comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more +than they had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a kind far +above those which commercial honor permits a man to be content with. He +held himself bound, as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, +to have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He believed that +he owed it to the community to do nothing to lower its standards of +personal integrity and responsibility; and he distinguished himself by a +gratified consciousness from those people of chromo-morality, who held +all sorts of loose notions on such points. His name stood not merely for +so much money; many names stood for far more; but it meant reliability, +it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He really loved these things, +though, no doubt, he loved them less for their own sake than because +they were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect +everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they +should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value +that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him +not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort +of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even +more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he +once saw it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it. + +The error that he had committed in Northwick's case, if it was an error, +was one that presented peculiar difficulties, as every error in life +does; the errors love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade +as all sorts of things. There were moments when Hilary saw his mistake +so clearly that it seemed to him nothing less than the repayment of +Northwick's thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of +justice to his fellow-losers if Northwick ran away; and then again, it +looked like the act of wise mercy which it had appeared to him when he +was urging the Board to give the man a chance as the only thing which +they could hopefully do in the circumstances, as common sense, as +business. But it was now so obvious that a man like Northwick could and +would do nothing but run away if he were given the chance, that he +seemed to have been his accomplice when he used the force of his +personal character with them in Northwick's behalf. He was in a +ridiculous position, there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to +get out of it without much painful wear and tear of pride, of +self-respect. + +After a long time he looked at the clock, and found it still early for +the return of his young people. He was impatient to see his son, and to +get the situation in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. +He had already told him of the defalcation, and of what the Board had +decided to do with Northwick; but this was while he was still in the +glow of action, and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who came in +just as he was going out to dinner; it was before his cold fit came on. + +He had reached that time of life when a man likes to lay his troubles +before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, +Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, +different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger +and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, +and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, +but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. +The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go +into the mills at Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the +natural course. But one day he came home and told his father that he had +begun to have his doubts of the existing relations of labor and capital; +and until he could see his way clearer he would rather give up his +chance with the company. It was a keen disappointment to Hilary; he made +no concealment of that; but he did not quarrel with his son about it. He +robustly tolerated Matt's queer notions, not only because he was a +father who blindly doted on his children and behaved as if everything +they did was right, no matter if it put him in the wrong, but because he +chose to respect the fellow's principles, if those were his principles. +He had his own principles, and Matt should have his if he liked. He bore +entirely well the purpose of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he +wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry +on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and +published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the +expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale +of the little book as if it had cost him nothing. + +Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone +counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he +came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had +exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good for only a +certain degree of advance in opinion; few men are indefinitely +progressive; and Hilary had not caught on to the movement that was +carrying his son with it. But he understood how his son should be what +he was, and he loved him so much that he almost honored him for what he +called his balderdash about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at +last he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door below, and +he made lumbering haste down stairs to open and let the young people in. +He reached the door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness of +his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay welcome, and took +his daughter, all a fluff of soft silken and furry wraps, into his arms. + +"Oh, don't kiss my nose!" she called out. "It'll freeze you to death, +papa! What in the world are you up, for? Anything the matter with +mamma?" + +"No. She was in bed when I came home; I thought I would sit up and ask +what sort of a time you'd had." + +"Did you ever know me to have a bad one? I had the best time in the +world. I danced every dance, and I enjoyed it just as much as if I had +'shut and been a Bud again.' But don't you know it's very bad for old +gentlemen to be up so late?" + +They were mounting the stairs, and when they reached the library, she +went in and poked her long-gloved hands well in over the fire on the +hearth while she lifted her eyes to the clock. "Oh, it isn't so very +late. Only five." + +"No, it's early," said her father with the security in a feeble joke +which none but fathers can feel with none but their grown-up daughters. +"It's full an hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his +cattle, if he were in Vardley." Hilary had given Matt the old family +place there; and he always liked to make a joke of his getting an honest +living by farming it. + +"Don't speak of that agricultural angel!" said the girl, putting her +draperies back with one hand and confining them with her elbow, so as to +give her other hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet she +dropped on both knees before it. + +"Was he nice?" asked the father, with confidence. + +"Nice! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all the dull girls he +talked with! When I think what a good time I should have with him as a +plain girl, if I were not his sister, I lose all patience." She glanced +up in her father's face, with all the strange charm of features that had +no regular beauty; and then, as she had to do whenever she remembered +them, she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture +in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed +flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with +as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She +was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; +though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery +red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. +She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself +tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect +neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't +have treated us better." + +"Do you hear that, Matt?" asked the father, as his son came in, after a +methodical and deliberate bestowal of his outer garments below; his +method and his deliberation were part of the joke of him in the family. + +"Complaining of me for making her walk home?" he asked in turn, with the +quiet which was another part of the joke. "I didn't suppose you'd give +me away, Louise." + +"I didn't; I knew I only had to wait and you would give yourself away," +said the girl. + +"Did he make you walk home?" said the father. "That's the reason your +hands are so cold." + +"They're not very cold--now; and if they were, I shouldn't mind it in +such a cause." + +"What cause?" + +"Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me. But +it was only three blocks, and I had my arctics." She moved a little away +toward the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where she must +have been scuffling them off under her skirts. "Ugh! But it's cold!" She +now stretched a satin slipper in toward the fire. + +"Yes, it's a cold night; but you seem to have got home alive, and I +don't think you'll be the worse for it now, if you go to bed at once," +said her father. + +"Is that a hint?" she asked, with a dreamy appreciation of the warmth +through the toe of her slipper. + +"Not at all; we should be glad to have you sit up the whole night with +us." + +"Ah, now I know you're hinting. Is it business?" + +"Yes, it's business." + +"Well, I'm just in the humor for business; I've had enough pleasure." + +"I don't see why Louise shouldn't stay and talk business with us, if she +likes. I think it's a pity to keep women out of it, as if it didn't +concern them," said the son. "Nine-tenths of the time it concerns them +more than it does men." He had a bright, friendly, philosophical smile +in saying this, and he stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a +patience which their father did not share. He stood something over six +feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame seemed starting out of the +dress-suit, which it appeared so little related to. His whole face was +handsome and regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a mouth of +singular sweetness. + +"Yes; I think so too, in the abstract," said the father. "If the +business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the +term--" + +"Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?" The girl put her +arms round her father's neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a +little way from her cloak and her arctics. "If you hadn't said it was +business, I should have been in bed long ago." Then, as if feeling her +father's eagerness to have her gone, she said, "Good night," and gave +him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said "Good night, Matt," and got +herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and +stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying +to follow her. + + + + +VIII. + + +Louise's father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt +himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred +itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about +picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the +cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove +on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to +it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that +was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to +get sight of. + +"What in the devil is that?" he roared. + +"Louise's pin," said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place +for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went +and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, "It's about Northwick, I +suppose." + +"Yes," said his father, still furious from the pinprick. "I'm afraid the +miserable scoundrel is going to run away." + +"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly. + +"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might +have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at +the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all +sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him, +but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to +be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a +turnip, even by crushing the turnip." + +"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile. + +"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he +was a thief." + +"Oh!" said Matt. + +"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily. + +"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an +air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more. + +"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it +will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent +things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being +rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him +for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him +the chance he asked for." + +"It was really the only thing you could do." + +"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't +seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought +the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on +his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter +who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him +handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables." + +Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in +criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the +point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature." + +"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his +father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up +abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall, +for the time being." + +"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't +shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on +you." + +"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss +Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I +never quite saw what Louise found to like in her." + +"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently +offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a +person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I +suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like +Louise." + +Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that +affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?" + +"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to +all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get +married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to +be done with it." + +"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?" + +"Yes; but I never believed in it." + +"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem +the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because--" + +"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he +is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the +matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say +what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next +in the matter?" + +"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to +right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the +hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in +Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, +with a smile of sympathy: + +"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't +a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the +apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to +get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money +even when he's made it in large sums as our class do." + +The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with +himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's +rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may +fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself." + +"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you." + +"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his +own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to +me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than +I've done. I know I've made myself responsible, in a way, for +Northwick's getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give +him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won't change that fact +at all; but I can't conceal from myself that I half-expected him to +abuse it." + +He put this tentatively, and his son responded, "I suppose that +naturally inclines you to suppose he'll run away." + +"Yes." + +"But your supposition doesn't establish the fact." + +"No. But the question is whether it doesn't oblige me to act as if it +had; whether I oughtn't, if I've got this suspicion, to take some steps +at once to find out whether Northwick's really gone or not, and to mix +myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I +promised him he shouldn't be shadowed in any way till his three days +were over." + +"It's a nice question," said Matt, "or rather, it's a nasty one. Still, +you've only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your +fears before. I don't think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry +one into the catchpole business." Matt laughed again with that fondness +he had for his father. "Though as for any peculiar disgrace in +catchpoles as catchpoles, I don't see it. They're a necessary part of +the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I +don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as +respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who +puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is +one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in +every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's +all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in +the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board +know that you have your misgivings?" + +"Yes," said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, "I +felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to _him_! And I wanted +to talk with you." + +"It was just as well to let them have their night's rest. There isn't +really anything to be done." Matt rose from the low chair where he had +been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. "If the man was +going he's gone past recall by this time; and if he isn't gone, there's +no immediate cause for anxiety." + +"Then you wouldn't do anything at present?" + +"I certainly shouldn't. What could you do?" + +"Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose." + +"Good night," the son said, suggestively, "I suppose there isn't really +anything more?" + +"No, what could there be? You had better go to bed." + +"And you, too, I hope, father." + +"Oh, I shall go to bed--as a matter of form." + +The son laughed. "I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go +to sleep, too. I shall." + +"I sha'n't sleep," said the father, bitterly. "When things like this +happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them." + +"Well, I dare say Northwick's doing that." + +"I doubt it," said Hilary. "I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing +slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this +time." + +"I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he's only going to a +larger prison if he's going into exile. He may be on the Montreal +express, but I guess he isn't sleeping," said Matt. + +"Yes," his father admitted. "Poor devil! He'd much better be dead." + + + + +IX. + + +The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that +day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister +that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, +but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch +with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o'clock +train. + +She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four +balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had +promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night. + +"I don't see how she lives through it," said Adeline. "And at her age, +it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud." + +"Louise is only twenty-three," said Suzette. "If she were married, she +would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older." + +"But she isn't married, and that makes all the difference." + +"Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of +his being with them." + +"Has he given up his farming? It's about time." + +"No; not at all, I believe. She says he's in Boston merely as a matter +of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to +go with her." + +"Well," said Adeline, "I should think he would want to be of _some_ use +in the world; and if he won't help his father in business, he had better +help his mother in society." + +Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if +she had not heeded, "I think I will give a little dance here, next week. +Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We +made out the list--just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, +and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert +will matronize them; it'll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls +are concerned, but I've asked two or three buds; and some of the young +married people. It will be very pleasant, don't you think?" + +"Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?" + +Suzette smiled. "I dare say he would. I wasn't thinking of him in making +it, but I don't see why he shouldn't look in." + +"He might come to the supper," Adeline mused aloud, "if it isn't one of +his church days. I never can keep the run of them." + +"We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be +perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could +make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have +been certain to object if we had made any mistake." + +"I'm very glad," said Adeline. "I know father will be glad to have Mr. +Wade here. He's taken a great fancy to him." + +"Mr. Wade's very nice," said Suzette, coolly. "I shouldn't have liked to +have it without him." + +They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at +larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her +escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and +from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and +then went on talking. + +"Shall you have any of the South Hatboro' people?" her sister asked. + +"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little +smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; +or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack +Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she +went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he +were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now +to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise +suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a +quarrel." + +Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always +afraid you'll get--" + +"To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly +dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in +the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, +"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put +an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't +believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the +point." + +"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you +needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; +and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him +here." + +Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see +me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him +at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his +explanations." + +"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak." + +"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his +weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and +didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be +explained." + +"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the +world, after the way he's treated you!" + +"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in +love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other +things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?" + +She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the +chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet +nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second +husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a +rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and +returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and +undying thing is a slight. That lasts--with _me_!" + +Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from +the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant +it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced--" + +Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, _you're_ in love with him! +Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at +the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each +rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, +across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said, +with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have +to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb--as +good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, +come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!" + +She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. +"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had +reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little +boy--" + +"Well, that's _like_ you, Adeline! To bring _that_ up! _No_, indeed! +It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he _isn't_ quite one of the +family. What an idea!" + +"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise. + +"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl, +with some relenting. "When is it to be?" + +"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's +selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts +or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them +you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will +understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly +fib like this seemed no harm to her. + + + + +X. + + +In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the +coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead +child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it +wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me; +that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him +back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said, +and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work +to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live." + +The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one +lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's +watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she +can't seem to sense the comfort of it." + +"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon +her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more +care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you +talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and +nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up +against death, but I don't want any _comfort_. You want to see Elbridge, +Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep +about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have +to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such things to each other +as women do, big fools as they be!" + +Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity for Mrs. Newton and +expressed that she was hardly accountable for what she was saying. + +"He used to complain of me for lettin' Arty get out into the stable +among the horses; but I guess he won't be troubled that way _much_ +more," said the mother; and then something in Miss Northwick's face +seemed to stay her in her wild talk; and she asked, "Want I should call +him for you?" + +"No, no," said Adeline, "I'll go right through to him, myself." She knew +the way from the coachman's dwelling into the stable, and she found +Elbridge oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged attention to +the work, which he hardly turned from to look at her. "Elbridge," she +asked, "did you drive father to the depot yesterday morning?" + +"Yes, ma'am, I did." + +"When did he say he would be back?" + +"Well, he said he couldn't say, exactly. But I understood in a day or +two." + +"Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset?" + +"No, ma'am, I didn't hear him say as he did." + +"Then it's a mistake; and of course I knew it was a mistake. There's +more than one Northwick in the world, I presume." She laughed a little +hysterically; she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with the +nervous tremor that passed over her. + +"Why, what is it, Miss Northwick?" said Elbridge with a perception of +the trouble in her voice through the trouble in his own heart. He +stopped pulling the greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned +towards her. + +"Oh, nothing. There's been an accident on the Union and Dominion +Railroad; and of course it's a mistake." + +She handed him the paper, folded to the column which she wished to show, +and he took it between two finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as +possible, and stood reading it. She went on saying, "He wouldn't be on +the train if he was at Ponkwasset; I got the paper when I first came +down stairs, but I didn't happen to read the account till just now; and +then I thought I'd run out and see what father said to you about where +he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, too, and--" Her +voice growing more and more wistful, died away in the fascination of +watching the fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half-column +of scare-heads, and then followed down to the meagre details of the +dispatch eked out with double-leading to cover space. + +It appeared that the Northern express had reached Wellwater Junction, on +the Union and Dominion line, several hours behind time, and after the +usual stop there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the United +States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just after leaving the +Junction, run off the track. "The deadly car stove got in its work" on +the wreck, and many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the +parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list of the killed and +wounded, but several bodies were identified, and among the names of +passengers in the Pullman that of T. W. Northwick was reported, from a +telegram received by the conductor at Wellwater asking to have a seat +reserved from that point to Montreal. + +"It ain't him, I know it ain't, Miss Northwick," said Elbridge. He +offered to give her the paper, but took another look at it before he +finally yielded it. "There's lots of folks of the same name, I don't +care what it is, and the initials ain't the ones." + +"No," she said, doubtfully, "but I didn't like the last name being the +same." + +"Well, you can't help that; and as long as it ain't the initials, and +you know your father is safe and sound at the Mills, you don't want to +worry." + +"No," said Adeline. "You're sure he told you he was going to the Mills?" + +"Why, didn't he tell _you_ he was? I don't recollect just what he said. +But he told me about that note he left for me, and that had the money in +it for the fun'al--" Elbridge stopped for a moment before he added, "He +said he'd telegraph just which train he wanted me to meet him when he +was comin' back.... Why, dumn it! I guess I _must_ be crazy. We can +settle it in half an hour's time--or an hour or two at the outside--and +no need to worry about it. Telegraph to the Mills and find out whether +he's there or not." + +He dropped his harness, and went to the telephone and called up the +Western Union operator at the station. He had the usual telephonic +contention with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but he got her +at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset Falls, asking whether +Northwick was at the Mills. + +"There!" he said, "I don't believe but what that'll fix it all right. +And I'll bring you in the answer myself, when it comes, Miss Northwick." + +"I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, when--" + +"I guess you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it +wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be +a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, +and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for +him, interpreted them aright. + +She stayed to add, "I don't know what he could have been on that train +for, any way, do you?" + +"No, and he wa'n't on it; you'll find that out." + +"It'll be very provoking," she said, forecasting the minor trouble of +the greater trouble's failure. "Everybody will wonder if it isn't +father, and we shall have to tell them it isn't." + +"Well, that won't be so bad as havin' to tell 'em it is," said Elbridge, +getting back for the moment to his native dryness. + +"That's true," Adeline admitted. "Don't speak to anybody about it till +you hear." She knew from his making no answer that he would obey her, +and she hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the +intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world. + +She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her day in Boston and +the excitement of their talk at night, which she suspected had prevented +the girl from sleeping early. Elbridge's sympathetic incredulity had +comforted her, if it had not convinced her, and she possessed herself in +such patience as she could till the answer should come from the mills. +If her father were there, then it would be all right; and in the +meantime she found some excuses for not believing the worst she feared. +There was no reason in the world why he should be on that train; there +was no reason why she should identify him with that T. W. Northwick in +the burnt-up car; that was not his name, and that was not the place +where he would have been. + + + + +XI. + + +There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between +Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an +answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony +and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could +have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether +misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned +down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain +told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended, +she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home +with her. + +"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her +troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her. + +"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning +and began to cry. + +"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and +with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought +it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel +for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow +to her--so sudden, and her only child." + +"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have--have you seen +the--paper this morning?" + +"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I +thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?" + +"No, nothing. Only--only--" Adeline had not been able to separate +herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage +pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly, +but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you +see--see--" She stopped, and handed him the paper. + +He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her +trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of +reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the +train?" + +"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part +about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't +have been on the train at all. Only the name--" + +"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he +would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to +be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of +possibility. + +"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the +Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there +must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before +the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep +round after him when--" + +"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news +is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station, +and find out whether any answer has been--" + +"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will +telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you +haven't something to do, and stay with us till we--" + +"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the +accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the +horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts +with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been +on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability. + +Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby, +which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got +into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once; +"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at +Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some +hosses there--" + +"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply. + +Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well, +no, he hain't been, yet--" + +Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks. + +At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to +the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where +this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the +world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight +of Elbridge lifting something from the floor. + +"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a +little faint, and--" + +"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and +setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll +get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping +over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air +began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, +"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline +answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is. +Let us get her into the library on the lounge." + +She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried +Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly +about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come +back. + +Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When +she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the +clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her." + +"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle +eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and +physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the +morning paper, and among the passengers--the missing--was one of the +name of Northwick--" + +"But father is at the Mills!" + +"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure--and word +has come that he--isn't there." + +"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty +incredulity. + +Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving +it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to +one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while +her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came +from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity. + +"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the +train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at +this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and +came back to the other two. + +"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable--" + +"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at +the Mills?" + +"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette, +scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or--" + +"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought." + +"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there." + +"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a +little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries +there; and--" + +"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going +farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in +the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see +the paper first?" + +"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly. + +"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?" + +Adeline's silence made confession. + +"What I think is, we'd better all have _lunch_," said Suzette, and she +went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't +you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who +answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see +Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when +the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will +drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall +not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be +no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad +guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and +came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe +he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for +the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last +night. The express has to come up from Boston--" She stopped and ran +over the time-table of the route. "Well, he _could_ get a connecting +train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did." + +She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then +suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready +yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and +I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father +was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before +yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph +to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home, +Adeline, till I know something definite." + +The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that +betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste, +and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, +untasted. + +"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till +she comes back!" she entreated. + +Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a +harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said. + +She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they +heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then +came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away. + +Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as +one can in the suspense of a strong emotion. + +"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he +were a little abashed by it. + +"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that +she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every +minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd--I mustn't keep +you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical +strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be +anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!" + +She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really +wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away, +before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and +he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early +winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl +had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be +resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had +now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the +presumptuous rumor and destroy it. + +Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village +from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped +into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their +feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the +side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and +saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and +the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque +sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and +then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron +filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her +to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was +another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon +liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his +astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays +nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if +fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew +it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her +friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her +brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of +it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at +the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and +he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater +now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing +is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills. +Some one was asking for him there yesterday." + +"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested." + +"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet." + +"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very +provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline +know." + +"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of +good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he +suggested to Louise. + +"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you. +Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we +were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous." + +"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep +thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this +fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she +called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add, +"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something +definite?" + +Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a +resolute cheerfulness. + + + + +XII. + + +The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the +suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two +more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade +loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was +such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its +strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the +moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed +roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the +witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to +her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help +bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible. + +He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the +platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two +of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some +wornout rails with new ones. + +"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, +Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his +face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in +position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the +plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, +free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer. + +"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor, +even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association +with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of +the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief +just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: +in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their +work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which +ennobled the scene. + +When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade, +who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the +moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her +father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that +matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it. +"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or--" + +Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height +with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss +Northwick's father?" + +"Very little--nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in +the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just +met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at +the station." + +Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk +from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the +station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of +the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't +follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and +directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the +station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he +met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I +should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our +state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust +can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the +business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that +doesn't belong to him?" + +"What do you mean, Matt?" + +"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick +was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked." + +"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe +that?" + +"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss +Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I +was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that +wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt +that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In +fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut +their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding +defaulter." + +"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These +things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind +of--" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's +revery in which he seemed to have been far absent. + +"Have you seen much of the family this winter?" + +"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've +been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at +their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with +the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I +don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all +kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was +willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that _she_ kept the +family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture." + +"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared +anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her." + +Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean, +Matt? Is there anything besides--" + +"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him +steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary +tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something +that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what +Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their +suspicions." + +"Right?" + +"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter +to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the +directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the +face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make +up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best +thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke +his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the +defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no +question about it." + +"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts +which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible--do you +suppose--imagine--that it was really he who was in that burning car? +What an awful fate!" + +"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe +ground in regard to a thing of that kind--the only ground." + +"The only ground?" + +"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt. + +"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of +the Board--called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names--and told +him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident +on his way home." + +"Ah!" + +"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this +morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he +was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused +his death--I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything +of the kind." + +"Of course," said Wade, compassionately. + +"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the +devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean +anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any +superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a +friend--or a victim--of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way +out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke +from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been +telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his +business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my +coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two +poor women." + +"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst +always seems to do." + +"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to +fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be +when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that +awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was +running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it." + +"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?" + +"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but +sorrow and shame have to come out--I don't know why, but they do. Then, +when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the +cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in +silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in +words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that +bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she +took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating +with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it +was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!" + +"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was +very good of her to come." + +"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head +up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her +friendship with Miss Northwick--she's so much younger than I, and they +came together when I was abroad--but I've fancied she wasn't much liked +among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read +that report, nothing would do but she must come." + +"Of course." + +"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a +sacrifice for him to let us come." + +"I don't understand." + +"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick; +and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to +cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a +rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have +some interest in getting him out of the way." + +"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as +Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even +from the man's son. + +"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach +to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt. + +Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the +case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor +sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so +little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to +make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins +to God!" + +"Ah, I'm with you _there_!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther +through his friend's arm. + +They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for +mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life, +which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had +thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to +verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good +deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points +in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life. +Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard +they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was +not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured +in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them: +Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his +back on manufacturing. + +They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the +calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their +sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the +victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so +much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick +old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of +her doom which Matt tried to put into words. + +"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I +don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when +I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were +taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and +I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with +my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the +most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why, +just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They +will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up +everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the +world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her +head!" + +Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of +course she won't be allowed to come to want." + +"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a +disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve +everything." + +"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade. + +"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that +you--" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed +nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get +Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is." + +They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a +head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet +of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and +then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could. + +"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks +best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. +Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your +sister." + +"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll +see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch." + +The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to +meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it +to Matt and promptly turned his back on him. + +Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car +passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at +Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling. + +"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst." + +Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no. +This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting. +And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go +up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to +send if anything else comes." + +"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left +the station. "I'm going to my study, there." + +They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more +elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow. + +From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous +little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I +beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly +transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to +Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?" + +"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is +impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car." + +"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be +_our_ Mr. Northwick. Er--good-morning, sir." + +He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked +Wade, "Who in the world is that?" + +"He's a Mr. Gerrish--keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant +type." + +Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so +low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business +standing." + +"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar +of material success." + +Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is +simply seething with curiosity." + +Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down +to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was +alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble. + +"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply. + +Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater. + +"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. +"It's perfectly ridiculous! _Why_ should he have been there? I think +there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating +false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the +train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some +horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm +going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's +bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out." + +"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt. + +"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you +back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she +handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell +them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes." + +The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the +paper in his hand. + +"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully +backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing +from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater +Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's +the worst, I want to know the worst." + +Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to +gain time. + +"Of course! At such a time, I would _rather_ be alone." + +At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he +said he would like to speak with her there. + +She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, +"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my +sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this +week. What have you heard?" + +"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?" + +"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? +Must you go back?" + +"No--not exactly." + +"Not exactly? What are you driving at?" + +"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go +up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she +wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose +she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she +do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the +accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was--" + +"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She +mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her +go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this +point. "She must send somebody--some of their men. She mustn't go. It's +too hideous!" + +"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go." + +"You!" + +"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I +can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible +suspense for her." + +"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that +poor, sick old maid." + +"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left +her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for +her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more." + +"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, +Matt. _You_ couldn't do _less_! It's magnificent of you. Have you told +her, yet, that you would go?" + +"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first." + +"Oh, _I_ approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay +here till you come back--" + +"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. +"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for +them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts +with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to +Canada to escape arrest." + +He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her. + +"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope +he's killed." + +Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much +the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way." + +"When must it come out?" + +"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may +come out--some rumor of it--in the morning papers. The question is +whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be +wise, or useful." + +"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a +thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me +get away alive. I must go at once!" + +She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up +a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from. + +"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without +telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would +insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed." + +"Oh, _that_ was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to +get away." + +"I hope you won't let her suspect--" + +"Well, I _think_ you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning +round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as +sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a +warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he +was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and +he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, +fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other +than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from +her friend. + +Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library. + +"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at +Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would +be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the +same farm." + +The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head +in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, +she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe +herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an +apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable." + +"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no +news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to +that." + +"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were +red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears +came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. +Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time +we went to Quebec?" + +Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at +least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?" + +Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. +"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map +of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal +and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the +Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get +to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly +frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of +_course_, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's +usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans--" + +She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and +began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at +the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might +not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the +Springfield train at Wellwater." + +"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the +ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a +man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot +help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time +does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train--if I +don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear." + +A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette +went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing +the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on, +and her jacket over her arm. + +"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you--I had to do that--but we +both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences." +Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite +know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she +spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, +she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell +you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time +for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could +out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about +all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But +remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can +send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm +simply waiting. Will you remember that--_whatever_ happens?" + +Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief. + +"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in +formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of +them than it could to the other. + +"Come, Matt!" said Louise. + +She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they +would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then +Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and +wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette." + +"That is a good idea," said Louise. + +"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston +alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!" + +"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive, +I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him +I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall +be set down at our door in perfect safety." + +They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined +reluctantly in it. + +When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she +will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she +will trust you enough to turn to us?" + +"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall +come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections, +as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is--" + +"Yes, of course," said Matt. + +"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But +I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?" + +"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at +the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country +person." + +"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise. + +Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven +knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation +of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see +him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits +seem ugly." + +They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked +up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father +might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question +whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief +for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided +motive. + +"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said +Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness." + +"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt +answered. + +There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, +released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station +an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming +and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with +envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were +both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their +fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of +good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against +whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help +carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to +help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality +she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the +front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell +plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed +with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls +who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a +young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; +she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated +operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was +no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why +he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second +glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a +studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his +clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however +he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned +from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came +up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, +and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went +to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for +Miss Northwick. + +She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it +up." + +"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's," +said Matt. + +"All right." + +Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting +quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the +station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short +of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as +observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from +the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the +awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of +the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called +from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the +depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?" + +"Yes, I have a telegram." + +"Oh, give it to me!" + +He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But +if isn't what you expected, will you let--will you allow me--" + +As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from +his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been +there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously +in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins. + +Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn't. You--you must let me go." + +"You?" + +"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I +can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn't do. +Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I +solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or +forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish +done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if +you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you've borne +with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust +me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go +in your place on such an errand, but it really isn't so. You ought to +know that I wouldn't offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all +that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!" + +He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without +strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she +answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of +assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping +his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that +day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he +stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the +rise of ground to the southward. + + + + +XIII. + + +The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight +thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to +Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and +shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young +man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of _The +Boston Events_' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far +from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young +man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a +woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual +sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching +the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in +rows on either side of the room. + +She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for +his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself. + +"Well," he said, "let's see. No use asking if you've got coffee?" He +inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a +deep breath. + +"Baked beans?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I don't think there's anything much better than baked beans. Do +you?" + +"Well, not when you git 'em _good_," the woman admitted. "_Ril_ good." + +"And what's the matter with a piece of mince pie?" + +"I don't see's there's any great deal. Hot?" + +"Every time." + +"I _thought_ so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I'd as soon +eat a piece of I don't know what as a piece o' _cold_ mince pie." + +"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I +guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor +round inside of five minutes." + +The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship +established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need +to. Nothin' else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot +plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them +on the table before the young man, "Your pie's warmin' for you; I got +you some rolls; they're just right out the oven; and here's some the +best butter I ever put a knife to, if I _do_ say so. It's just as good +and sweet as butter can be, if it _didn't_ come from the Northwick place +at a dollar a pound." + +"Well, now, I should have thought you'd have used the Northwick butter," +said the young man with friendly irony. + +"You know the Northwick butter?" said the woman, charmed at the +discovery of another tie. + +"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a +fancy brand for the table." + +The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I'll bet you +grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy +which he did not disallow. + +"Well, I'm pretty particular," said the young man. "But I _have_ to be, +to find anything to find fault with in the way _my_ wife manages. I +don't suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick butter, now." + +"Why not?" + +"Why, if he was killed in that accident--" + +"Oh, I guess there ain't anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it +was some other Northwick. Their coachman--Elbridge Newton--was tellin' +my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at +some hosses there. He's always buyin' more hosses. I guess he must have +as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don't place any dependence on +that report." + +"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at +the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?" + +"What fellow?" + +"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and +blazing, as you may say." + +"Oh,--Mr. Putney! That's just one of his jokes. He's always down on Mr. +Northwick." + +"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble +there." + +"Labor trouble?" + +"I guess so." + +The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" +and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor +trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?" + +"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward +inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the _Events_' +young man. + +"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost +so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston +to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles." + +"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?" + +"Well, I'm a reporter--same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps +you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?" + +"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in +Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the +_Events_' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee +caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him. + +"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the +drug store that seemed to be pretty happy." + +"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife." + +"Who _is_ Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the _Events_' man. + +"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for +instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the +old Hatboro' Putneys, here." + +"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?" + +"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much +liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man +perceived that he had struck a false note. + +"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more +bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a +month on a strict prohibition basis." + +The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, +I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is +bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way +you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in +every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as +anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband." + +"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go +ahead of him, well, not in _this_ town," said the husband. + +"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes +him so down on Mr. Northwick?" + +"Well, I dunno," said the host, "_what_ it is. He's always been so. I +presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is +anything else." + +"Why, what kind of a man _is_ Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man +asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had +now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason." + +"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's +only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never +did have much to do with the place, before." + +"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?" + +"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered. + +His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue +Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to." + +"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be +merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more +available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose +slippers require constant attention?" + +"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as +that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the +workin' folks, since Mr. Peck." + +"Who was Mr. Peck?" + +"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here +two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort +of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union." + +"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. +"Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard +history of co-operation." + +"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly. + +"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he +isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on +that big place of his; and give work." + +"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the +neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The +hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been +quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a +man of the reporter's wide observation. "_He_ thinks Hatboro' was better +off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place." + +"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and +he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. +Northwick, personally?" + +The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a +moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had +anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything +against him. I guess he's a pretty good man." + +"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he _was_ going +to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. +With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to +throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?" + +"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, +sarcastically. + +"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on +in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line +of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed. + +"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion +road there. Then it's on a branch." + +"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. +_What_ did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick +family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up +his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. +"Married man myself, you know." + +"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her +husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk +in the corner of the room, and brought back the change. + +"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" +the young man asked, in pocketing his money. + +"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. +"There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the +hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. +Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, +either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't +suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to +talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell." + +"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter. + +"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew." + +"Oh, I see: second wife. Then _he's_ the young man, heigh!" + +The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat +the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en." + +The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, +and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he +had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. +Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband +long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth +crying for. + +The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of +accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so +much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his +own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist +the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended +himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular +belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one +else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if +you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was +what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the +happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, +and on his own exceptional good fortune in it. + +He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat +he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the +pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in. + +The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You +onto it, too?" + +"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion. + +"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him +alone. + +"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." +Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting +Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably +shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, +"some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He +rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and +pressed his fingers against his temples. + +"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one +another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take +something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache." + +The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth +while?" + +"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?" + +"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of +the news with us," he suggested. + +"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney. + +"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, +Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an +object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the +consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away." + +"The what is?" asked Pinney. + +"The consensus." + +"Anything like the United States Census?" + +"It isn't spelt like it." + +Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my +own wherever I find it, as George Washington said." + +"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't +know what the word means." + +"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his +book. + +"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had +revived himself with a sip or two. + +"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?" + +"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do +you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have +you. There are no scoops in it." + +"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly. + +Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a +detective--in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, +like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion. + +"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney. + +"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a +space-man can't do." + +"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and +superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at +trifles." + +"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt +up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their +emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome +to it." + +"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name +and--" + +"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind." + +"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, +anyhow. It's not a personal thing." + +"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, +but it makes the man's face burn." + +"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that +stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay +there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for +a reporter. When are you going to Boston?" + +"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own." + +"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously. + +"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you." + +"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the +cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your +diffidence is infectious, Maxwell." + + + + +XIV. + + +Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it +appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to +pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him +suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They +would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see +him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all +the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family +required him to use every means for making copy. + +He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably +doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly +well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden +palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the +inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of +baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance +gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or +a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring. + +"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney +in, and in his absence, the representative of the _Events_ made note of +the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and +of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The +inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he +returned with his card still in his hand. + +"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at +home." + +"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see +Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home." + +"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. +She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence +of an interviewer. + +"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card +which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. +Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words _Representing the Boston +Events_. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and +business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a +certain shade of authority. + +"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some +conversation with you in regard to this--this rumor--accident. Can you +tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?" + +"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. +She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the +mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to +its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She +wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do +this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not +telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; +and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to +have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this +reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior. + +"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully. + +"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days." + +"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney. + +"Yes, three or four. There _is_ one train, at half-past-twelve, I +think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you +there in three hours." + +"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?" + +"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often +take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the +Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses +from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have +run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any +reliance on that story"--she gasped the rest out--"about--that +accident." + +"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those +flying rumors--they get the names all mixed up, those country +operators." + +"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. +"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs." + +"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are +they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed +questionings. + +"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, +and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the +Falls." + +"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope +you'll find out it's all a mistake about--" + +"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman--a friend of ours--has +just gone up to Wellwater to see about it." + +"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. +I suppose you've telegraphed?" + +"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went." + +It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did +not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, +"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to +see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd +taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, +smiling. + +There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by +seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They +take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; +their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts +warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use +to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about +him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five +minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later. + +When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't +at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the +troubles." + +"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her +relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, +in summer, Miss Northwick." + +"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been +enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long +time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to +their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and +to warrant her father's safety. + +"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my +wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the +country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have +to live there." + +Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the +vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper +from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to +your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth +in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She +thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and +keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to +ask him not to do so. + +"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to--it's very kind of +you--I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely +human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away +from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now +suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home +life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, +he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, +it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him +down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given +him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; +on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and +dropped them into the deep snow. + +His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success +he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an +enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done. + +She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, +you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the _Abstract_ clear out +of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and +the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on +the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the +world." + +Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are +ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big +default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a +chance to make up his shortage--it's the old story. I've got just the +setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the +word to go ahead--" + +"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall +do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute." + +Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her +enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why +he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective +authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. +"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm +going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. +There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, +any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell +you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk. + +His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work +on the table there. It's bigger than this desk." + +"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and +followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their +simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" +He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into +it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!" + +"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a +pathetic little mouth. + +Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he +was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his +dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, +of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter +which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which +enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do +justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's +home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with +a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit +in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when +he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as +plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would +sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his +daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't +quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently +hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to +Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!" + +His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. +"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure +out of it for _me_; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of +his family, I can't help you any more." + +"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I +guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall +handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. +"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it +hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to +Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I +knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so +I didn't go." + +"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes +upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back." + +"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he +asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, +and the love he saw in them. + +Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take +air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife +often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she +saw him. + +This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, +when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the _Events_. She +had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in +a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up +the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main +dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the +clerks. + +At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in +the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready +to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, +and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under +his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more +like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He +wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they +began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the +summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first +meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. +They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social +splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that +they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value +each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the +greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they +were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was +good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great +deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a +virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual +devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great +merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they +prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so +deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of +altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and +content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married +on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been +rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their +happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest. + + + + +XV. + + +Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached +the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house +his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told +her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work. + +"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying +round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. +You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks +it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the +defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't +_do_ that." + +"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to +have you." + +"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young +fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a +business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is +getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an +owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years." + +"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother. + +"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at +this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a +wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and +he's sure to get on." + +"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged +soothingly. + +"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my +own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of +working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first +thing is to earn your bread." + +"Well, you _do_ earn yours, my son--and no one works harder to earn +it." + +"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it." + +"Oh, my son!" + +"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the +rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the +door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar +and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to +leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he +finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on +the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! +He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only +chance for a scoop." + +"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a +gentleman." + +"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the +room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of +business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I +intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to +pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps _he_ isn't +a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to +write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility +with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it." + +"He's very kind to you, Brice." + +"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my +life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every +now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room +in independent journalism?" + +Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning +the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had +not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to +put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call. + +The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, +but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He +tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat +and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather +haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, +and led him in there. + +Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after +dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange +experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and +comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over +the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the +contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', +with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she +remembered. + +The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood +irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father." + +"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very +soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along +unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for +the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes +were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her +nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far +as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of +man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, +and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's +very cold out, isn't it?" + +"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell. + +He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an +illogical sense of acquaintance with him. + +"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the +beginning of February." + +"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than +she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold +weather after the January thaw." + +"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought +of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes +any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the +proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be +a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some +of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a +walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her +father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision +gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, +he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he +found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, +as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking +up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's +library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which +was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare +Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes +without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a +scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say +next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with +no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what +he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the +country." + +"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town." + +"And how dreary," he added. + +"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be +debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this +rate." + +"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, +to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color +and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the +literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to +get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall +below. + +Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that +brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the _Daily +Abstract_, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about +this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick." + +"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about +the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! +Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?" + +"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out. + +"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how _could_ you treat him so?" + +"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! +What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of +my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?" + +"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!" + +"Saw that he was a gentleman?" + +"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not--not a common reporter +at _all_!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, +and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous +experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father +who had not been the gentleman. "You--you might have been a little +kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether +you would say anything. He didn't persist." + +"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw +always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find +himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and +admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the +way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for +you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What +does it all mean?" + +The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: +"Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I +should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I +_could_. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if +you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you +did." + +Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as +you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise +gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a +tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have +been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters +after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this +bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to +Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and +more?" + +"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was +going alone. He couldn't do less." + +"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He +turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a +strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's +this?" + +He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, +"Of course he will come back for it." + +"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll--I'll write him a note," Hilary +groaned. + +Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor +fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? +It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, +and meet all kinds of rebuffs." + +"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, +with some return to his grudge. + +"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, papa," said Louise, sweetly. + +The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came +up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his +note-book, he--" + +Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it +is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell. + + + + +XVI. + + +Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in the little triptych +mirror against one of the shelves. Her hair was not tumbled, and she +completed her toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending the +edge of her skirt over them where she stood. + +Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and she smiled a fresh +greeting to him. "We--I had just picked your note-book up. I--I'm glad +you came back, I--was a little short with you a moment ago. I--I--Mayn't +I offer you a cigar?" + +"No, thanks. I don't smoke," said Maxwell. + +"Then a glass of--It's pretty cold out!" + +"Thank you; I never drink." + +"Well, that's good! That's--sit down; sit down!--that's a very good +thing. I assure you, I don't think it's the least use, though I do both. +My boy doesn't, he's a pattern to his father." + +In spite of Hilary's invitation Maxwell remained on foot, with the +effect of merely hearing him out as he went on. + +"I--I'm sorry I haven't anything to tell about that accident. I've been +telegraphing all day, without finding out anything beyond the fact as +first reported; and now my son's gone up to Wellwater, to look it up on +the ground. It may have been our Mr. Northwick, or it may not. May I ask +how much you know?" + +"I don't know that I'm quite free to say," answered Maxwell. + +"Oh!" + +"And I didn't expect you to say anything unless you wished to make +something known. It's a matter of business." + +"Exactly," said Hilary. "But I think I might been a little civiller in +saying what I did. The rumor's been a great annoyance to me; and I like +to share my annoyances with other people. I suppose your business often +brings you in contact with men of that friendly disposition? Heigh?" +Hilary rolled the cigar he was about to light between his lips. + +"We see the average man," said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his +poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that +from the bore it is to interview." + +"I dare say that's often the worst part of it," said Hilary, lighting +his cigar, and puffing out the first great clouds. "Well, then, I may +congratulate myself on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn't know I +should come off so handsomely." + +There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell did not attempt to make +conversation. Hilary offered him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve +the parting of abruptness, "If you care to look in on me again, later +on, perhaps--" + +"Thank you," said Maxwell, and he turned to go. Then he turned back, and +after a moment's hesitation, bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, +"Good-evening!" and went out. + +Louise fetched a deep breath. "Why didn't you keep him longer, papa, and +find out all about him?" + +"I think we know all that's necessary," said her father, dryly. "At +least he isn't on my conscience any longer; and now I hope you're +satisfied." + +"Yes--yes," she hesitated. "You don't think you were too patronizing in +your reparation, papa?" + +"Patronizing?" Hilary's crest began to rise. + +"Oh, I don't mean that; but I wish you hadn't let him see that you +expected him to leap for joy when you stooped to excuse yourself." + +Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the violence he was about to +permit himself. "The next time, if you don't like my manner with people, +don't stay, Louise." + +"I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how beautifully you could do +it; and you _did_ do it beautifully. It was magnificent--perhaps _too_ +magnificent." She began to laugh and to kiss away the vexation from her +father's face, keeping her hands behind her with her shoes she had +picked up again, in them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat. + +"And did I want you to stay and entertain him here till I came in?" he +demanded, to keep from being mollified too soon. + +"No," she faltered. "_That_ was a work of necessity. He looked so sick +and sad, that he appealed to my sympathy, and besides--Do you think I +could trust you with a secret, papa?" + +"What are you talking about?" + +"Why, you see I thought he was a walking-delegate at first." + +"And was that the reason you stayed?" + +"No. That was what frightened me, and then interested me. I wanted to +find out what they were like. But that isn't the secret." + +"It's probably quite as important," Hilary growled. + +"Well, you see it's such a good lesson to me! I had slipped off my shoes +when I was lying down, and I couldn't get away, he came in so suddenly." + +"And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you were talking to that +reporter all the time in--" + +"How should he know it? You didn't know it yourself, papa. I couldn't +get my shoes on after he came, of course!" She brought them round before +her in evidence. + +"Well, it's scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous! I never come in after +you've been here without finding some part of your gear lying +round--hair-pins, or gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or +something--and I won't have it. I want you to understand that I think +it's disgraceful. I'm ashamed of you." + +"Oh, no! Not _ashamed_, papa!" + +"Yes, I am!" said her father; but he had to relent under her look of +meek imploring, and say, "or I ought to be. I don't see how you could +hold up your head." + +"I held it very _high_ up. When you haven't got your shoes on--in +company--it gives you a sort of--internal majesty; and I behaved very +loftily. But it's been a fearful lesson to me, papa!" She made her +father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, and kissed him for +his amiability. + +She said at the end of this rite, "He didn't seem much impressed even +after you had apologized, do you think, papa?" + +"No, he didn't," Hilary grumbled. "He's as stiff-necked as need be." + +"Yes," said Louise, thoughtfully. "He must be proud. How funny proud +people are, papa! I can't understand them. That was what always +fascinated me with Suzette." + +Hilary's face saddened as it softened. "Ah, poor thing! She'll have need +of all her pride, now." + +"You mean about her father," said Louise, sobered too. "Don't you hope +he's got away?" + +"What do you mean, child? That would be a very rascally wish in me." + +"Well, you'd rather he had got away than been killed?" + +"Why, of course, of course," Hilary ruefully assented. "But if Matt +finds he wasn't--in the accident, it's my business to do all I can to +bring him to justice. The man's a thief." + +"Well, then, _I_ hope he's got away." + +"You mustn't say such things, Louise." + +"Oh, _no_, papa! Only _think_ them." + + + + +XVII. + + +Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look +into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It +was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have +three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have +justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing +to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way. +Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same +errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with +them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in +agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end; +but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith +with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could +have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do, +and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. +The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck. +There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely +swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to +the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent +and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of +derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the +locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that +had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a +wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were +ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing +to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter +and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of +passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the +operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved +in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but +those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his +death. + +This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to +Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it +left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt +struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself +in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind +he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and +whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real +course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide +his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If +the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that +Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all. +But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must +be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In +any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who +must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were +really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other +fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family; +he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only +thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming +a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive; +but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse +when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her +father was dead. + +She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they +were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell +them so. + +Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he +urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was +not in the accident. + +She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no +difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her +father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by +this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was +doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when +they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight +change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to +his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them +know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very +suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else. + +Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he +thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that +he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered +nothing, she did not ask him. + +It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that +she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she +will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a +slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline +jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes; +but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief. +She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and +she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister. + +Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved, +when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel +it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of +hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help +those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it; +these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their +bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude. + +Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to +linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell. +Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was +astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last. + +"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never! +Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I +wonder you could do it!" + +"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as +well as their loss, and were of one mind about it. + +"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it--" + +"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because _you_ would have +done it for any one! But you have done it for _us_; and as long as I +live I shall remember that! Oh"--She broke off; and dropped her face +with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he +was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after +they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of +encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had +accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be +born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make +women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his +heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity +that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from +every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from +that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He +went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned +from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was +respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was +foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for +them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he +had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it +was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair. + +The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away +from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and +followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the +night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all +that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him +to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick +was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his +name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all +the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he +had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his +misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal +justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his +stand. + + + + +XVIII. + + +For forty-eight hours longer the fact of the defalcation was kept back; +but then, in view of the legal action urged by those who did not accept +the theory of Northwick's death, it had to come out, and it broke all +bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity. + +Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and it was weeks before +the editorial homilies ceased. From time to time, fresh details and +unexpected revelations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the +interest of the original fact. There were days when there was nothing +about it in the papers, and then days when it broke out in vivid +paragraphs and whole lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was +singular in its features; these were common to most of the defalcations, +great and small, which were of daily fame in the newspapers. But the +doubt as to the man's fate, and the enduring mystery of his whereabouts, +if he were still alive, were qualities that gave peculiar poignancy to +Northwick's case. Its results in the failure of people not directly +involved, were greater than could have been expected; and the sum of his +peculations mounted under investigation. It was all much worse than had +been imagined, and in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral +gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts stolen and indirectly +lost by it. There was a great deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that +the crime should have been that of a man whom no one would have dreamed +of suspecting, and there was some sufficiently ridiculous consternation +at the presence of such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial +life of Boston. + +In the _Events_, Pinney made his report of the affair the work of art +which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's +masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with +its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to +page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In +the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a +devotion to the interests of the _Events_ and its readers. With every +hour the painful impressions of his interview with Miss Northwick grew +fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no +color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening +the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow +upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the +family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly +on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the +victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the +facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the +capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force +the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase +widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the +library into which "the _Events_' representative was politely ushered," +was furnished with "all the appliances of a cultured taste." The works +of the standard authors in costly bindings graced its shelves; +magnificent paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and +alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously received the _Events_' +reporter, was suitably enriched; her years were discounted, and her +beauty approached to the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about +Pinney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial grandeur upon the +Northwick place, outside as well as inside. He imparted a romantic +consequence to Hatboro' itself: "A thriving New England town, proud of +its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern prosperity, with a +population of some five or six thousand souls, among whose working men +and women modern ideas of the most advanced character had been realized +in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-operative kitchen and +its clientèle of intelligent members and patrons." + +People of all occupations became leading residents in virtue of taking +Pinney into their confidence, and "A Prominent Proletarian" achieved the +distinction of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of J. M. +Northwick's character among the working-classes. "The Consensus of +Public Feeling," in portraying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the +proprietary word he had seized, formed the subject of some dramatic +paragraphs; and the whole formed a rich and fit setting for the main +facts of Northwick's undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures +which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate. + +Pinney's masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could write only at that +moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the _Events_ could publish +only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was +flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by +accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But +it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more +philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle Ages. + +The _Abstract_ addressed a different class of readers, and aimed at a +different effect in its treatment of public affairs. We look upon +newspapers as having a sort of composite temperament, formed from the +temperaments of all the different men employed on them; but, as a matter +of fact, they each express the disposition and reflect the temperament +of one controlling spirit, which all the other dispositions and +temperaments yield to. This is so much the case that it is hard to +efface the influence of a strong mind from the journal it has shaped, +even when it is no longer actively present in it. A good many years +before the time of the Northwick defalcation, the _Events_ had been in +the management of a journalist, once well-known in Boston, a certain +Bartley Hubbard, who had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who +had thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After he left it, the +owner tried several devices for elevating and reforming it, but failed, +partly because he was himself a man of no ideals but those of the +counting-room, and largely because the paper could not recover from the +strong slant given it without self-destruction. So the _Events_ +continued what Bartley Hubbard had made it, and what the readers he had +called about it liked it to be: a journal without principles and without +convictions, but with interests only; a map of busy life, indeed, but +glaringly colored, with crude endeavors at picturesqueness, and with no +more truth to life than those railroad maps where the important centres +converge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, and leave +rival roads wriggling faintly about in uninhabited solitudes. In +Hubbard's time the _Abstract_, then the _Chronicle-Abstract_, was in +charge of the editor who had been his first friend on the Boston press, +and whom he finally quarreled with on a point which this friend +considered dishonorable to Hubbard. Ricker had not since left the paper, +and though he was called a crank by some of the more progressive and +reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal of a conscience in +journalism; he gave the Abstract a fixed character and it could no more +have changed than the _Events_, without self-destruction. The men under +him were not so many as Cæsar's soldiers, and that, perhaps, was the +reason why he knew not only their names but their qualities. When +Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which the detectives had +entrusted to him for provisional use, and asked to be assigned to the +business of working it up, Kicker consented, but he consented +reluctantly. He thought Maxwell was better for better things; he knew he +was a ravenous reader of philosophy and sociology, and he had been early +in the secret of his being a poet; it had since become an open secret +among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both honor and +dishonor. + +"I shouldn't think you'd like to do it, Maxwell," said Ricker, kindly. +"It isn't in your line, is it? Better give it to some of the other +fellows." + +"It's more in my line than you suppose, Mr. Ricker," said the young +fellow. "It's a subject I've looked up a great deal lately. I once +thought"--he looked down bashfully--"of trying to write a play about a +defaulter, and I got together a good many facts about defalcation. +You've no idea how common it is; it's about the commonest fact of our +civilization." + +"Ah! Is that so?" asked Ricker with ironical deference to the bold +generalizer. "Who else is 'onto' this thing?" + +"Pinney, of the _Events_." + +"Well, he's a dangerous rival, in some ways," said Ricker. "When it +comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for +him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker +pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his +forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and +Maxwell knew that he was authorized to do the work. + +He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the +affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had +expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he +worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at +theirs. He waited till the next morning to begin, however, for he was +too fagged after he came home from the Hilarys'; he rose early and got +himself a cup of tea over the gas-burner; before the house was awake he +was well on in his report. By nightfall he had finished it, and then he +carried it to Ricker. The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave +Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two +separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts +which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set +down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone +which the _Abstract_ affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the +facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he +saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, +"Hello, young man! Who invited you to take the floor?" + +"Nobody. I found I couldn't embody my general knowledge of defalcation +in the report without impertinence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my +mind somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don't expect you to take +it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere." + +Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explanation. He went on reading +the manuscript, and when he ended, he took up the report again, and +compared it with the editorial in length. "If we printed these things as +they stand it would look like a case of the tail wagging the dog." + +Maxwell began again, "Oh, I didn't expect--" + +"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report +was at least physically inadequate." + +"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like +padding or faking, and I don't myself." + +Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now +handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do +you think you could weld these two things together?" + +"I don't know." + +"Suppose you try." + +"As editorial, or--" + +"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here." + +He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat +down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of +kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory +sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the +editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in +half an hour he handed the result to Ricker. + +"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil +in his hand. + +Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his +article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his +pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire +paragraphs. + +When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it +now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I _must_ +say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it." + +Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here, +young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying +them?" + +"I don't know--" + +"_I_ know. I know you _didn't_. Every one of them rang false. They were +there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But +by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking +them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you +ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you +didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish; +he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on: +"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have +killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have +suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out +of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique, +and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made +any secret of my belief that you have talent." + +"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The +surgeon's knife hurts though it cures. + +When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the +young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and +we're not going to have any report." + +"I told you it was good!" + +Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said, +"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue +pencil. It's perfectly dead." + +It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it +did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he +was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work, +and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was +not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its +symmetry and force, as he read and read it again. + +He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter, +and had accused the structure of society. There must be something +rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning +brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our +country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their +employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and +corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our +commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that +while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in +business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create +surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of +which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the +_Abstract_ reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home, +and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was +universally believed that he had run away with other people's money +merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting +for his whereabouts. + +At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit +to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a +vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the +historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and +manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a +closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the +first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions +and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and +proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout +so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote +in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical +comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had +been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and +quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young +fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it +when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt +afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere +accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for +his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their +material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and +strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all +off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised +Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or +unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he +admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one +except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane +temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the +play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the +conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred +instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted +perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the +compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the +reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact +that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without +peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for +the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers, +cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the +uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They +were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune; +they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth; +they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not +belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans +they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace +the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to +make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some +shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand +their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada. + +In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than +to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those +cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to +observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon +the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker +employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of +almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black +pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was +adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the +leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the +listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife +and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on +his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and +in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to +come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same +crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this +soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there +nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected +to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to +business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned +that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle +for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had +opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. +The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the +same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape +the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to +consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do +without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a +paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without +such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the +semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank +socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing +sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative +shape. + + + + +XIX. + + +The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as they chose. When Matt +was at home, his mother and he were usually first; then his father came, +and Louise last. They took the _Events_, as many other people did, +because with all its faults it was a thorough newspaper; and they +maintained their self-respect by taking the _Abstract_. The morning that +the defalcation came out, Matt sent and got all the other papers, which +he had glanced through and talked over with his mother before his father +joined them at nine o'clock. + +Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of +his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's +Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it +was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers +were atrocious, but that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing +more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in that of the +directors, who gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of +publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were +fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against +his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had +suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised +the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, +even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these +blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called +him. He got through the various accounts in the various papers, by +broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these +terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he +came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over. + +"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final +effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered +from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort." + +"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily. + +"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to +pick yourself up." + +"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or +rather, at the copy of the _Abstract_ which Matt was hiding behind, and +he said, "What have you got there, Matt?" + +"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most +uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!" + +"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently; +and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as +Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood; +its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly +refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so +enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the +writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading +was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined +Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such +cases. + +"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept +from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added, +"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told +them." + +"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't +be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them +shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers +are so bad--" + +"Not bad!" cried his father. + +"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They +probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about +the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used +to. But I wish I knew who did this _Abstract_ article; I should like to +thank him." + +"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them +there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were +willing to have them come to us, no matter _what_ happened?" + +"Louise and I both tried to do that," said her son, "when we were there +together; and when I reported to them after Wellwater, I told them again +and again what our wish was." + +"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, "I am glad we have done everything we could. +At first I doubted the wisdom of your taking Louise to see them; but now +I'm satisfied that it was right. And I'm satisfied that your father did +right in getting that wretched creature the chance he abused." + +"Oh, yes," said Matt. "That was right. And I'm thoroughly glad he's out +of it. If he's still alive, I'm glad he's out of it." + +Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his various remorses and +misgivings, but now he broke out. "And I think you're talking abominable +nonsense, Matt. I didn't get Northwick given that chance to enable him +to escape the consequences of his rascality. Why shouldn't he be +punished for it?" + +"Because it wouldn't do the least good, to him or to any one else. It +wouldn't reform him, it wouldn't reform anything. Northwick isn't the +disease; he's merely the symptom. You can suppress him; but that won't +cure the disease. It's the whole social body that's sick, as this +article in the _Abstract_ implies." + +"I don't see any such implication in it," his father angrily retorted. +"Your theory would form an excuse for the scoundrelism of every +scoundrel unhung. Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it +doesn't begin at home, with every man in it? I tell you, it would be a +very good thing for Northwick, and every rogue like him, if he could be +made serve his term in State's prison." + +The controversy raged a long time without departing from these lines of +argument on either side. Mrs. Hilary listened with the impatience women +feel at every absence from the personal ground, the only ground of +reality. When Matt had got so far from it as to be saying to his father, +"Then I understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for +his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the +same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in +upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and +wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, +who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw +that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman +always wants some one punished; some woman, first, or then some other +woman's men kindred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and Mrs. +Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk between her son and husband, +because she felt Matt to be doubly wrong. + +But when she spoke, her husband roared at her, "Don't interrupt, Sarah!" +and then he roared at Matt, "I tell you that the individual is not +concerned in the matter! I tell you that it is the interest, the +necessity of the community to punish A for his sins without regard to B, +and for my part, I shall leave no stone unturned till we have found +Northwick, dead or alive; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to +have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment." He shouted these +words out, and thumped the breakfast table so that the spoons clattered +in the cups, and Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was saying +just inside the door. + +"To see Mr. Hilary? A lady? Did she send her card?" + +"She wouldn't give her name, ma'am; she said she didn't wish to, ma'am. +She wished to see Mr. Hilary just a moment in the reception-room." + +Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another bang with his fist, +but his wife succeeded in stopping him, with a repetition of Patrick's +message. + +"I won't see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're +in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are +claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your +sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a +brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other +letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's +little game has landed him in jail." + +"Oh, I admit that the A's had better suffer for their sins; but I doubt +if the punishment which a man gets against his will is the right kind of +suffering. If this man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear +the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would have been a good +thing for himself and for everybody else; it would have been a real +warning. But he ran away." + +"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry +come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of +your company." + +"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, +as I've told you." + +"What _I_ did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I +gave him a chance to make himself an honest man--" + +"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you _must_ go and get rid of that woman, +at least; or let _me_." + +Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look +about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out +of the room. + +His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a +dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed," +before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For +the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the +apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with +the demand: + +"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?" + +"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with +her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could +say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other. + +"Is it true?" she asked. + +He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do +it. "Why, we hope--we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about +his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt--" + +"It isn't _that_. It's worse than that. It's that other thing--that the +papers say--that he was a defaulter--dishonest. Is _that_ true?" + +"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he +felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would +have been possible. "Those newspapers--confound them!--you know how they +get things all--You needn't mind what the papers say." + +"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when +he's--What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and +so I came to you--as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would +tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how +_good_ he is! I--You know that he never wronged any one--that he +_couldn't_!" + +"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to +me--quite right. How--how is your sister? You must stay, now--Louise +isn't down, yet--and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary +at the table. You must join us. She can assure you--Matt is quite +confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to +the--He--" + +Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, +and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she +dropped into a chair, and he had to stay. + +"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest +foundation for what the papers say this morning?" + +"How, foundation? My dear child--" + +"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?" + +"Well--well, there are always questions arising." + +"Is there any question of my father's accounts--his honesty?" + +"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much--want of +confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to +time." + +"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one +suspect him?" + +Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring +to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us--some of +the directors--have had doubts--" + +"Have _you_?" + +"My dear girl--my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly +say, that when this examination--when the subject came up for discussion +at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father +should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed +that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the +girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his +part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing +for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, +and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm +is meant, and none is done--unless--unless the venture turns out +unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was +getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; +but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and +that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole +affair was very well put in the _Abstract_. Have you seen it? You must +see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. +Hilary--we have the paper--" + +Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has +been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?" + +"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point--" + +"Do _you_?" + +"I can't say--I don't think he meant----He expected to restore it, of +course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he +thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the +company's funds in his private enterprises." + +"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the +room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise +coming down the stairs. + +"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms +around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a +woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and +sympathizes utterly with her. + +Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise." + +"No, no! You shan't go. I want you--you must stay with us, now. I know +Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report." + +"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another +report--don't you know it?--in the paper this morning." Louise tried to +look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And +your father has been saying my father is a thief." + +"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out. + +It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave +a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he +could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone. + + + + +XX. + + +The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to +Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any +sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and +accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, +that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to +work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to +establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could +shake. + +Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused +him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. +But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in +business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would +not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed +other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his +own, and could not; that was all. + +With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they +were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they +encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. +But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, +when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly +establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this +servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. +She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she +willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her +husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and +tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not +freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the +Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had +always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind. + +Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in +the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of +their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the +house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the +consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of +mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages +and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that +the next time she hoped to see him. + +One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her +winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, +upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she +failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with +urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second +attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of +Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity +which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. +Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished +himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the +directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband +forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief +in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused +him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the +railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came +upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced +before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick +had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in +seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was +now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', +those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty +leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to +his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and +exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But +Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. +He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing +to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive. + +"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to +the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance +conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, +in Boston, who has shielded and--and protected him from the start, +and--and right along. I don't know _why_; but if I was one of the +Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I _should_. I should make a point of +inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had +plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on." + +The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one +cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, +I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate +belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The +listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother +Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have +done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of +the soldier's monument." + +"I _never_ wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr. +Gerrish retorted angrily. + +Putney's spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the +contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he +was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by +which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects +and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the +worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went +on, now: "Didn't you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl +they've got there in circus-clothes." They all laughed; Putney had a +different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier's monument +every time he spoke of it. "And it would suggest what those poor fellows +really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a +whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don't have to +be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a +necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the +courts if there were no rogues? We must _have_ Northwicks. It's a pity +that the Northwicks should have families; but I don't blame the +Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure +to end in. I'm glad the roof can't be taken from over those women's +heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding +the property to them." + +"It's downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!" Gerrish +shouted. + +"Oh, no, it isn't, Billy. It's law. You must respect the law and the +rights of property. You'll be wanting the strikers to burn down the +shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You're getting awfully +incendiary, Billy." + +Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the +group, and there were many people in Hatboro', including most of the +women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with +Northwick's case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those +girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their +father's crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest +people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where +the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the +houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not +even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro' shops who +said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much +about them, and the noise of Northwick's misdeeds died first amid the +din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the +respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded +envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, +and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and +that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those +daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak +to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset +Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and +perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to +do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they +learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the +Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not +long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in +the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see +the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy +of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of +judging or of meting with the fullest measure. + +In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands +were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but +Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of +sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men +of Hatboro' a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded +as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, +but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be +expected of a man in Northwick's position; it happened every day +somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did +not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were +fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, +reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them +regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot +of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to +gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, +and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the +matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely +believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the +same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were +mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the +railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing +his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue's Rest, as Putney called the +Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick's +survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When +Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something +like, "Well, Joel, how's cremation, this morning?" + +"Just booming, Squire. That stock's coming up, right along. Bound to be +worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin', yet." This, or +something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he +asked, "Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They +say--paper does--that the reason the president hung off from making a +complaint was that he didn't rightly see how he could have the ashes +indicted. _He_ believes in it, any way." + +"Well," said Putney, "the fathers of New England all died in the blessed +hope of infant damnation. But that didn't prove it." + +"That's something so, Squire. Guess you got me there," said Gates. + +"I can understand old Hilary's not wanting to push the thing, under the +circumstances, and I don't blame him. But the law must have its course. +Hilary's got his duty to do. _I_ don't want to do it for him." + + + + +XXI. + + +Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he +was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the +persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was +really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as +any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the +tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But +still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was +all talked over in Hilary's family, where he was pitied and forgiven in +that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks +we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, +and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had +tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed +that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when +he did not talk of it, no one must mention it. + +Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly +because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. +He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business +repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the +defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the +wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed +that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a +public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that +Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice +but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could +not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick's escape. + +He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would +work Northwick's daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette +answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went +away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally +appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever +warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that +they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were +generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a +thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go +to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience. + +It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate +her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She +treated her own father's course as something above suspicion, as +something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have +returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to +her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day +his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home +where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it +from them. + +Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might +have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father's +regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and +she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the +sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression +in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The +sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their +forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like +compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her +will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked +and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve +themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited +wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her +mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; +she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom +the girl saw. + +Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did +not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of +truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the +sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started +to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go +to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take +Louise back to the station. + +It was a clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and +some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out +of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot. + +They talked at arm's length of the weather; and then Suzette said +abruptly, "Of course, Louise, your father will have to do what they want +him to, against--papa. I understand that." + +"Oh, Sue--" + +"Don't! I should wish him to know that I wasn't stupid about it." + +"I'm sure," Louise adventured, "he would do anything to help you!" + +Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good feeling. "We don't +believe papa has done anything wrong, or anything he wouldn't have made +right if he had lived. We shall not let them take his property from us +if we can help it." + +"Of course not! I'm sure papa wouldn't wish you to." + +"It would be confessing that they were right, and we will _never_ do +that. But I don't blame your father, and I want him to know it." + +Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it +seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had +never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a +misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people +would listen to reason. + +Sue released herself, and said, looking away from her friend: "It has +been hard. He is dead; but we haven't even been allowed to see him laid +in the grave." + +"Oh, perhaps," Louise sobbed out, "he _isn't_ dead! So many people think +he isn't--" + +Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. "Do you think that if he +were alive he would leave us without a word--a sign?" + +"No, no! He couldn't be so cruel! I didn't mean that! He is dead, and I +shall always say it." + +They walked on without speaking, but at the gate Suzette offered to +return Louise's embrace. The tears stood in her eyes, as she said, "I +would like to send my love to your mother--if she would care for it." + +"Care for it!" + +"And tell your brother I can never forget what he did for us." + +"He can never forget that you let him do it," said Louise, with eager +gratitude. "He would have liked to come with me, if he hadn't thought it +might seem intrusive." + +"_Intrusive!_ Your _brother_!" Sue spoke the words as if Matt were of +some superior order of beings. + +The intensity of feeling she put into her voice brought another gush of +tears into Louise's eyes. "Matt _is_ good. And I will tell him what you +say. He will like to hear it." They looked down the road, but they could +not see Simpson coming yet. "Don't wait, Sue," she pleaded. "Do go back! +You will be all worn out." + +"No, I will stay till your carriage comes," said Suzette; and they +remained a moment silent together. + +Then Louise said, "Matt has got a new fad: a young man that writes on +the newspapers--" + +"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence. + +"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very +handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, +but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's +awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't +have to interview people any more--he came to interview papa, the first +time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got +some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what +he wrote about--about, your--troubles, Sue." + +"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel." + +"His wasn't cruel. It was in the _Abstract_." + +"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered +unrelentingly. + +"Did he? I thought he only said _if_ he did. I don't believe he said +more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad +health. But he's awfully clever." + +The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving +furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms +round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come +home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have +you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!" + +"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all +the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore +it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We +shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the +lodge here." + +Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would +be beautiful. + +"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can +move back into the house in the winter." + +This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, and she parted from her +friend in more comfort than she could have imagined when they met. She +carried her feeling of elation home with her, and was able to report Sue +in a state of almost smiling prosperity, and of perfect resignation, if +not acquiescence, in whatever the company should make Hilary do. She +figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of ally of the +Northwicks, and she was disappointed that he seemed to derive so little +pleasure from Sue's approval. But he generally approved of all that she +could remember to have said for him to the Northwicks, though he did not +show himself so appreciative of the situation as Matt. She told her +brother what Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to intrude +upon her, and she added that now he must certainly go to see her. + + + + +XXII. + + +A day or two later, when Matt Hilary went to Hatboro', he found Wade in +his study at the church, and he lost no time in asking him, "Wade, what +do you know of the Miss Northwicks? Have you seen them lately?" + +Wade told him how little he had seen Miss Northwick, and how he had not +seen Suzette at all. Then Matt said, "I don't know why I asked you, +because I knew all this from Louise; she was up here the other day, and +they told her. What I am really trying to get at is, whether you know +anything more about how that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you +know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble about her father +came out?" + +Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, as usual, and it really +related so wholly to Suzette in the thoughts of both the young men, that +neither of them found it necessary to limit it explicitly. + +"I feel quite sure he hasn't," said Wade, "though I can't answer +positively." + +"Then that settles it!" Matt walked away to one of Wade's gothic +windows, and looked out. When he turned and came back to his friend, he +said, "If he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he would have +tried to see her at such a time, don't you?" + +"I can't imagine his not doing it. I never thought him a cad." + +"No, nor I." + +"He would have done it unless--unless that woman has some hold that +gives her command of him. He's shown great weakness, to say the least. +But I don't believe there's anything worse. What do the village people +believe?" + +"All sorts of lurid things, some of them; others believe that the affair +is neither more nor less than it appears to be. It's a thing that could +be just what it is in no other country in the world. It's the phase that +our civilization has contributed to the physiognomy of scandal, just as +the exile of the defaulter is the phase we have contributed to the +physiognomy of crime. Public opinion here isn't severe upon Mrs. +Wilmington or Mr. Northwick." + +"I'm not prepared to quarrel with it on that account," said Matt, with +the philosophical serenity which might easily be mistaken for irony in +him. "The book we get our religion from teaches leniency in the judgment +of others." + +"It doesn't teach cynical indifference," Wade suggested. + +"Perhaps that isn't what people feel," said Matt. + +"I don't know. Sometimes I dread to think how deeply our demoralization +goes in certain directions." + +Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and +Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal +ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further +considered in regard to her?" + +"In regard to Miss Sue Northwick? I don't know whether I quite +understand what you mean." + +"I mean, is it anybody's duty--yours or mine--to go to the man and find +him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make +an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's +holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he +could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be +everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely +more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman--What +do you think? He could be reparation, protection, safety, everything!" + +Wade shook his head. "It would be useless. Wilmington knows very well +that such a girl would never let him be anything to her now when he had +slighted her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in love with +her, which I doubt, he couldn't do it." + +"No, I suppose not," said Matt. After a little pause, he added, "Then I +must go myself." + +"Go, yourself? What do you mean?" Wade asked. + +"Some one must try to make them understand just how they are situated. I +don't think Louise did; I don't think she knew herself, how the legal +proceedings would affect them; and I think I'd better go and make it +perfectly clear." + +"I can imagine it won't be pleasant," said Wade. + +"No," said Matt, "I don't expect that. But I inferred, from what she +said to Louise, that she would be willing to see me, and I think I had +better go." + +He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade said heartily, "Why, of +course. It's the only thing," and Matt went away with a face which was +cheerful with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure. + +He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, and coming forward +with the magnificent, haughty movement she had. As she caught sight of +him, she started, and then almost ran toward him. "Oh! _You_!" she said, +and she shrank back a little, and then put her hand impetuously out to +him. + +He took it in his two, and bubbled out, "Are you walking somewhere? Are +you well? Is your sister at home? Don't let me keep you! May I walk with +you?" + +Her smile clouded. "I'm only walking here in the avenue. How is Louise? +Did she get home safely? It was good of her to come here. It isn't the +place for a gay visit." + +"Oh, Miss Northwick! It was good of you to see her. And we were very +happy--relieved--to find that you didn't feel aggrieved with any of _us_ +for what must happen. And I hope you don't feel that I've taken an +advantage of your kindness in coming?" + +"Oh, no!" + +"I've just been to see Wade." Matt reddened consciously. "But it doesn't +seem quite fair to have met you where you had no choice but to receive +me!" + +"I walk here every morning," she returned, evasively. "I have nowhere +else. I never go out of the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, +sometimes. But I can't meet people." + +"I know," said Matt, with caressing sympathy; and his head swam in the +sudden desire to take her in his arms, and shelter her from that shame +and sorrow preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them that made +him ache with pity; he recognized, as he had not before, that they were +the translation in feminine terms, of her father's eyes. "Poor Wade," he +went on, without well knowing what he was saying, "told me that he--he +was very sorry he had not been able to see you--to do anything--" + +"What would have been the use? No one can do anything. We must bear our +burden; but we needn't add to it by seeing people who believe that--that +my father did wrong." + +Matt's breath almost left him. He perceived that the condition on which +she was bearing her sorrow was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it +could not have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, and it +required no effort in her to frame the theory of her father's innocence; +perhaps no other hypothesis was possible to her, and evidence had +nothing to do with the truth as she felt it. + +"The greatest comfort we have is that none of _you_ believe it; and your +father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't +make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did. +It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that +was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I +would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is +going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have +the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I +thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his +kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us." + +Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust +and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her +right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her +through her love, her pride. + +She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her +freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our +father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every +one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be +punished as they deserve." + +She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the +impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it +all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last +an effort to enlighten her. + +"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't +be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his +solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't +allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage." + +She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't +cleared up?" + +"I'm afraid--I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly +understand." + +"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," +the girl returned. + +"But a lawyer--indeed you ought to see a lawyer!--could explain how such +a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case +against your father, but against _you_." + +"Against us? What do they say we have done?" + +Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if +it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take +everything here that belonged to your father--everything on the place, +to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I +can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your +rights in the case." + +"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything +to us!" + +"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his +debts." + +"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have +paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed +of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one." + +Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was +essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure +effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much +was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to +wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred +from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have +been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face +seemed to stay her. + +"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?" + +"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in +every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as +her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the +last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever +wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it." + +"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I _know_ +what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any reassurance. I'm sorry +to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank +you very much for the kind advice you have given me." + +"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to +you--all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see +that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you +couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has +said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, +or--" + +"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we +understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I +think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, +and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained +staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She +suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say +that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you +have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these +words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then +whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again. + + + + +XXIII. + + +That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner +they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving +out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating +their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for +them." + +"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, passively. +Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her +why; each knew why the other cried. + +"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, +that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell +some of the cattle." + +"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over." + +Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which +they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to +speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when +a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, +and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, +they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but +they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning +such matters, and they did not know his name. + +Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept +from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister +went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and +let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had +left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given +her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said +that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely +enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces +were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her +death. + +Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely +village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her +heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her +mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of +his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed +that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time +she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came +to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, +and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her +against the right in her interest than a friendlier person. + +Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he +was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her. +"Can I see--see--see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some--some +law business?" + +"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He +led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and +placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for +her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch. + +"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave +him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know +what it means." + +"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit +against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot +sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares +him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his +debts." + +"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they +will suffer," cried Adeline. + +"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of +the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors." + +"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our +house--mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me +long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill. + +Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endorsement before +he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears +till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the +buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's +creditors can't touch them." + +The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair +and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, +gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?" + +"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers +together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an +anxiety she could not keep out of her voice. + +"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you +showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried +to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for +her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!" + +"Yes. I'm not at all afraid--" + +"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and +plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it. + +Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it +seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without +help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, +early spring night. + +After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice +I _should_ like to give you." + +"Well?" she quavered, meekly. + +"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this +case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply +involved--" + +"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline +hastened to put in, nervously. + +"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could +safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his +creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything +but the real estate." + +"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We +intended just to let it go." + +"That's the best way," Putney said. + +"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place +from us." + +"That was right, and I assure you they can't touch either. If you get +anxious, come to me again--as often as you like." + +"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let +him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the +house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, +with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if +she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested. + +"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better +act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way." + +"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think +just as you do, Mr. Putney." + +"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor. + +When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, +Ralph?" + +"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline +Northwick." + +"Ralph, what _do_ you mean?" + +He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange +phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her +coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!" + +"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, +you know, Ellen." + +"Ralph!" + +"Oh. I may have spent my whole natural life in denouncing him as +demoralization incarnate, and a curse to the community, but I always +_liked_ him, Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely waiting for +him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, to find out just how +_much_ I loved him. I've no doubt but if we could have him among us +again, in the attractive garb of the State's-prison inmates, I should be +hand and glove with brother Northwick." + + + + +XXIV. + + +Adeline's reasons for going to Putney in their trouble had to avail with +Suzette against the prejudice they had always felt towards him. In the +tangible and immediate pressure that now came upon them they were glad +to be guided by his counsel; they both believed it was dictated by a +knowledge of law and a respect for justice, and by no regard for them. +They had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely relied upon +it, as in some sort the advice of an honest and faithful enemy. They +remembered that the last evening he was with them, their father had +spoken leniently of Putney's infirmity, and admiringly of his wasted +ability. Now each step they took was at his suggestion. They left the +great house before the creditors were put in possession of the personal +property, and went to live in the porter's lodge at the gate of the +avenue, which they furnished with the few things they could claim for +their own out of their former belongings, and from the ready money +Suzette had remaining in her name at the bank. They abandoned everything +of value in the house they had left, even to their richer dresses and +their jewels: they preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw +that it saved them more than it cost them in their helpless pride. + +The Newtons continued in their quarters unmolested; the furniture was +theirs and the building belonged to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons +called them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to get going in +their new place, and Elbridge and she lived there for a few weeks with +them, till they said they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood +guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain them in the +spoliation that had to come. He locked the avenue gate against the +approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter +and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways +he rendered himself obstructive and inconvenient. + +His deference to the law was paid entirely through Putney, whose +smartness inspired Elbridge with a respect he felt for no other virtue +in man. Putney arranged with him to take the Northwick place and manage +it on shares for the Northwick girls; he got for him two of the old +horses which Elbridge wanted for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. +The rest of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round about, who had +fancies for costly cattle: the horses, good, bad and indifferent, were +sent to a sale-stable in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all +that was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the place, of its +former equipment, except the few farm implements, a cart or two, and an +ancient carryall that Putney bid off for Newton's use. + +Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house to let for a term +of years, and failing a permanent tenant before the season opened, he +rented it to an adventurous landlady, who proposed to fill it with +summer boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it monthly, in +advance, that would enable the Northwick girls to live on, in the +porter's lodge, without fear of want. For the future, Putney imagined a +scheme for selling off some of the land next the villas of South +Hatboro', in lots to suit purchasers. That summer sojourn had languished +several years in uncertainty of its own fortunes; but now, by a caprice +of the fashion which is sending people more and more to the country for +the spring and fall months, it was looking up decidedly. Property had so +rapidly appreciated there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot +for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the acre. + +In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of his clients, he had +to reconcile his practice with theories he had held concerning unearned +land-values; and he justified himself to his crony, Dr. Morrell, on the +ground that these might be justly taken from such rich and idle people +as wanted to spend the spring and fall at South Hatboro'. The more land +at a high price you could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro' +was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the town tax, the +better for the land that working men wanted to get a living on. In +helping the Northwick girls to keep all they could out of the clutches +of their father's creditors, he held that he was only defending their +rights; and any fight against a corporation was a kind of holy war. He +professed to be getting on very comfortably with his conscience, and he +promised that he would not let it worry other people. To Mr. Gerrish he +made excuses for taking charge of the affairs of two friendless women, +when he ought to have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their +father's sins, as any respectable man would. He asked Gerrish to +consider the sort of fellow he had always been, drinking up his own +substance, while Gerrish was thriftily devouring other people's houses, +and begged him to make allowance for him. + +The anomalous relation he held to the Northwicks afforded him so much +excitement and enjoyment, that he passed his devil's dividend, as he +called his quarterly spree. He kept straight longer than his fellow +citizens had known him to do for many years. But Putney was one of those +men who could not be credited by people generally with the highest +motives. He too often made a mock of what people generally regarded as +the highest motives; he puzzled and affronted them; and as none of his +most intimate friends could claim that he was respectable in the +ordinary sense of the word, people generally attributed interested +motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. Adeline Northwick profited +by a call she made upon Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to +sound him in regard to Putney's management of her affairs; and if the +doctor's powders had not so distinctly done her good, she might not have +been able to rely upon the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting +wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her sister. + +"He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes," she said. + +But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in everything, not so much +because she implicitly trusted him, as because she knew no one else to +trust. The kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the first of +their trouble, had, of course, become impossible to both the sisters. He +had, in fact, necessarily ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had +steadily rejected all the overtures Louise made her since they last met. +Louise wanted to come again to see her; but Sue evaded her proposals; at +last she would not answer her letters; and their friendship outwardly +ceased. Louise did not blame her; she accounted for her, and pitied and +forgave her; she said it was what she herself would do in Sue's place, +but probably if she had continued herself, she would not have done what +Sue did, even in Sue's place. She remembered Sue with a tender constancy +when she could no longer openly approach her without hurting more than +she helped; and before the day of the assignee's sale came, she thought +out a scheme which Wade carried into effect with Putney's help. Those +things of their own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bidden +off, and restored to them in such a way that it was not possible for +them to refuse to take back the dresses, the jewels, the particular +pieces of furniture which Louise associated with them. + +Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort; Adeline simply +exulted in getting her things again; Sue gave all hers into Adeline's +keeping, and bade her never let her see them. + + + + +PART SECOND. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick kept up the mental juggle he had used in getting himself away +from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he +was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. +He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his +destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he +let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset +Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in +the pretence that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, to look +after some business of his quarries. He verified his pretence by +speaking of it to the conductor who knew him; he was not a person to +take conductors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account to +the man for his apparent change of mind. He was at some trouble to make +it seem casual and insignificant, and he wondered if the conductor meant +to insinuate anything by saying in return that it was a pretty brisk day +to be knocking round much in a stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, +"It was, rather;" he watched the conductor to see if he should betray +any particular interest in the matter when he left him. But the +conductor went on punching the passengers' tickets, and seemed to forget +Northwick as soon as he left him. At the next station, Northwick +followed him out on the platform to find if he sent any telegram off. +When he had once given way to this anxiety, which he knew to be +perfectly stupid and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He +took his bag with him each time he left the car, and he meant not to go +back if he saw the conductor telegraphing. It was intensely cold, and in +spite of the fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost +gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, when it stopped and +started, as if it were crunching along on a bed of dry snow; the noises +of the wheels seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and then +Northwick held his breath for fear one of them might be broken. He had a +dread of accident such as he had never felt before; his life had never +seemed so valuable to him as now; he reflected that it was so because it +was to be devoted now to retrieving the past in a new field under new +conditions. His life, in this view, was not his own; it was a precious +trust which he held for others, first for his children, and then for +those whom he was finally to save from loss by the miscarriage of his +enterprises. He justified himself anew in what he was intending; it +presented itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he +was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was a defaulter who +had used the money in his charge, and tampered with the record so as to +cover up the fact, and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off +a large sum of money that was not morally his. At one of the stations +where he got out to see whether the conductor was telegraphing, he +noticed the conductor eyeing his bag curiously; and he knew that he +believed there was money in it. Northwick felt a thrill of gratified +cunning in realizing how mistaken the conductor was; but he was willing +the fellow should think he was carrying up money to pay off his quarry +hands. + +He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this conductor would leave +the train, and it would continue northward in the charge of another man; +he seldom went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new conductor +would hardly know him. He meant to go on to Blackbrook Junction, and +take the New England Central there for Montreal; but he saw the +conductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junction, and it +suddenly occurred to him that he must not go to Montreal by a route so +direct that any absconding defaulter would be expected to take it. He +had not the least proof that the conductor's dispatch had anything to do +with him; but he could not help acting as if it had. He said good-day to +the conductor as he passed him, and he went out of the station, with his +bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched till he saw the +conductor go off in another direction, and then he came back, and got +aboard the train just as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that +he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness of stealth was +such that he felt as if he were followed, and that he must act so as to +baffle and mislead pursuit. + +At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no +one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, +and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He +perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could +not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there +was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely +anywhere, by any road. + +But he had now let the New England Central train leave without him, and +it only remained for him to push on to Wellwater, where he hoped to +connect with the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Dominion +road. He remembered that this train divided at Wellwater, and certain +cars ran direct to Quebec, up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He +meant to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned whether he +had better not go straight on from Wellwater; when he recalled the long, +all-night ride without a sleeper, which he had once made on that route +many summers before, he said to himself that in his shaken condition, he +must not run the risk of such a hardship. If he were to get sick from +it, or die, it would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now made +him think of what Hilary had said; Hilary who had called him a thief. He +would show Hilary whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he would +make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary retracting and apologizing +in the presence of the whole Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and +Northwick forgave him, while it was also passing through his mind that +he must reduce the risks of railroad accident to a minimum, by +shortening the time. They reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, +by reducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the safest. If +he could get to Montreal from Wellwater in four or five hours, when it +would take him twelve hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty +to go to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of danger of +every kind. He must not even fatigue himself too much; and he decided to +telegraph on to Wellwater, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to +Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the ordinary car, and he had +found it very rough. + +It suddenly occurred to him that he must now assume a false name; and he +reflected that he must take one that sounded like his own, or else he +would not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose Warwick, and he +kept saying it over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the +station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the +Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his +own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he +congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of +something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did +not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like +something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. +The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if +Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the +other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his +love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, +and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the +demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his +children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint +of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight +of himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face betrayed +nothing; it looked, as it always did, like the face of a kindly, +respectable man, a financially reliable face, the face of a leading +citizen. He gathered courage and strength from it to put away the +remorse that was devouring him. If that was the way he looked that was +the way he must be; and he could only be leaving those so dear to him +for some good purpose. He recalled that his purpose was to clear the +name they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it; to rehabilitate +himself; to secure his creditors from final loss. This was a good +purpose, the best purpose that a man in his place could have; he +recollected that he was to be careful of his life and health, because he +had dedicated himself to this purpose. + +He determined to keep this purpose steadily in mind, not to lose thought +of it for an instant; it was his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized +him; a doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew that he had +signed that dispatch Northwick and not Warwick; he saw just how his +signature looked on the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now +he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending any dispatch. He +cursed himself under his breath, and in the same breath he humbly prayed +to God for some way of escape. His terror made it certain to him that he +would be arrested as soon as he reached Wellwater. That would be the +next stop, the conductor told him, when he halted him with the question +on his way through the cars. The conductor said they were behind time, +and Northwick knew by the frantic pull of the train that they were +running to make up the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the +car; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In his prayer he +bargained with God that if He would let him escape, he would give every +thought, every breath to making up the loss of his creditors; he half +promised to return the money he was carrying away, and trust to his own +powers, his business talent in a new field, to retrieve himself. He +resolved to hide himself as soon as he reached Wellwater; it would be +dark, and he hoped that by this understanding with Providence he could +elude the officer in getting out of the car. But if there were two, one +at each end of the car? + +There was none, and Northwick walked away from the station with the +other passengers, who were going to the hotel near the station for +supper. In the dim light of the failing day and the village lamps, he +saw with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the strong, still +cold of the winterland he had been journeying into. The white drifts +were everywhere; the vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from +the hotel like a sea of snow; on its edge lay the excursion steamer in +which Northwick had one summer made the tour of the lake with his +family, long ago. + +He was only a few miles from the Canadian frontier; with a rebound from +his anxiety, he now exulted in the safety he had already experienced. He +remained tranquilly eating after the departure of the Montreal train was +cried; and when he was left almost alone, the head-waiter came to him +and said, "Your train's just going, sir." + +"Thank you," he answered, "I'm going out on the Quebec line." He wanted +to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were +made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at +the next station, which was still within the American border, on that +line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half +an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch +asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in +starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and +waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long +all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to +Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his +journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal +with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any +possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had +prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, +with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every +faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that +perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he +was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed +his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer +agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him; +and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but +should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent +of others in the effort to retrieve his losses. + + + + +II. + + +At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their +talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an +interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying +personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made +themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers. +They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends +were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked +freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and +they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of +them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the +Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in +Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter shocked +Northwick; it seemed immoral; he remembered that though he might seem a +defaulter, he was a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But he +listened eagerly; if their enterprise were one that approved itself to +his judgment, the chance of their discussing it before him might be a +leading of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence +had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier +safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the +agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to +study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed +first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was +the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. Gold had always +been found there, but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine it +than it was worth; but with the application of his new process of +working up the tailings, there was no doubt of the result. It was simply +wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. + +Northwick had heard that song before; and he fell back in his seat, with +a smile which was perhaps too cynical for a partner of Providence, but +which was natural in a man of his experience. He knew something about +processes to utilize the tailings of gold mines which would not +otherwise pay for working; he had paid enough for his knowledge: so much +that if he still had the purchase-money he need not be going into exile +now, and beginning life under a false name, in a strange land. + +By and by he found himself listening again, and he heard the Canadian +saying, "And there's timber enough on the tract to pay twice over what +it will cost, even if the mine wasn't worth a penny." + +"Well, we might go down and see the timber, any way," said one of the +party who had not yet spoken much. "And then we could take a look at +Markham's soap-mine, too. Unless," he added, "you had to tunnel under a +hundred feet of snow to get at it. A good deal like diggin' the north +pole up by the roots, wouldn't it be?" + +"Oh, no! Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of +an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties +that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the +autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you +could in the early part of January, when I was down there." + +"The hole hadn't run away?" + +"No. It was just where we left it." + +"Well, that's encouragin'. But I say, Markham, how do you get down there +in the winter?" + +"Oh! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. Lots of fellows in the +lumber trade do it all winter long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne's, +about twenty miles below Quebec--from Quebec you have your choice of +train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a clean thing of it, and do it all +by sleigh. I take it by easy stages, and so I take the long route: there +is a short cut, but the stops are far between. You make your twenty +miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day; eighteen to St. Joachim, the +next; thirty-nine to Baie St. Paul, the next; twenty to Malbaie, the +next; then forty to Tadoussac; then eighteen to Rivière Marguerite. You +can do something every day at that rate, even in the new snow; but on +the ice of the Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there's a pull of sixty miles; +you're at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you know it. Good +feed, and good beds, all along. You wrap up, and you don't mind. Of +course," Markham concluded, "it isn't the climate of Stanstead," as if +the climate of Stanstead were something like that of St. Augustine. + +"Well, it sounds a mere bagatelle," said the more talkative of the other +two, "but it takes a week of steady travel." + +"What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Golconda's yours when you get +there?" said Markham. "Why, Watkins, the young spruce and poplar alone +on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the whole. A +pulp-mill, which you could knock together for a few shillings, on one of +those magnificent water-powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a +single summer." + +"And what would it do in the winter when your magnificent water-power +was restin'?" + +"Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set an example of industry to +all the lazy _habitans_ in the country. You could get your fuel for the +cost of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar in under your +furnace, and have it come out paper pulp at the other end of the mill." + +Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud haw-haws at Markham's +drolling, and Watkins said, "I say, Markham, weren't you born on the +other side of the line?" + +"No. But my father was; and I wish he'd stayed there till I came. Then +I'd be going round with all the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for +a chance to put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out the +knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging you not to slap your +everlasting fortune in the face." + +They now all roared together again, and at Sherbrooke they changed cars. + +Northwick had to change too, but he did not try to get into the same car +with them. He wanted to think, to elaborate in his own mind the +suggestion for his immediate and remoter future which he had got from +their talk; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly he dreaded the +misgiving, that might come from hearing more of their talk. He thought +he knew, now, just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be +swerved from it. + +He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. He bore very well the +long waits that he had to make both at Sherbrooke and Richmond; but when +the train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled himself in +his seat with a solider content than he had felt before, and gave +himself up to the pleasure of shaping the future, that was so obediently +plastic in his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at the end of +the car with fuel, and Northwick did not suffer from the cold that +strengthened and deepened with the passing night outside, though he was +not overcoated and booted for any such temperature as his +fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were all Canadians, and they +talked now and then in their broad-vowelled French, but their voices +were low, and they came and went quietly at the country stations. The +car was old and worn, and badly hung; but in spite of all, Northwick +drowsed in the fervor of the glowing stove, and towards morning he fell +into a long and dreamless sleep. + +He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that surprised him, and found +the train pulling into the station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like +a soft lamp through the thick frost on the car-window; when he emerged, +he found it a cloudless splendor on a world of snow. The vast landscape, +which he had seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty rivers +to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue distance, showed rounded +and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid +the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the +currents below. The villages of the _habitans_ sparkled from tinned roof +and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a +thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping +swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and +speckled the expanse of glistening white with single figures and groups +of men and horses. + +It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a thrill of boyish +delight. He wondered for a moment why he had never come to Quebec in +winter before, and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut-faced +driver of one of the carrioles which waited outside the station to take +the passengers across the river, and tossed his bag into the bottom of +the little sledge. He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and +the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over the space of ice +which was kept clear of snow by diligent sweeping with fir-tree tops, +and then up the steep incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were +roadways from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels of +thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow; and the foot passengers, muffled to +the eyes against the morning cold, came and went among the vehicles in +the middle of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, to +keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight snow that slipped here +and there from the steep tin roofs. + +Northwick's unreasoned gladness grew with each impression of the beauty +and novelty. It quickened associations of his earliest days, and of the +winter among his native hills. He felt that life could be very pleasant +in this latitude; he relinquished the notion he had cherished at times +of going to South America with his family in case he should finally fail +to arrange with the company for his safe return home; he forecast a +future in Quebec where he could build a new home for his children, among +scenes that need not be all so alien. This did not move him from his +fixed intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the courage of +indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was bent upon the scheme he had +in mind, and as soon as he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare +for it. + + + + +III. + + +The inn he had chosen was one which he remembered, from former visits to +Quebec, as having seemed a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. +He got a room, and went to it long enough to count the money he had with +him, and find it safe. Then he took one of the notes from the others, +and went to a broker's to get it changed. + +The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but he concerned himself +only with the genuineness of the greenback, and after a keen glance at +Northwick's unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars in +Canadian bills. "We used to make your countrymen give us something +over," he said with a smile in recognition of Northwick's nationality. + +"Yes; that's all changed, now," returned Northwick. "Do I look so very +American?" he asked. + +"Oh, I don't know that," said the broker, with an airy English +inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all +wear fur caps in such weather." + +"Ah, that's a good idea," said Northwick. He spoke easily, but with a +nether torment of longing to look at the newspaper lying open on the +counter. He could see that it was the morning paper; there might be +something about him in it. The thought turned him faint; but he knew +that if the paper happened to have anything about him in it, any rumor +of his offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear it. He +could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to the self he had put behind +him, but he could not bear anything less. The papers seemed to thrust +themselves upon him; newsboys followed him up in the street with them; +he saw them in all the shops, where he went for the fur cap and fur +overcoat he bought, for the underclothing and changes of garments that +he had to provide; for the belt he got to put his money in. This great +sum, which he dared not bank, must be carried about with him; it must +not leave him night or day; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and +worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt was really for gold, +but the forty-two thousand-dollar notes, which were not a great bulk, +would easily go into it. + +He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, and put the belt on. +Then he felt easier, and he looked up the landlord to ask about the +route he wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it was one very +commonly travelled by lumber merchants going down into the woods to look +after their logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; but the +landlord said it was just as well to go by train to St. Anne, and save +that much sleighing; you would get enough of it then. Northwick thought +so too, and after the early dinner they gave him he took the cars for +St. Anne. + +He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and strong. He thought he +might get a nap on the way; but he remained vividly awake; and even that +night he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of his mind, as +if it were something separate from him, and were struggling to get +beyond the control of his will. The hotel in the little native village +was very good in its way; he had an excellent supper and an easy bed; +but he slept brokenly, and he was awake long before the early breakfast +which he had ordered for his start next day. The landlord wished to +persuade him that there was no need of such great haste; it was only +eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he was to make his first stop, and +the road was so good that he would get there in a few hours. He had +better stop and visit the church, and see the sick people's offerings, +which they left there every year, in gratitude to the saint for healing +them of their maladies. The landlord said it was a pity he could not +come some time at the season of the pilgrimage; his countrymen often +came then. Northwick perceived that in spite of his fur cap and +overcoat, and his great Canadian boots, he was easily recognizable for +an American to this man, though he could not definitely decide whether +his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell whether it was in +earnest or in irony that he invited him to try St. Anne for any trouble +he happened to be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, while +his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of hanging that money-belt at +her altar, and so easing himself of all his pains. He grotesquely +imagined the American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage to St. +Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral disease to her: forged notes, +bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part +of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the +gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for +himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his +own way and at his own time. + +In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in some ways, Northwick +found him a kindly young fellow. He treated Northwick with a young +fellow's comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped him forget +the hurts to his respectability which rankled so when he remembered +them. He explained the difference between the two routes from Malbaie +on, and advised him to take the longer, which lay through a more settled +district, where he would be safer in case of any mischance. But if he +liked to take the shorter, he told him there were good _campes_, or +log-house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he would find +excellent meals and beds, and be well cared for by people who kept them +in the winter for travellers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that +route, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were +carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers. + +This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in +government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he +would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a +tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to +Chicoutimi with him. + +After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on +runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and +back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air +which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole, +sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light +shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at +noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after +dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow +to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the +name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was +silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man +might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his +belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within +his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began, +except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin' +freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and +which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally +shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at +regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of +a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He +wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not +let him stop; he had to keep tolling. + +Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was +drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the +death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched +himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go +again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric +lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn +Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like +barking, and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of the +habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled +with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in +a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion. + +Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate +and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength +away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the +greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue +stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but +it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from +the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two +rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he +had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand +much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them +speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his +being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild +and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and +children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it. + +The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he +went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the +younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the +guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his +host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down +before the fire with the carriole driver. + + + + +IV. + + +In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself; +and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, +but he got through without much interruption. The following day, +however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the +twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the +journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that +first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt +well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed +to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm +stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first +his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of +a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not +tell where he was going, or why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact +that he had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond pursuit, +but beyond the temptation to return voluntarily and give himself up. He +knew, in those days before the treaty, that he was safe from +extradition; but he feared that if a detective approached he would yield +to him, and go back, especially as he could not always keep before +himself the reasons for not going back. When from time to time these +reasons escaped him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in +case he went home and restored to the company the money he had brought +away. It needed a voluntary operation of logic to prove that this +partial restitution would not avail; that he would be arrested, and +convicted. He would not be allowed to go on living with his children in +his own house. He would be taken from them, and put in prison. + +He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wakeful night. His driver +wished to break the forty mile journey midway, but Northwick would not +consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got +through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because +it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the +river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, +and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was +twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been +nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its +summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier now than it seemed in the +summer. The lamps shone from the windows where he had seen them then, +when he walked about a little just after supper; the village store had a +group of _habitans_ and half-breeds about its stove, and there was as +much show of life in the streets as there used to be at the same hour +and season in the little White Mountain village where his boyhood was +passed. It did not seem so bad; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live +there well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He imagined +bringing his family there after his mills had got successfully going; +then probably other people from the outside world would be living there. + +He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep well, and in the +night he was feverish. He thought how horrible it would be if he were to +fall sick there; he might die before he could get word to his children +and they reach him. He thought of going back to Quebec, and sailing for +Europe, and having his children join him there. They could sell the +place at Hatboro', and with what it brought, and with what he had, they +could live comfortably in some cheap country which had no extradition +treaty with the United States. He remembered reading of a defaulter who +went to a little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, and was +safe there; he found the President treading his own grape vats; and it +cost nothing to live there, though it was dull, and the exile became so +homesick that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered that he had +not thought of that place before; then he reflected that no ships could +make their way from Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He +would be arrested if he left any American port, or arrested as soon as +he reached England. He remembered the advertisement of a line of +steamships between Quebec and Brazil; he must wait for the St. Lawrence +to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morning must go back to Quebec. + +But in the morning he felt so much better that he decided to keep on to +Chicoutimi. He could not bear the thought of being found out by +detectives at Quebec, and by reporters who would fill the press with +paragraphs about him. He must die to the world, to his family, before he +could hope to revisit either. + +The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the glare of the snow hurt +his eyes. He went to the store to get some glasses to protect them, and +he bought some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he should be +wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha Bay, but the road on the +frozen river was good, and he could do a long stretch of it. From +Rivière Marguerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, and the +going would be smooth and easy. + +All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it in that far-off summer. +The tops of the interminable solitudes that walled the river in on both +sides appeared lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, but +doubtless they had grown beyond their real height in his memory. They +had lost the mystery of the summer aspect when they were dimmed with +rain or swathed in mist; all their outlines were in plain sight, and the +forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that +unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their +stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of +white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a +fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the +photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, +and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white +between the ranges of extinct volcanoes. + +At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for the snow to lodge +on; then their rocky faces shone harsh and stern; and sometimes the +springs that gushed from them in summer were frozen in long streams of +ice, like the tears bursting from the source of some Titanic grief. +These monstrous icicles, blearing the visage of the rock, which he +figured as nothing but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he +nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole in front of the +great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and silently pointed at them with his +whip. He had no need to name them, the fugitive would have known them in +another planet. It was growing late; the lonely day was waning to the +lonely night. While they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from +the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and repeated itself in the +echo that wandered from depth to depth of the frozen wilderness, and +seemed to die wailing away at the point where it first tore the silence. + +Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point or a recess where +a saw-mill stood, with a few log houses about it, and with signs of +human life in the smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their +chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the doorways as the +carriole passed. At the next of these beyond the capes, the driver +proposed to stop and pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt +worn out by his day's journey; his nerves were spent as if by a lateral +pressure of the lifeless desert he had been travelling through, and by +the stress of his thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran +back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By this time, long +before this time, they must be wild with anxiety about him; by this time +their shame must have come to poison their grief. He realized it all, +and he realized that he could not, must not help them. He must not go +back to them if ever he was to live for them again. But at last he asked +why he should live, why he should not die. There was laudanum enough in +that bottle to kill him. + +As he walked up from the carriole at the river's edge to the door of the +saw-miller's cabin, he drew the cork of the vial, and poured out the +poison; it followed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on the +snow, that the miller's dog smelt at and turned from in offence. That +night he could not sleep again; toward morning, when all the house was +snoring, he gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. He heard +the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in their dreams; then they +were still, and he fell into a deep sleep. + +They let him sleep late; and he had a dream of himself, which must have +been caused by the nascent consciousness of the going and coming around +him. People were talking of him, and one said how old he was; and +another looked at his long, white beard which flowed down over the +blanket as far as his waist. He told them that he wore it so that they +should not know him when he got home; and he showed them how he could +take it off and put it on at pleasure. He started awake, and found his +carriole driver standing over him. + +"You got you' sleep hout, no?" + +"What time is it?" said Northwick, stupidly, scanning the man to make +sure that it was he, and waiting for a full sense of the situation to +reach him. + +"Nine o'clock," said the man, and he turned away. + +Northwick got up, and found the place empty of the men and dogs. A +woman, who looked like a half-breed, brought him his breakfast of fried +venison and bean-coffee; her little one held by her skirt, and stared at +him. He thought of Elbridge's baby that he had seen die. It seemed ages +ago. He offered the child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its +mother's dress. The driver said, "'E do'n' know what money is, yet," but +the mother seemed to know; she showed her teeth, and took it for the +child. Northwick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it was not +to know what money was; it had never occurred to him before; he asked +himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to +pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have +no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of +childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for +his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You +could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and +supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went +out to see Elbridge's sick boy; when Elbridge left the dead child to +drive him to the station. It was something else that came in there; but +that thing and money were the same, after all: he had proved his love +for his children by making money for them; if he had not loved them so +much he would not have tried to get so much money, and he would not have +been where he was. + +His mind fought away from his control, as the sledge slipped along over +the frozen river again. It was very cold, but the full sun on his head +afflicted him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up from the +snow, too. His head felt imponderable; and yet he could not hold it up. +It was always sinking forward; and he woke from naps without being sure +that he had been asleep. + +He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi; but his start was so +late that it seemed to him as if they would never get to Haha Bay. When +they arrived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress thither faded +away; it was as if the starting and stopping were one, or contained in +the same impulse. It might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to +Chicoutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the beginning; the +wish could involve its accomplishment only at the end. He said to +himself that this was unreasonable; it was a poor rule that would not +work both ways. + +This ran through his mind in the presence of the old man who bustled out +of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger +than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered +curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in +birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which +branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his +left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face +was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition +went through Northwick. He knew the man for the talkative Canadian who +had taken him and his wife a drive over the hills around the bay, in the +morning, when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with them at +this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass of milk. Northwick's wife +liked the man, and said she would like to live in such a house in such a +place, and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her was so +terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were there; but Northwick said +to himself that he must not let the man know that he had ever seen him +before. The resolution cost him something, for he felt so broken and +weak that he would have liked to claim his kindness as an old +acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals +for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha +Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former +meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently +knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there +before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting. + +"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me +'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English +with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but +it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They +are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live. +No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for +you, sir." + +Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked. + +"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But +hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two +rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always +ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick +in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' +'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to +his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right." + +"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the +same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to +Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would +like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird--_Oiseau_? +You have been here before?" + +"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and +gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed +that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There +was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden, +with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was +the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the +frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now. + +He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there, +and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak; +and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the +sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his grave, and be done with +it. + + + + +V. + + +Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the +chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I +wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff +and on. I am born at Quebec"--in his tremulous inattention, Northwick +was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years +before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon +him--"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the +Americans know me. I used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots +of bear in the bush when I first came; now they get pretty scarce. I +have the best moose-dog. But I don't care much for the hunting now; I am +too hold. That's a fact. I am sixty; and forty winters I 'ave pass at +Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I +don't hear much ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here in +the summer; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chicoutimi; and more gold in +the 'ills." + +He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he +knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at +once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real +motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, +and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart +from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose +he was there to look into the question of the mines; but there was +something else that seemed to go with that intention; something like a +wish to get away from the past so remotely and so completely that no +rumor of it should reach him till he was willing to let it; to be absent +from all who had known him so long that no one of them would know him if +he saw him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but to grow a +beard that should effectually disguise him. He recalled how he had +looked with that long beard in his dream; he put his hand to his chin +and felt the eight days' stubble there, and he wondered how much time it +would take to grow such a beard. + +Bird went on talking. "I know that Chicoutimi Company. I told Markham +about the gold when he was here for bear. He is smart; but he don't know +heverything. You think he can make it pay with that invention? I doubt, +me. There is one place in those 'ills," and Bird came closer to +Northwick, and dropped his voice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with +the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you +want capital." + +He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which +he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove +hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny +thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?" + +Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you +can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the +ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it +had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe. +Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. +But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is +to be 'omesick." + +The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his +consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with +self-pity. + +"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more. +I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down +those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep +the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead! +Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some +capital--ten, fifteen thousand dollars--I would hopen that mine, and +take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by, +Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want +nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough +there to pay, and I can hire those _habitans_ cheap, like dirt. What is +their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is +the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time." + +Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed +aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps, +and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?" + +Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He +knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and +then he would not have to go. + +"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted." + +"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe +and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed. + +"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. He +was very gentle and light-handed, like a woman; but Northwick felt one +touch on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help. + +He let his host carry his two bags into the next room for him; the bag +that he had brought with the few things from home, when he pretended +that he was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that he had got in +Quebec to hold the things he had to buy there. When Bird set them down +beside his bed he could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed +it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the bed, and pulled +the bearskin robe that he found on it up over him, and fell into a thin +sleep, that was not so different from his dim waking that he was sure it +had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp. + +"Been 'aving a little nap?" he asked, looking gayly down on Northwick's +bewildered face. "Well, that is all right! We have supper, now, pretty +soon. You hungry? Well, in a 'alf-hour." + +He went out again, and Northwick, after some efforts, made out to rise. +His skull felt sore, and his arms as if they had been beaten with hard +blows. But after he had bathed his face and hands in the warm water Bird +had brought with the lamp, he found himself better, though he was still +wrapped in that cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or +waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, white walls: the Seven +Stations of the Cross, in colored prints; a lithograph of Indians +burning a Jesuit priest. Over the bed's head hung a chromo of Our Lady, +with seven swords piercing her heart; beside the bed was a Parian +crucifix, with the figure of Christ writhing on it. + +These things made Northwick feel very far and strange. His simple and +unimaginative nature could in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, +this alien language. He heard soft voices of women in the next room, the +first that he had heard since he last heard his daughters'. A girl's +voice singing was severed by a door that closed and then opened to let +it be heard a few notes more, and again closed. + +But he found Bird still alone in the next room when he returned to it. +"Well, now, we go to supper as soon as Father Étienne comes. He is our +curate--our minister--here. And he eats with me when he heat anywhere. I +tell 'im 'e hought to have my appetite, if he wants to keep up his +spiritual strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, no? Well, +you let that foundation tumble hin, and then where you got you' soul, +heigh? But Father Étienne speaks very good English. Heducate at Rome. I +am the only other educated man at Haha Bay. You don't 'appen to have +some papers in you' bag? French? English? It is the same!" + +"Papers? No!" said Northwick, with horror and suspicion. "What is in the +papers?" + +"That is what I like to find hout," said Bird, spreading his hands with +a shrug. + +The outer door opened, and a young man in a priest's long robe came in. +Bird introduced his guest, and Northwick shook hands with the priest, +who had a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, like a +girl's. He might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine; he had the spare +figure of a man under thirty who leads an active life; his features were +refined by study and the thought of others. When he smiled the innocence +of his face was more than girlish, it was childlike. Points of light +danced in his large, soft, dark eyes; an effect of trusting, alluring +kindness came from his whole radiant visage. + +Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He shrank away from the +priest, and at the table he left the talk to him and his host. They +supped in a room opening into a sort of wing; beyond it was a small +kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the dishes, and where that +girl whom he heard singing kept trilling away as if she were excited, +like a canary, by the sound of the frying meat. + +Bird said, by way of introduction, that the woman was his niece; but he +did not waste time on her. He began to talk up his conjecture as to +Northwick's business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained fact. +Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him to it. They discussed the +question of gold in the hills, which the young father treated as an old +story of faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor of fresh +excitement. The priest spoke of the poor return from the mines at +Chaudière, but Bird claimed that it was different here. Northwick did +not say anything: he listened and watched them, as if they were a pair +of confidence-men trying to work him. The priest seemed to be anxious to +get the question off the personal ground into the region of the +abstract, and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, a ruse +to throw him from his guard, and commit him to something. He made up his +mind to get away as early as he could in the morning; he did not think +it was a safe place. + +"Very well!" the priest cried, at one point. "Suppose you had the +capital you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is +there, and you were rich. What would you do?" + +"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay +to-morrow morning!" + +"And where would you go?" + +"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!" + +The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned +with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men +in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In +what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?" + +"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into +himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed. + +"Where do they live?" + +Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as +if to restrain a burst of information from him. + +"I suppose most of them live in New York." + +"All the time?" + +"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar +Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and +they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their +yachts." + +"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea. +My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the +advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again +in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him +lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen +it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a +moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those +rich people in Europe, by inheritance?" + +"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used +to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They +made it." + +"How? Excuse me!" + +"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the +rise in land-values." + +"What causes the land to rise in value?" + +"The demand for it. The necessity." + +"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man +loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are +the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are +miserable. Is it so?" + +Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these +questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion +of Bird than as an expression of his own opinions; but in his dazed +intelligence he could not find the answers. + +Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other +world--an angel--a mere imbecile--about business!" The priest threw +himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful +teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few +thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish +work to every man in Haha Bay--to hundreds. Are the miners more +miserable than those _habitans_, eh?" + +"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At +least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out. +What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile. + +"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Père +Étienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to +Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal--" + +"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling +very well--I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of +what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at +Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a +third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both. + +It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped +to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made +shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with +lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a +little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. +Afterwards he appeared to have come back. + + + + +VI. + + +The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two +Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really +leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into +that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he +could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to +decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he +pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the +reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness; +but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him. + +Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in +his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he +would like to have some breakfast; perhaps he would like a cup of tea +and some toast. + +Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in a few minutes the tea +was brought him by a young girl, whom Bird called Virginie; he said she +was his grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not disturbed the +gentleman: she always sang; one could hardly stop her; but she meant no +harm. He stayed to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to put +away the suspicion Bird's kindness roused in him. He was in such need of +kindness that he did not wish to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched +Bird narrowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he listened +warily when he began to talk of the priest and to praise him. It was a +pleasure, Bird said, for one educated man to converse with another; and +Father Étienne and he often maintained opposite sides of a question +merely for the sake of the discussion; it was like a game of cards where +there were no stakes; you exercised your mind. + +Northwick understood this too little to believe it; when he talked, he +talked business; even the jokes among the men he was used to meant +business. + +"Then you haven't really found any gold in the hills?" he asked, slyly. + +"My faith, yes!" said Bird. "But," he added sadly, "perhaps it would not +pay to mine it. I will show you when you get up. Better not go to +Chicoutimi to-day! It is snowing." + +"Snowing?" Northwick repeated. "Then I can't go!" + +"Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best," Bird suggested. "Try to get +some sleep. Sleep is youth. When we wake we are old again, but some of +the youth stick to our fingers. No?" He smiled gayly, and went out, +closing the door softly after him, and Northwick drowsed. In a dream +Bird came back to him with some specimens from his gold mine. Northwick +could see that the yellow metal speckling the quartz was nothing but +copper pyrites, but he thought it best to pretend that he believed it +gold; for Bird, while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was +feeling with the other for the buckle of Northwick's belt, as he sat up +in bed. He woke in fright, and the fear did not afterwards leave him in +the fever which now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was aware +that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared for, and that his host and +all his household were his devoted watchers and nurses; when he knew the +doctor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this he perceived +cloudily, and as with a thickness of some sort of stuff between him and +the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was +always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when +the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did +not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion +was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan. + +The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open +doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of +the men met. + +"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not +speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not +misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then +reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick. +"You think you are among some Yankee defal_ca_tor?" he asked, for sole +resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have +imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick +man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay +across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?" + +Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the +thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the +pouch of the belt. + +"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you +see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?" + +Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills +made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me." + +"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud +air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly +confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call. + +Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he +could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the +air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern +land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare +hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an +illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its +first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales +sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of +his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by +that time. It was then the time of the apple-blossoms there; with his +homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops of his orchard, all +pink-white. He thought how the apples smelt when they first began to +drop in August on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It +seemed to him that if he could only be there again for a moment he would +be willing to spend the rest of his life in prison. As it was, he was in +prison; it did not matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from +his home. He hated the vastness of the half world where he could come +and go unmolested, this bondage that masked itself as such ample +freedom. To be shut out was the same as to be shut in. + +In the first days of his convalescence, while he was yet too weak to +leave his room, he planned and executed many returns to his home. He +went back by stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown in his +sickness, and tried to see what change had come upon it; but he could +never see it different from what it was that clear winter night when he +escaped from it. This baffled and distressed him, and strengthened the +longing at the bottom of his heart actually to return. He thought that +if he could once look on the misery he had brought upon his children he +could bear it better; he complexly flattered himself that it would not +be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Sometimes when this wish +harassed him, he said to himself, to still it, that as soon as the first +boat came up the river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and +arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and abandon the +struggle. + +But as he regained his health, he began to feel that this was a rash and +foolish promise: he thought he saw a better way out of his unhappiness. +It appeared a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of his. He +was restored to this feeling in part by the respect, the distinction +which he enjoyed in the little village, and which pleasantly recalled +his consequence among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was +declared out of danger he began to receive visits of polite sympathy +from the heads of families, who smoked round him in the evening, and +predicted a renewal of his youth by the fever he had come through +safely. Their prophecies were interpreted by Bird and Père Étienne, as +with one or other of these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, +the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to +furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got +ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere +Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor +render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the +treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the +priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not +the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a +great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral, +agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American +scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished +to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was +impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was +too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he +bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's +reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all +respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought +in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself +that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the +victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and +would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money +by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort +of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would +have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have +accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The +doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with +Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to +Père Étienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing +with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner. + + + + +VII. + + +It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man +of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly +decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the +things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and +purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only +the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of +money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and +from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he +was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with rare plants. But the +flowers were possessions, not passions; he did not speak of them as if +they afforded him any artistic or scientific delight. The young priest +learned that he had put a good deal of money in pictures; but then the +pictures seemed to have become investments, and of the nature of stocks +and bonds. He found that this curious American did not care to read the +English books which Bird offered to lend him out of the little store of +gifts and accidents accumulated in the course of years from bountiful or +forgetful tourists; the books in French Père Étienne proposed to him, +Northwick said he did not know how to read. He showed no liking for +music, except a little for the singing of Bird's niece, Virginie, but +when the priest thought he might care to understand that she sang the +ballads which the first voyagers had brought from France into the +wilderness, or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its hard +life, he saw that the fact said nothing to Northwick, and that it rather +embarrassed him. The American could not take part in any of those +discussions of abstract questions which the priest and the old woodsman +delighted in, and which they sometimes tried to make him share. He +apparently did not know what they meant. It was only when Père Étienne +gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly and arid to be +borne, that he began to love him as a brother; when he could make +nothing of Northwick's mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul. + +Père Étienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, and he had his +misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the +American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating +to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there +a pure and unworldly heart, such as Père Étienne bore in his breast, +with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of +the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious +stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he +knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that +Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of an uneasy +conscience in its possession. Why had he come to that lonely place in +midwinter with a treasure such as that; and why did he keep the money by +him, instead of putting it in a bank? Père Étienne talked these +questions over with Bird and the doctor, and he could find only one +answer to them. He wondered if he ought not to speak to Northwick, and +delicately offer him the chance to unburden his mind to such a friend as +only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any +approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the +church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and +reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy +necessary to the good which Père Étienne wished to do the lonely and +silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a piece of +writing, which he always locked carefully into his bag when he left his +room, and which he copied in part or in whole again and again, burning +the rejected drafts in the hearth-fire that had now superseded the +stove, and stirring the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was +left distinguishable on it. + +One day there came up the river a bateau from Tadoussac, bringing the +news that the ice was all out of the St. Lawrence. "It will not be long +time, now," said Bird, "before we begin to see you' countrymen. The +steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of June." + +Northwick responded to the words with no visible sensation. His +sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more and more, and intolerably deepened +the mystification of his failure to do any of the things with his +capital which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citizens. He no +longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, that was true, and there was not +the danger of his putting his money into Markham's enterprise there; but +neither did he show any interest or any curiosity concerning Bird's +discovery of the precious metal at Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as +well as Père Étienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his guest, +even with the intention of making their joint fortune. + +A few days later there came to Père Étienne a letter, which, when he +read it, superseded the interest in Northwick, which Bird felt gnawing +him like a perpetual hunger. It was from the curé at Rimouski, where +Père Étienne's family lived, and it brought word that his mother, who +had been in failing health all winter, could not long survive, and so +greatly desired to see him, that his correspondent had asked their +superior to allow him to replace Père Étienne at Haha Bay, while he came +to visit her. Leave had been given, and Père Étienne might expect his +friend very soon after his letter reached him. + +"Where is Rimouski?" Northwick asked, when he found himself alone with +the priest that evening. + +"It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first point where the +steamers touch in going and coming between Quebec and Liverpool." Père +Étienne had been weeping, and his heart was softened and emboldened by +the anxiety he felt. "It is my native village--where I lived till I went +to make my studies in the Laval University. It is going home for me. +Perhaps they will let me remain there." He added, by an irresistible +impulse of pity and love, "I wish you were going home, too, Mr. +Warwick!" + +"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't--yet." + +"This is a desert for you," Père Étienne pressed on. "I can see that. I +have seen how solitary you are." + +"Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted. + +"My son," said the young priest to the man who was old enough to be his +father, and he put his hand on Northwick's, where it lay on his knee, as +they sat side by side before the fire, "is there something you could +wish to say to me? Something I might do to help you?" + +In a moment all was open between them, and they knew each other's +meaning. "Yes," said Northwick, and he felt the wish to trust in the +priest and to be ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his +heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too innocent, too unversed +in the world and its ways to know his offence in its right proportion; +to know it as Northwick himself knew it; to be able to account for it +and condone it. The affair, if he could understand it at all, would +shock him; he must blame it as relentlessly as Northwick's own child +would if her love did not save him. With the next word he closed that +which was open between them, a rift in his clouds that heaven itself had +seemed to look through. "I have a letter--a letter that I wish you would +take and mail for me in Rimouski." + +"I will take it with great pleasure," said the priest, but he had the +sadness of a deep disappointment in his tone. + +Northwick was disappointed, too; almost injured. He had something like a +perception that if Père Étienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he +could have told him everything, and saved his own soul by the +confession. + +About a month after the priest's departure the first steamboat came up +the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. +Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he +would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it +should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to +the piety of the _habitans_ as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to +Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity +which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye +on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps +both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps +prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave +out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his +wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it +was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon +him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the +community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at +him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he +would. Northwick could not have moved himself. He was like one benumbed. +He let the days go by, and made no attempt to realize the schemes for +the retrieval of his fortunes that had brought him to that region. + +The sound of the steamboat's whistle was a joyful sound to Bird. He rose +and went into Northwick's room. Northwick was awake; he had heard the +whistle, too. + +"Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you' name," said Bird, with trembling +eagerness, "that is the boat. I want you take you' money and go hout my +'ouse. Yes, sir. Now! Pack you' things. Don't wait for breakfast. You +get breakfast on board. Go!" + + + + +VIII. + + +The letter which Père Étienne posted for Northwick at Rimouski was +addressed to the editor of the _Boston Events_, and was published with +every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist +newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room +proofs of his efficiency in the line of the _Events_' greatest +successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands was +capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the effect was disappointing, +not only in the figure of the immediate sales, but in the cumulative +value of the recognition of the fact that the _Events_ had been selected +by Northwick as the best avenue for approaching the public. The +_Abstract_, in copying and commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed +its esteemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of its prime importance +as the organ of the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after +questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as +a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many +defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the +despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several +of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the +picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an +effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his +death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it +experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter +himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public, +but his own family, concerning his fate. + +The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those +belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are +closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and +Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before +opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living _en garçon_. +There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to +question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its +absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his +guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the +beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man +and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It +isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. +Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of +other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that +he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was +found out, and ran away. That's all." + +"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression +that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was _not_ one of your +most remarkable men." + +Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our +_least_ remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which +we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman, +he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made +man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands +of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and now by this +unconsciously hypocritical and nauseous letter. He's what the +commonplace American egotist must come to more and more in finance, now +that he is abandoning the career of politics, and wants to be rich +instead of great." + +"Really?" said the Englishman. + +Among Hilary's guests was Charles Bellingham, a bachelor of pronounced +baldness, who said he would come to meet Hilary's belated Englishman, in +quality of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Corey, a +society veteran of that period when even the swell in Boston must be an +intellectual man. He was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom +left town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner whenever he was +asked. Bellingham came to the rescue of the national repute in his own +fashion. "I can't account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, +when you invited me, unless you knew where you could steal some more." + +"Ah, it isn't quite like a gentleman's stealing a few spoons," old Corey +began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary +sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more +heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as +something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so +does birth; but they're not commonplace." + +"They're not so frequent as defalcation with us, quite--especially +birth," suggested Bellingham. + +"No," Corey went on, "every fact of this sort is preceded by the slow +and long decay of a moral nature, and that is of the most eternal and +tragical interest; and"--here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, +whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him--"if it's very common with +us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we +excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed +moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that +it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our +bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world; our habit of +defalcation hasn't resulted yet in any ethical compensation. Sewell, +here, used to preach about such things, but I'll venture to say we shall +have no homily on Northwick from him next Sunday." + +The Rev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. "What is the use?" +he asked, with a certain sadness. "The preacher's voice is lost in his +sounding-board nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are crying aloud +from twenty-eight pages illustrated." + +"Perhaps _they_ are our moralists," Corey suggested. + +"Perhaps," Sewell assented. + +"By the way, Hilary," said Bellingham, "did you ever know who wrote that +article in the _Abstract_, when Northwick's crookedness first appeared?" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It was a young fellow of twenty-four or five." + +"Come off!" said Bellingham, in a slang phrase then making its way into +merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like +it in the _Abstract_." + +"No, and I'm afraid you're not likely to. The fellow was a reporter on +the paper at the time; but he happened to have looked up the literature +of defalcation, and they let him say his say." + +"It was a very good say." + +"Better than any other he had in him. They let him try again on +different things, but he wasn't up to the work. So the managing editor +said--and he was a friend of the fellow's. He was too literary, I +believe." + +"And what's become of him?" asked Corey. + +"You might get _him_ to read to you," said Bellingham to the old man. He +added to the company, "Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. +He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds their society +oppressive." + +"Why," Hilary answered with a little hesitation, "he was out of health, +and Matt had him up to his farm." + +"Is he Matt's only beneficiary?" Corey asked, with a certain tone of +tolerant liking for Matt. "I thought he usually had a larger colony at +Vardley." + +"Well, he has," said Hilary. "But when his mother and sister are +visiting him, he has to reduce their numbers. He can't very well turn +his family away." + +"He might board them out," said Bellingham. + +"Do you suppose," asked Sewell, as if he had not noticed the turn the +talk had taken, "that Northwick has gone to Europe?" + +"I've no doubt he wishes me to suppose so," said Hilary, "and of course +we've had to cable the authorities to look out for him at Moville and +Liverpool, but I feel perfectly sure he's still in Canada, and expects +to make terms for getting home again. He must be horribly homesick." + +"Yes?" Sewell suggested. + +"Yes. Not because he's a man of any delicacy of feeling, or much real +affection for his family. I've no doubt he's fond of them, in a way, but +he's fonder of himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he's +trying to make interest for himself, and that he's quite willing to use +his children if it will tell on the public sympathies. He knows very +well that they're provided for. They own the place at Hatboro'; he +deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known to have begun; +and his creditors couldn't touch it if they wished to. If he had really +that fatherly affection for them, which he appeals to in others, he +wouldn't have left them in doubt whether he was alive or dead for four +or five months, and then dragged them into an open letter asking +forbearance in their name, and promising, for their sake, to right those +he had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent." + +Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond +question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to +him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp +rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which +he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for +him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, +Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out +of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got +to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to +remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay +the people he had defrauded." + +"Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell. + +"No? Why not?" + +"Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep +up." + +"He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said +Hilary. + +"That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. +"Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death." + +"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the +newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays." + +"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village +down the St. Lawrence--" + +"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey. + +"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite +different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the +wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to +leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save +their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; +a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false." + +"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they +all laughed. + +"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. +You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to +principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless +creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he +can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, +but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would +come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in +greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!" + +"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey. + +"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that +Northwick is cracked." + +"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every +wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the +last state of the wicked." + +"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to +have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?" + +"What a question!" said Hilary. "You're _as_ bad as my daughter. She +asked me the same thing." + +"I wish I were no worse," said the old man. + +"You speak of his children," said the Englishman. "Hasn't he a wife?" + +"No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the other a young girl, whom my +daughter knew at school," Hilary answered. + +"I saw the young lady at your house once," said Bellingham, in a certain +way. + +"Yes. She's been here a good deal, first and last." + +"Rather a high-stepping young person, I thought," said Bellingham. + +"She is a proud girl," Hilary admitted. "Rather imperious, in fact." + +"Ah, what's the pride of a young girl?" said Corey. "Something that +comes from her love and goes to it; no separable quality; nothing that's +for herself." + +"Well, I'm not sure of that," said Hilary. "In this case it seems to +have served her own turn. It's enabled her simply and honestly to deny +the fact that her father ever did anything wrong." + +"That's rather fine," Corey remarked, as if tasting it. + +"And what will it enable her to do, now that he's come out and confessed +the frauds himself?" the Englishman asked. + +Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Bellingham, "Charles, I want you +to try some of these crabs. I got them for you." + +"Why, this is touching, Hilary," said Bellingham, getting his fat head +round with difficulty to look at them in the dish the man was bringing +to his side. "But I don't know that I should have refused them, even if +they had been got for Corey." + + + + +IX. + + +They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in +Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the +stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a +part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the +provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death. +He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such +a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their +doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that +they had _never_ believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who +acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to +cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his +faith restored him to the esteem of many. + +Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said +Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of +his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an +early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public +opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public +confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good +intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no +question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions--if you will +excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for +repentance--when he makes the first payment to his creditors--I will +believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not _till_ then." + +"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to +say to all this. Can he feel that _his_ skirts are quite clean, acting +that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to +say against him?" + +Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on +the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr. +Putney on any subject." + +In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not +discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their +father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through +Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's +character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack +Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not +obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it." + +"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used +to say against Mr. Northwick?" + +"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington. + +"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger +appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery +of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in +it. + +"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?" + +"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?" + +"Oh, _I_ don't know. What do _you_ think, Jack?" + +"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who +avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a +look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too. + +"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on. +"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved +in Hatboro'--not among the ladies at least." + +Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's +the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men +in my family to say a word against her." + +Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. +Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul +of a man." + +"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that +they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," +Mrs. Wilmington teased. + +"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. +Munger alone to his aunt. + +"_Do_ you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, +with cosey confidentiality. + +"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very +poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to +her?" + +"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do _like_ a manly man!" + +She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a +further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one +she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of +the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road +so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it. + +"Doctor," she called out, "what _do_ you think of this extraordinary +letter of Mr. Northwick's?" + +Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the +_Events_? Do you think Northwick wrote it?" + +"Why, don't _you_, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal +grievance in her voice. + +"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he _did_ +write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood +you thought he was burned in that accident last winter." + +"Now, _doctor_!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said +always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I +know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. _She_ +will tell me what you think." + +"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all +well." + +"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though, +with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr. +Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself +to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it +be romantic?" + +"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to +see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. +He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by." + +She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South +Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, +where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely +drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs. +Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and +in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own +emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South +Hatboro'. + +Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat +crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door +that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her +hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter +in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be +crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, +who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he +had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us, +and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead, +long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's +just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell +us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything +we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do +it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't +complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, +what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that +he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he +didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you +think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and +tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one +where he was? That _shows_ he's out of his mind. I always thought that +if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied +about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that +was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that +we trusted so much, had broken his word to _us_. That is what kills me." + +The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at +dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, +as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief +responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if +her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs. + +Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it +of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. +"We must give it up!" + +"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back. + +"The house--and the farm--and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"No. That letter makes it theirs--the people's whose money he took. We +must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know +how." + +Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but +Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!" + +"That was _before_. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we +should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give +it to us when he did?" + +"Suzette!" + +"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to +go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because +he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it +up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my +father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to +me, _now_!" + +The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such +natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about +father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his +mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away +because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him +that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to +blame himself. That's the way I look at it." + +"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You +_know_ you don't believe that!" + +Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist +in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's +confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at +last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it, +Suzette; and I have a right." + +"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't +belong to us till father comes back to prove it." + +"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!" + +"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he +isn't--" + +"Suzette! Don't you dare!" + +"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong +to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be +seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole +world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if +we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look _you_ in the +face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either +of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room. + +"Wait! I can't let you--yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline. + +"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat +in her rocking-chair. + +"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering +strength of resistance in her heart. "Because _you've_ been thinking of +it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was +mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for +both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did +use their money--and I don't believe he did--I don't see why I should +give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said, +"And I won't." + +"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette. + +"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so." + +"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr. +Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves +on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so +terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send +Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any +squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the +property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you +don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I +will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to +you. Do you promise?" + +"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of +tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give +it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall +never say that I wanted you should do it." + +"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you +say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft +throat. "_I_ do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I +care as much for them as you do." + +In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive +whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession +of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it," +she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep +it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up." + +Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had +been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained, +"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they +have on my house and lot?" + +"I don't know. I don't care for the law." + +"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father +is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions +made in the letter he has published." + +"I understand that," said the girl. + +"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the +bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing +to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property." + +He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and +Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the +property, they'd let father come back?" + +Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have +got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been +indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There +can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial." + +"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would +make them easier with him?" + +"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't +like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless +you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property." + +"And do you think it has a moral claim?" + +Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked +his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some +peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing +company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a +sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it +makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who +buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns +its bread by the sweat of its capital--neither better nor worse." +Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from +the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative +economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the +Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral +obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a +clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold +on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a +body that hadn't a soul for that purpose." + +Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then +recollected himself, and put it back. + +"There, Suzette!" said Adeline. + +Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with +her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that. +I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the +company, and if you would do it for me at once." + +"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow +morning and see their attorney." + +"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary." + +"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, +if you wish." + +"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the +company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr. +Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my +sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks +you. Will you?" + +"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, +I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole +place must be sold?" + +Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place +sold?" + +"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?" + +"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm." + +Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps--" + +"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the +world. I--" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on +piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But +I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, +need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?" + +"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw +up the writings." + +"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked. + +"Oh, yes; if you wish." + +"I do." + +"It won't be necessary." + +"I wish it." + +Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt +justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl +freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of +course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of +conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought +to make any one else obey one's conscience?" + +"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why +should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the +frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just +as it does?" + +"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood." + +"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of +pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the +right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. +She would do anything for that. She's as _hard_!" + +"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted. + + + + +X. + + +The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. +"I haven't slept all night--I don't see how _you_ could--and I want you +shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I +want to think it over, first." + +"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first +word. + +Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing +to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. +Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the +writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. +I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like." + +"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated. + +"_No_, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's +right; and I want to do what _I_ think is right. I'm almost sick. I want +Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She +broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! _Do_ give me a little +more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do--" + +They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and +they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, +as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. +Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on +her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him +hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't +agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. +Putney from writing till you think as _I_ do. But be still, now!" + +"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with +you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me! +And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down +sick." + +She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, +dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, +now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney." + +Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up +and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not +slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened +her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a +bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in +it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the +day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very +difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to +compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world +where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from +thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till +now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for +the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser +wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly +within herself before she spoke with Adeline again. + +That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found +as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over +Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; +heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most +pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely. +But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to +excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade +asked. + +"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is +something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this +letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you +once about Jack Wilmington--" + +Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm +sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have +shown it long ago!" + +"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if +it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a +time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried +tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her +so much more than I; and I didn't know--Is it possible--Perhaps I ought +to ask if _you_ are at all--if _you_ care for her?" + +"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! _Why_ do +you ask?" + +"Because _I_ do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that +when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a +wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength +between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind +made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a +hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him +from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I +thought--I thought that if you, old fellow--But now, it's all right--all +right--" + +Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A +great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their +way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a +cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and +which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow +when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was +scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he +could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no +more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by +his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick +was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants +often find themselves in, but his final perception of his +impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's +hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the +purpose when another wishes to do the talking. + +"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got +anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my +way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and +can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere +bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he +walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of +anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for +the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted +sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I +don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; +summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, +anything like _this_. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad +to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good +sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization." +He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor +father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him." + +Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the +thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he +must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all +rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile +for the purpose of this question. + +"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it +must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise +and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever +been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, +though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," +Matt ended, philosophically. + +Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your +family, do they know of your--feeling?" + +"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like +a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added, +despondently. + +Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the +aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to +share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said, +presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation +to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it +very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think +there are very few men like my father?" + +"There are none, Matt!" said Wade. + +"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of +them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered +man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever +loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can." + +"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!" + +"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said +Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I +couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that +she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her +of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I +think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up +altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have +her to _give_ up. Then it's an easy sacrifice." + +"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's +self-satire. + +Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and +looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk. +"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once--to leave her to suffer +it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No +real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might +gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to +think she had given herself through that need--No, it wouldn't do! My +father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and +Louise can be her friend--What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle +it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather +cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I +suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all +the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't +bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I +think I ought to wait." + +"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's +a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and +Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation. + +"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid +it might look calculating and self-interested--" + +"You self-interested, Matt!" + +"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little? +If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and +mother, brother and sister, before all the world?" + +"If you are sure she loves you, yes." + +Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little +condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now. +I've just run over from the farm to see you--" + +"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the +rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly +improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were +immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of +yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as +yourself, to take time before speaking." + +"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade +of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I +should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in +adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much +obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and +helping me to see it in the right light." + +"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation. + +"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think +you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article +on the defalcation in the _Boston Abstract_?" + +"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it, +very humanely--too humanely, perhaps?" + +"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of +that article--a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds +with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no +health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily +newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the +time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who +recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell--that's the fellow's name--and +since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But +he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's +out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative +friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of +the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type--the artistic type +cynicised by the hard conditions of life--newspaper conditions, and then +economic conditions." + +Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful +formulation of Maxwell. + +Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any +use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon +Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he +said, "I think you've decided _so_ wisely, Matt; and justly and +unselfishly." + +"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said +Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of +his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think +it would seem unfeeling--or out of taste, at all--if I went to see her +at such a time?" + +"Why, I can't imagine _your_ doing anything out of taste, Matt." + +"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some +messages by me to her. Will you take them, or--" + +"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's +messages yourself." + +"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid." + + + + +XI. + + +Matt took the lower road that wound away from Wade's church toward the +Northwick place; but as he went, he kept thinking that he must not +really try to see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time; out of +all propriety, of all decency; it would be taking advantage of her +helplessness to intrude upon her the offer of help and of kindness which +every instinct of her nature must revolt from. There was only one thing +that could justify his coming, and that was impossible. Unless he came +to tell her that he loved her, and to ask her to let him take her burden +upon him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love's sake, he had +no right to see her. At moments it seemed as if that were right and he +could do it, no matter how impossible, and then he almost ran forward; +but only to check himself, to stop short, and doubt whether not to turn +back altogether. By such faltering progresses, he found himself in the +Northwick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from the mansion, +which the farm road had brought him to, until he reached the cottage at +the avenue gate. On the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set +his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and he floundered +on till he made out that this languid figure was Adeline. He could have +laughed at the irony, the mockery of the anti-climax, if it had not been +for the face that the old maid turned upon him at the approach of his +footfalls, and the pleasure that lighted up its pathos when she +recognized him. + +"_Oh_, Mr. Hilary!" she said; and then she could not speak, for the +twitching of her lips and the trembling of her chin. + +He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural for him to do that +reverent and tender thing which is no longer a part of our custom; he +bent over it and kissed the chill, bony knuckles. + +She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief and wipe her tears. "I +suppose you've come to see Suzette; but she's gone up to the village to +talk with Mr. Putney; he's our lawyer." + +"Yes," said Matt. + +"I presume I don't need to talk to you about that--letter. I think,--and +I believe Suzette will think so too in the end,--that his mind is +affected, and he just accuses himself of all these things because +they've been burnt into it so. How are your father and mother? And your +sister?" + +She broke off with these questions, he could see, to stay herself in +what she wished to say. "They are all well. Father is still in Boston; +but mother and Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their love, and +they are anxious to know if there is anything--" + +"Thank you. Will you sit down here? It's so close indoors." She made +room for him on the threshold, but he took the step below. + +"I hope Miss Suzette is well?" + +"Why, thank you, not very well. There isn't anything really the matter; +but we didn't either of us sleep very well last night; we were excited. +I don't know as I ought to tell you," she began. "I don't suppose it's a +thing you would know about, any way; but I've got to talk to somebody--" + +"Miss Northwick," said Matt, "if there is anything in the world that I +can do for you, or that you even hope I can do, I _beg_ you to let me +hear it. I should be glad beyond all words to help you." + +"Oh, I don't know as anything can be done," she began, after the fresh +gush of tears which were her thanks, "but Suzette and I have been +talking it over a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your +father about it. You see, Suzette can't feel right about our keeping the +place here, if father's really done what he says he's done. We don't +believe he has; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, and +made to give up the money he says he has got. Suzette thinks we ought to +give up the money we have got in the bank--fifteen hundred or two +thousand dollars--and she wanted I should let her give up her half of +the place, here; and at first I _did_ say she might. But come to find +out from Mr. Putney, the whole place would have to be sold before it +could be divided, and I couldn't seem to let it. That was what +we--disputed about. Yes! We had a dispute; but it's all right now, or it +will be, when we get the company to say they will stop the lawsuit +against father, if he will give up the money he's got, and we will give +up the place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company couldn't stop it; +but I don't see why a rich corporation like that couldn't do almost +anything it wanted to with its money." + +Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor her scheme for defeating +justice; but he smiled forlornly at the hopelessness of it. "I'm afraid +Mr. Putney is right." He was silent, and then at the despair that came +into her face, he hurried on to say, "but I will see my father, Miss +Northwick; I will go down to see him at once; and if anything can be +honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am sure he will try to +do it for your sake. But don't expect anything," he said, getting to his +feet and putting out his hand to her. + +"No, no; I won't," she said, with gratitude that wrung his heart. +"And--won't you wait and see Suzette?" + +Matt reddened. "No; I think not now. But, perhaps, I will come back; +and--and--I will come soon again. Good-by!" + +"Mr. Hilary!" she called after him. He ran back to her. "If--if your +father don't think anything can be done, I don't want he should say +anything about it." + +"Oh, no; certainly not." + +"And, Mr. Hilary! Don't _you_ let Suzette know I spoke to you. _I'll_ +tell her." + +"Why, of course." + +On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less and less impossible +to Matt; but he really knew nothing of the legal complications; and when +he proposed it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. "I don't +believe it could be done. The man's regularly indicted, and he's in +contempt of court as long as he doesn't present himself for trial. +That's the way I understand it. But I'll see our counsel. Whose scheme +is this?" + +"I don't know. Miss Northwick told me of it; but I fancied Miss +Suzette--" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It must have cost her almost her life to give up +her faith in that pitiful rascal." + +"But after she had done that, it would cost her nothing to give up the +property, and as I understood Miss Northwick, that was her sister's +first impulse. She wished to give up her half of the estate +unconditionally; but Miss Northwick wouldn't consent, and they +compromised on the conditions she told me of." + +"Well," said Hilary, "I think Miss Northwick showed the most sense. But +of course, Sue's a noble girl. She almost transfigures that old +scoundrel of a father of hers. That fellow--Jack Wilmington--ought to +come forward now and show himself a man, if he _is_ one. _Any_ man might +be proud of such a girl's love--and they say she was in love with him. +But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his uncle's wife. He +isn't good enough for her, and probably he always knew it." + +Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his father, to go and +look at the picture over the mantel. It was not a new picture; but he +did not feel that he was using his father quite frankly; and he kept +looking at it for that reason. + +"If those poor creatures gave up their property, what would they do? +They've absolutely nothing else in the world!" + +"I fancy," said Matt, "that isn't a consideration that would weigh with +Suzette Northwick." + +"No. If there's anything in heredity, the father of such a girl must +have some good in him. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to suffer." + +"Do you mean that the company would regard the fact that it had no legal +claim on the property, and would recognize it in their behalf?" + +"The company!" Hilary roared. "The company has _no_ right to that +property, moral _or_ legal. But we should act as if we had. If it were +unconditionally offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of +charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man Jack of us would +hold out for a right to it that didn't exist, and we should take it as +part of our due; and I should be such a coward that I couldn't tell the +Board what I thought of our pusillanimity." + +"It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously in a corporate +capacity, or even humanely," said Matt. "But I don't know but there +would be an obscure and negative justice in such action. It would be +right for the company to accept the property, if it was right for +Northwick's daughter to offer it, and I think it is most unquestionably +right for her to do that." + +"Do you, Matt? Well, well," said Hilary, willing to be comforted, +"perhaps you're right. You must send Louise and your mother over to see +her." + +"Well, perhaps not just now. She's proud and sensitive, and perhaps it +might seem intrusive, at this juncture?" + +"Intrusive? Nonsense! She'll be glad to see them. Send them right over!" + +Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went +away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of +till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain +the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own +children. + +What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave his love for her +unconscious approval; but at the same time it created a sort of comedy +situation, and Matt was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from +the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going direct to her, he +hated to be going, like the hero of a novel, to offer himself to the +heroine at the moment her fortunes were darkest; but he knew that he was +only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and humbly her lover, +who wished in any way or any measure he might, to be her friend and +helper. He thought he might put his offer in some such form as would +leave her free to avail herself a little if not much of his longing to +comfort and support her in her trial. But at last he saw that he could +do nothing for the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to +give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend. He did not go +back to Hatboro', as he longed to do. He went back to his farm, and +possessed his soul in such patience as he could. + + + + +XII. + + +Suzette came back from Putney's office with such a disheartened look +that Adeline had not the courage to tell her of Matt's visit and the +errand he had undertaken for her. The lawyer had said no more than that +he did not believe anything could be done. He was glad they had decided +not to transfer their property to the company, without first trying to +make interest for their father with it; that was their right, and their +duty; and he would try what could be done; but he warned Suzette that he +should probably fail. + +"And then what did he think we ought to do?" Adeline asked. + +"He didn't say," Suzette answered. + +"I presume," Adeline went on, after a little pause, "that you would like +to give up the property, anyway. Well, you can do it, Suzette." The joy +she might have expected did not show itself in her sister's face, and +she added, "I've thought it all over, and I see it as you do, now. +Only," she quavered, "I do want to do all I can for poor father, first." + +"Yes," said Suzette, spiritlessly, "Mr. Putney said we ought." + +"Sue," said Adeline, after another little pause, "I don't know what +you'll think of me, for what I've done. Mr. Hilary has been here--" + +"Mr. Hilary!" + +"Yes. He came over from his farm--" + +"Oh! I thought you meant his father." The color began to mount into the +girl's cheeks. + +"Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they all want to do +anything they can; and--and I told Mr. Hilary what we were going to try; +and--he said he would speak to his father about it; and--Oh, Suzette, +I'm afraid I've done more than I ought!" + +Suzette was silent, and then, "No," she said, "I can't see what harm +there could be in it." + +"He said," Adeline pursued with joyful relief, "he wouldn't let his +father speak to the rest about it, till we were ready; and I know he'll +do all he can for us. Don't you?" + +Sue answered, "I don't see what harm it can do for him to speak to his +father. I hope, Adeline," she added, with the severity Adeline had +dreaded, "you didn't ask it as a favor from him?" + +"No, no! I didn't indeed, Sue! It came naturally. He offered to do it." + +"Well," said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and she fell back in +the chair where she had been sitting. + +"I don't see," said Adeline, with an anxious look at the girl's worn +face, "but what we'd both better have the doctor." + +"Ah, the doctor!" cried Suzette. "What can the doctor do for troubles +like ours?" She put up her hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, +and sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the worst had come +upon them. + +The company's counsel submitted Putney's overtures, as he expected, to +the State's attorney, in the hypothetical form, and the State's +attorney, as Putney expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that +when Northwick's friends communicated with him and ascertained his +readiness to surrender the money he had with him, and to make +restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a _nolle +prosequi_. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt +of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the +chance of a merciful sentence. + +There could be no other answer, he said, and he could give none for +Putney to carry back to the defaulter's daughters. + +Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved herself up to bear +it so. Adeline had faltered between her hopes and fears, but she had +apparently decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst came. + +"Well, then," she said, "we must give up the place. You can get the +papers ready, Mr. Putney." + +"I will do whatever you say, Miss Northwick." + +"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my +doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it +all the same." + +Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with +the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see +Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family +that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his +clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed +circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end. + +Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his +mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes +burn on Matt's kindly face. + +"Well, sir," he said, "what do _you_ think can be done for two women, +brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?" + +"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked. + +"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make +their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company--" + +"But I thought--I thought they might have something +besides--something--" + +"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to +their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay +that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?" + +"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with +it--or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it." + +"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the +predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just +nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he +proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to +death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking +down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either." + +Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before +him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, +and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her +father's shame. + +"Of course," he said, "they mustn't be allowed to suffer. We shall count +upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive +somehow not to let them know that they are destitute." + +"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its +seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer +in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, +who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I +mean by every step I take? You're acquainted with Miss Suzette, I +suppose?" + +"Yes," said Matt, consciously. + +"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her +mind to starve, wouldn't know what you were up to if you pretended to +have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?" + +"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no +claim on the property, none whatever!" + +"Now you're shouting." Putney put a comfortable mass of tobacco in his +mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it. + +"They mustn't take it--they won't take it!" cried Matt. + +Putney laughed scornfully. + + + + +XIII. + + +Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous +railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape +the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not +go to see them, and find out some way to help them. + +Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the noble +action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette. + +"Yes, it is noble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn't do +it." + +"Why, mamma?" + +"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well +as they were; and the company doesn't need it; but now where will they +go? What will become of them?" + +Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking. + +"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they +are, for the present, and that they won't be actually houseless. But +they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their +support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself +that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live +on." + +"I _knew_ Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came +out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But +that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no +peace till she had given up everything--everything!" + +"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they--has Suzette--any +plans?" + +"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the +bank," said Matt, forlornly. + +"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, +"they've all managed as badly as they could." + +"Well, mother, they hadn't a very hopeful case, to begin with," said +Matt, and Louise smiled. + +"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs. +Hilary pursued. + +"He was annoyed, but I couldn't see that he had lost his appetite. I +don't think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, +though." + +"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don't know +just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and +see them. They don't seem to have any one else. It is very strange that +they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated +upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try +what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment's pause. + +They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the +end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I +shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the +shore." + +"Oh!" said Louise. + +"Yes; I don't like his being in town so late." + +"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don't you get +him to come up here?" + +"He's been asked," said Matt. + +"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise assented. She rose and went +to the glass door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was +filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think +what we can do for Suzette." + +Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and +listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two +voices retreated together, and Louise's laugh made itself heard farther +off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary. + +"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light +nature himself at that moment. "But I don't know that there is anything +wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily." + +"Oh, I don't mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she +is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I'm +afraid she doesn't feel things deeply. Matt, I don't believe I like this +protégé of yours." + +"Maxwell?" + +"Yes. He's too intense." + +"Aren't you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don't like +Louise's lightness, and you don't like Maxwell's intensity. I think +he'll get over that. He's sick, poor fellow; he won't be so intense when +he gets better." + +"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, +abruptly, "I hope Louise's sympathies will be concentrated on Sue +Northwick for awhile, now."' + +"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I'm sure Louise has +shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I +hadn't supposed she was so attached to her--so constant--" + +"She's romantic; but she's worldly; she likes the world and its ways. +There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of +the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out +of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe. +Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, +because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize. +But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away +she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!" +Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be _entirely_ worldly, it +wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes +in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask +her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly +not a simple character--like Sue Northwick, for instance." + +Matt now roused himself. "Is _she_ a simple character?" he asked, with a +show of indifference. + +"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains +everything she does." + +"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in +openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived +himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with +something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine +her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a +wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her +with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now." + +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than +could have been expected of her father's daughter." + +Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to +answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of +the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick +with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me +that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall +find it difficult to discharge with delicacy." + +"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?" + +"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property +which she is going to give up." + +"We are not the company." + +"Father is the president." + +"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused +it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why +should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do +what is right and proper--even what is delicate--with Miss Northwick." + +"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that." + +"You said something like it, my dear." + +"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her +alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that _we_ +realize all that she is doing." + +"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite +frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and +I wished she wouldn't do it." + + + + +XIV. + + +The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June +day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in +his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, +and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, +with a cushion clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was +pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his +thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted +herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent +gaze. + +"Have you got through?" + +"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to +the camp." + +"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the +importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick +man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her. + +"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But +I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?" + +"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor +and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his +shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly +across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about +the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun +struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their +needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and +through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of +a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place +was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just +beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it. + +Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and +high boots, and his cork helmet topping all. + +"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, +Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?" + +Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up +from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell--" + +"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the +camp." + +"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you +think he is, this morning?" + +"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast." + +"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere +out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a +girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at +such a time as this?" + +"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. +"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't +know what she _will_ do. If Jack Wilmington--but he never really cared +for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be." + +"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now." + +Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she +still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know +that he cared for her." + +"But her pride--wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal +terms--" + +"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a +person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a +thing as that there _is_ no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are +just alike--like cats in the dark." + +"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting +to them before, came into his eyes. + +"I _know_ so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington +still--" + +"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston +to-morrow, and see father--Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow +evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it." + +Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine +before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters. + +"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm +at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that +I thought perhaps you might want to see at once." + +He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. +"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse +me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when +he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; +but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to +feel like work, for the first time since I came up here." + +"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the +board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the +hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. +You must stay the whole summer." + +"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his +side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like." + +"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they +will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly +well?" + +"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one +thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the +light and shade flecks on her face and figure. + +"I _know_ you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted. + +"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor +people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a +caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility." + +"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse +than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will +let you help them." + +"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if +you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're +surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if +you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor +folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to +do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of +riches." + +"You would make me hateful." + +"I would make you charming." + +"Well, do me, then!" + +"Ah, you wouldn't like it." + +"Why?" + +"Because--I found it out in my newspaper work, when I had to interview +people and write them up--people don't like to have the good points they +have, recognized; they want you to celebrate the good points they +haven't got. If a man is amiable and kind and has something about him +that wins everybody's heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very +dignified and commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and +indomitable will." + +"I don't see," said Louise, "why you think I'm weak, and low-minded, and +undignified." + +Maxwell laughed. "Did I say something of that kind?" + +"You meant it." + +"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of +apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound +knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the +most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you +like that?" + +"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be +interviewed." + +"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if +I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I +shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the +_Abstract_. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be +read for me." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up +newspaper work altogether." + +"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal +sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much +would you get for your play?" + +"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six +thousand dollars a year." + +"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness. + +He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and +asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this +time?" + +"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I +should _like_ to." + +Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't +humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your +imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough." + +"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. +"But _I_ know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give +up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he +had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at +all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her +sister will have nothing to live on. And they _won't_ let themselves be +helped--any more than--than--_you_ will!" + +"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them. +Don't they know where their father is?" + +"No. But of course they must, now, before long." + +Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like +to have a peep into that man's soul." + +"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise. + +"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children--" + +"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he +always made me feel creepy." + +"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and +to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you +could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on +them, and forced them to beggar themselves--it would be a tremendous +situation." + +"But I shouldn't _like_ to see him at such a time. It seems to me, +that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell." + +There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt. +It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the +artistic point of view." + +"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be +about any such thing as that--" + +"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic +motive." + +"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not +know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, +but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the +letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you +want this?" + +"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, +"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want +the _true_ artistic point of view." + +"Is he a literary man?" + +"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the +_Events_--when it first came out? All illustrations?" + +"_That?_ I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps +he's your friend--" + +"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. +"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood +frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss +Hilary, though he _is_ a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good +material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has +only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his +generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five +minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't +keep still." + +"I should think she would detest him." + +"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's +affecting to witness their devotion--or it would be if it were not such +a bore." + +"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter. + + + + +XV. + + +Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found +himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the +back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had +the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he +pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, +though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were +never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they +liked Matt. + +Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. +"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked. + +"Yes. Where is Maxwell?" + +"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the +ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees. + +Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the +hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall. + +"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of +the good comradeship he felt for all living things. + +"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of +the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard." + +"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is." + +"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it." + +"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that +probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he +wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but +somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against +odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the +chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But +I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself." + +"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he +doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even +as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that." + +"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, +smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; +he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now." + +"He's older than I am!" said Louise. + +"He hasn't seen so much of the world." + +"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice +as we supposed. I should call him dangerous." + +"Oh, I shouldn't say _that_, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly +hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner." + +"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long +tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her +lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you +suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn. + +Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem +which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl +lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not +know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe +Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging +over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still +opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion +of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've +the time." + +"Well, after dinner," said Matt. + +Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long +slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully +folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the +language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he +usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper. + +"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The +_Events_ is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which +meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and +have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the +change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social +science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing +that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of +belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up +in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got +a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That +letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and +I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. +Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe--of course he +didn't!--but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't +believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business +with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his +investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with +him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am +not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a +detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over +the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends +of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but +I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, +and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, +while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I +shall need active help. + +"Now, I liked some things in that _Abstract_ article of yours; it was +snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. +It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that +could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So +I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into +the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My +idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we +have not only got to get _at_ him, but we have got to _get_ him; and get +him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral +suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect +will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you +believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and +spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously +work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a +great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have +our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, +whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the +fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in +all eternity. + +"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my +wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. _I want you, +old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you._ If this thing goes through, I +shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the _Events_. I +expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall +secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. +Maxwell, and don't you forget it. + +"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got +to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let +the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a +lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work +him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a +bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and +show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward +virtue." + + + + +XVI. + + +Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney +was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for _The Events_. +He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you +would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my +silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, +anyway." + +"Thank you," said Matt. "Then I suppose his proposal doesn't tempt you?" + +"Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I should like such an +adventure well enough, because it would give me a glimpse of life and +character that I should like to know something about. But the reporter +business and the detective business wouldn't attract me." + +"No, I should suppose not," said Matt. "What sort of fellow, personally, +is this--Pinney?" + +"Oh, he isn't bad. He is a regular type," said Maxwell, with tacit +enjoyment of the typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in +the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They +don't know much in the _Events_ office; but they do know Pinney. He's a +great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities +of private life than--Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn +his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very +domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby +now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always +advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most +harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite +soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make +copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a +newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't +the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that +I wanted to guard; and I thought Pinney was on the scent of it, I +shouldn't have any more scruple in setting my foot on him than I would +on that snake." + +A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had crept out of the +stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes +at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous +scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and +ground it into the earth. + +Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and writhing thing. "Ah, I +don't think I should have killed it!" + +"I should," said Maxwell. + +"Then you think one couldn't trust him?" + +"Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it +there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have +room to wriggle." + +They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the image of the tormented +snake in his mind; it somehow mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and +unconsciously softened him toward the reporter. + +"Would there be any harm," he asked, after a while, "in my acting on a +knowledge of this letter in behalf of Mr. Northwick's family?" + +"Not a bit," said Maxwell. "I make you perfectly free of it, as far as +I'm concerned; and it can't hurt Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. +_He_ wouldn't spare _you_." + +"I don't know," said Matt, "that I could justify myself in hurting him +on that ground. I shall be careful about him. I don't at all know that I +shall want to use it; but it has just struck me that perhaps--But I +don't know! I should have to talk with their attorney--I will see about +it! And I thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell." + +"Look here, Mr. Hilary!" said Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and +all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any +harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any +harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and +yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very elect. +Good heavens!" cried Maxwell, "if I could get such a character as +Pinney's into a story or a play, I wouldn't take odds from any man +living!" + +His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so that he waited more and +more impatiently for his mother's return, in order to act upon it. When +she did get back to the farm she could only report from the Northwicks +that she had said pretty much what she thought she would like to say to +Suzette concerning her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up +her property; but Matt inferred that she had at the same time been able +to infuse so much motherly comfort into her scolding that it had left +the girl consoled and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline that +their great distress was not knowing yet where their father was. +Apparently he thought that his published letter was sufficient +reassurance for the time being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at +him in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any appeal from +them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly believed, his mind had been warped by +his suffering--he must have suffered greatly--and he was not able to +reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hilary spoke of the +dignity and strength which both the sisters showed in their trial and +present stress. She praised Suzette, especially; she said her trouble +seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was really a noble girl, +and she had sent her love to Louise; they had both wished to be +remembered to every one. "Adeline, especially, wished to be remembered +to you, Matt; she said they should never forget your kindness." + +Matt got over to Hatboro' the next day, and went to see Putney, who +received him with some ironical politeness, when Matt said he had come +hoping to be useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks. + +"Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. Hilary. You were here on +a mission of that kind before. But may I ask why you think I should +believe you wish to be useful to them?" + +"Why?" + +"Yes. Your father is the president of the company Mr. Northwick had his +little embarrassment with, and the natural presumption would be that you +could not really be friendly toward his family." + +"But we _are_ friendly! All of us! My father would do them any service +in his power, consistent with his duty to--to--his business associates." + +"Ah, that's just the point. And you would all do anything you could for +them, consistent with your duty to him. That's perfectly +right--perfectly natural. But you must see that it doesn't form a ground +of common interest for us. I talked with you about the Miss Northwicks' +affairs the other day--too much, I think. But I can't to-day. I shall be +glad to converse with you on any other topic--discuss the ways of God to +man, or any little interest of that kind. But unless I can see my way +clearer to confidence between us in regard to my clients' affairs than I +do at present, I must avoid them." + +It was absurd; but in his high good-will toward Adeline, and in his +latent tenderness for Suzette, Matt was hurt by the lawyer's distrust, +somewhat as you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns over +your check and says you must bring some one to recognize you. It cost +Matt a pang; it took him a moment to own that Putney was right. Then he +said, "Of course, I must offer you proof somehow that I've come to you +in good faith. I don't know exactly how I shall be able to do it. Would +the assurance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. Michael's--" + +The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly; he smiled, and then he +said, "Brother Wade is a good man, and his words usually carry +conviction, but this is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary." He laughed, and +concluded earnestly, "You _must_ know that I can't talk with you on any +such authority. I couldn't talk with Mr. Wade himself." + +"No, no; of course not," Matt assented; and he took himself off +crestfallen, ashamed of his own short-sightedness. + +There was only one way out of the trouble, and now he blamed himself for +not having tried to take that way at the outset. He had justified +himself in shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he could +justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feeling compelled, as it were, +to take it. At least, now, he should not be acting from any selfish +impulse, and if there were anything unseemly in what he was going to do, +he should have no regrets on that score, even in the shame of failure. + + + + +XVII. + + +Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the Northwick place, or at +least as much time as would pass between walking and driving, but that +was because he was impatient, and his own going seemed faster to his +nerves than that of the swiftest horse could have seemed. At the crest +of the upland which divides Hatboro' from South Hatboro', and just +beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell's house, he met Sue Northwick; +she was walking quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put aside +her long, crape veil, and she came towards him with her proud face +framed in the black, and looking the paler for it; a little of her +yellow hair showed under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt was +afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of her. She seemed not to +know him at first, or rather not to realize that it was he; when she +did, a joyful light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed +over her visage; and "Mr. Hilary!" she said as simply and hospitably as +if their last parting had not been on terms of enmity that nothing could +clear up or explain away. + +He ran forward and caught her hand. "Oh, I am so glad," he said. "I was +going out to see you about something--very important; and I might have +missed you." + +"No. I was just coming to the doctor's, and then I was going back. My +sister isn't at all well, and I thought she'd better see the doctor." + +"It's nothing serious, I hope?" + +"Oh, no. I think she's a little worn out."' + +"I know!" said Matt, with intelligence, and nothing more was said +between them as to the cause or nature of Adeline's sickness. Matt asked +if he might go up the doctor's avenue with her, and they walked along +together under the mingling elm and maple tops, but he deferred the +matter he wished to speak of. They found a little girl playing in the +road near the house, and Sue asked, "Is your father at home, Idella?" + +"Mamma is at home," said the child. She ran forward, calling toward the +open doors and windows, "Mamma! Mamma! Here's a lady!" + +"It isn't their child," Sue explained. "It's the daughter of the +minister who was killed on the railroad, here, a year or two ago--a very +strange man, Mr. Peck." + +"I have heard Wade speak of him," said Matt. + +A handsome and very happy looking woman came to the door, and stilled +the little one's boisterous proclamation to the hoarse whisper of, "A +lady! A lady!" as she took her hand; but she did not rebuke or correct +her. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Morrell," said Suzette, with rather a haughty +distance; but Matt felt that she kept aloof with the pride of a person +who comes from an infected house, and will not put herself at the risk +of avoidance. "I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my sister. She isn't +well. Will you kindly ask him to call?" + +"I will send him as soon as he comes," said Mrs. Morrell, giving Matt +that glance of liking which no good woman could withhold. "Unless," she +added, "you would like to come in and wait for him." + +"Thank you, no," said Suzette. "I must go back to her. Good-by." + +"Good-by!" said Mrs. Morrell. + +Matt raised his hat and silently bowed; but as they turned away, he said +to Suzette, "What a happy face! What a lovely face! What a _good_ face!" + +"She is a very good woman," said the girl. "She has been very kind to +us. But so has everybody. I couldn't have believed it." In fact, it was +only the kindness of their neighbors that had come near the defaulter's +daughters; the harshness and the hate had kept away. + +"Why shouldn't they be kind?" Matt demanded, with his heart instantly in +his throat. "I can't imagine--at such a time--Don't you know that I love +you?" he entreated, as if that exactly followed; there was, perhaps, a +subtle spiritual sequence, transcending all order of logic in the +expression of his passion. + +She looked at him over her shoulder as he walked by her side, and said, +with neither surprise nor joy, "How can you say such a thing to me?" + +"Because it is true! Because I can't help it! Because I wish to be +everything to you, and I have to begin by saying that. But don't answer +me now; you need never answer me. I only wish you to use me as you would +use some one who loved you beyond anything on earth,--as freely as that, +and yet not be bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do that? I +mean, can you feel, 'This is my best friend, the truest friend that any +one can have, and I will let him do anything and everything he wishes +for me.' Can you do that,--say that?" + +"But how could I do that? I don't understand you!" she said, faintly. + +"Don't you? I am so glad you don't drive me from you--" + +"I? _You!_" + +"I was afraid--But now we can speak reasonably about it; I don't see why +people shouldn't. I know it's shocking to speak to you of such a thing +at such a time. It's dreadful; and yet I can't feel wrong to have done +it! No! If it's as sacred as it seems to me when I think of it, then it +couldn't be wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you; and I +want you some day for my wife. Yes! But don't answer that now! If you +never answer me, or if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me +be your true lover, while I can, and to do everything that your accepted +lover could, whether you ever look at me again or not. Couldn't you do +that?" + +"You know I couldn't," she answered, simply. + +"Couldn't you?" he asked, and he fell into a forlorn silence, as if he +could not say anything more. He forced her to take the word by asking, +"Then you are offended with me?" + +"How could I be?" + +"Oh--" + +"It's what any girl might be glad of--" + +"Oh, my--" + +"And I am not so silly as to think there can be a wrong time for it. If +there were, you would make it right, if you chose it. You couldn't do +anything I should think wrong. And I--I--love you, too--" + +"Suzette! Suzette!" he called wildly, as if she were a great way off. It +seemed to him his heart would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and +tried to seize her hand. + +She slipped by him, with a pathetic "Don't! But you know I never could +be your wife. You _know_ that." + +"I don't know it. Why shouldn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't bring my father's shame on my husband." + +"It wouldn't touch me, any more than it touches you!" + +"It would touch your father and mother--and Louise." + +"They all admire you and honor you. They think you're everything that's +true and grand." + +"Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to myself. I know how; +and I shall not give way. Don't think it!" + +"You will do what is right. I shall think that." + +"Don't praise me! I can't bear it." + +"But I love you, and how can I help praising you? And if you love me--" + +"I do. I do, with all my heart." She turned and gave him an impassioned +look from the height of her inapproachability. + +"Then I won't ask you to be my wife, Suzette! I know how you feel; I +won't be such a liar as to pretend I don't. And I will respect your +feeling, as the holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, we will be +engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall promise nothing but to +let me help you all I can, for our love's sake, and I will promise never +to speak to you of our love again. That shall be our secret--our +engagement. Will you promise?" + +"It will be hard for you," she said, with a pitying look, which perhaps +tried him as sorely as anything could. + +"Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you." + +They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, that he knew had +tears in them, "I promise." + +"And I promise, too," he said. + +She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, and he held its slim +fingers in his right a moment, and then let it drop. They both honestly +thought they had got the better of that which laughs from its +innumerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices to escape it. + +"And now," he said, "I want to talk to you about what brought me over +here to-day. I thought at first that I was only going to see your +lawyer." + + + + +XVIII. + + +Matt felt that he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking +to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. +Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust +established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was +any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater +forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing +as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both +insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the +fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for +otherwise unaccountable things. + +"It is what my sister has always said," Sue eagerly assented to his +suggestion of this theory. "I suppose it's what I've always believed, +too, somehow, or I couldn't have lived." + +"Yes; yes, it _must_ be so," Matt insisted. "But now the question is how +to reach him, and make some beginning of the end with him. I suppose +it's the suspense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister +down?" + +"Yes--that and what we ought to do about giving up the property. +We--quarrelled about that at first; we couldn't see it alike; but now +I've yielded; we've both yielded; and we don't know what to do." + +"We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in connection with +something I've just heard of." He told her of Pinney's scheme, and he +said, "We must see if we can't turn it to account." + +They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, but she began it +herself. She looked very old and frail, as she sat nervously rocking +herself in a corner of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, +anxious note. "What I think is, that now we know father is alive, we +oughtn't to do anything about the property without hearing from him. It +stands to reason, don't you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he would +know better than anybody else, what we ought to do. Any rate, I think we +ought to wait and consult with him about it, and see what he says. The +property belonged to mother in the first place, and he mightn't like to +have us part with it." + +"I don't think you need trouble about that, now, Miss Northwick," said +Matt. "Nothing need be done about the property at present." + +"But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what Sue thinks is right, +and to see it just in the light she does; and I've told her I would do +exactly as she said about it; but now she won't say; and so I think +we've got to wait and hear from father. Don't you?" + +"Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, till you hear from +him," said Matt. + +"I knew you would," said the old maid, "and if Sue will be ruled by me, +she'll see that it will all turn out right. I know father, and I know +he'll want to do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. He is +a person who could never bear to wrong any one out of a cent." + +"Well," said Sue, "we will do what Mr. Hilary says; and now, try not to +worry about it any more," she coaxed. + +"Oh, yes! It's well enough to say not to worry _now_, when my mind's got +going on it," said the old maid, querulously; she flung her weak frame +against the chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. "But +if you'd agreed with me in the first place, it wouldn't have come to +this. Now I'm all broken down, and I don't know _when_ I shall be well +again." + +It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted the cushion to her +sister's shoulders, while Adeline's tongue ran helplessly on. "You were +so headstrong and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were just +like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces against you, and you +wouldn't move." + +"I was wrong," said the proud girl, meekly. + +"I'm sure," Adeline whimpered, "I hate to make an exhibition before Mr. +Hilary, as much as any one, but I can't help it; no, I can't. My nerves +are _all_ gone." + +The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of doors, to leave her, for +the first few confidential moments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, +alone with the physician. There was a little sequestered space among the +avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward which he led the way, +but the girl would not sit down. She stood with her arms fallen at her +side, and looked him steadily in the face. + +"It's all true that she said of me. I set myself like a rock against +her. I have made her sick, and if she died, I should be her murderer!" + +He put his arms round her, and folded her to his heart. "Oh, my love, my +love, my love!" he lamented and exulted over her. + +She did not try to resist; she let her arms hang at her side; she said, +"Is _this_ the way we keep our word?--Already!" + +"Our word was made to be broken; we must have meant it so. I'm glad we +could break it so soon. Now I can truly help you; now that you are to be +my wife." + +She did not gainsay him, but she asked, "What will you think when you +know--you must have known that I used to care for some else; but he +never cared for me? It ought to make you despise me; it made me despise +myself! But it is true. I did care all the world for him, once. _Now_ +will you say--" + +"Now, more than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his +own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from +under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them in +mid-heaven. + +"Suzette!" Adeline's voice called from within. "Suzette! Where are you?" + +Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She came out again in a +little while, and said that the doctor thought Adeline had better go to +bed for a day or two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all +excitement. "We mustn't talk before her any more, and you mustn't stay +any longer." + +He accepted the authority she instinctively assumed over him, and found +his dismissal already of the order of things. He said, "Yes, I'll go at +once. But about--" + +She put a card into his hand. "You can see Mr. Putney, and whatever you +and he think best, will _be_ best. Haven't you been our good angel ever +since--Oh, I'm not half good enough for you, and I shouldn't be, even if +there were no stain--" + +"Stop!" he said; he caught her hand, and pulled her toward him. + +The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, "There's nothing to be +anxious about, but she really must have quiet. I'll send Mrs. Morrell +down to see you, after tea. She's quiet itself." + +Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again in parting. + +"Will you give me a lift, doctor, if you're going toward town?" + +"Get in," said the doctor. + +Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off together. + +Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read: "Mr. Putney: Please talk +to Mr. Hilary as you would to my sister or me." Suzette's printed name +served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket-book, and then he +said, "What sort of man is Mr. Putney, doctor?" + +"Mr. Putney," said the doctor, with a twinkle of his blue eyes, "is one +of those uncommon people who have enemies. He has a good many because +he's a man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But he's his own +worst enemy, because from time to time he gets drunk." + +"A character," said Matt. "Do you think he's a safe one? Doesn't his +getting drunk from time to time interfere with his usefulness?" + +"Well, of course," said the doctor. "It's bad for him; but I think it's +slowly getting better. Yes, decidedly. It's very extraordinary, but ever +since he's been in charge of the Miss Northwicks' interests--" + +"Yes; _that's_ what I was thinking of." + +"He's kept perfectly straight. It's as if the responsibilities had +steadied him." + +"But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge of one that's +gathering violence from its postponement," Matt suggested. + +"I think not," said the doctor after a moment. "But of course I can't +tell." + +"They trust him so implicitly," said Matt. + +"I know," said the doctor. "And I know that he's entirely devoted to +them. The fact is, Putney's a very dear friend of mine." + +"Oh, excuse me--" + +"No, no!" The doctor stayed Matt's apologies. "I understand just what +you mean. He disliked their father very much. He was principled against +him as a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the imaginations +of all the poor people about him who wanted to be like him--" + +"Oh, that's rather good," said Matt. + +"Do you think so?" asked the doctor, looking round at him. "Well! I +supposed you would be all the other way. Well! What I was saying was +that Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father's chief victims. +I think he was touched by their coming to him, and has pitied them. The +impression is that he's managed their affairs very well; I don't know +about such things; but I know he's managed them honorably; I would stake +my life on it; and I believe he'll hold out straight to the last. I +suppose," the doctor conjectured, at the end, "that they will try to get +at Northwick now, and arrange with his creditors for his return." + +"I don't mind telling you," said Matt, "that it's been tried and failed. +The State's attorney insists that he shall come back and stand his +trial, first of all." + +"Oh!" said the doctor. + +"Of course, that's right from the legal point of view. But in the +meantime, nobody knows where Mr. Northwick is." + +"I suppose," said the doctor, "it would have been better for him not to +have written that letter." + +"It's hard to say," Matt answered. "I thought so, too, at first. I +thought it was cowardly and selfish of him to take away his children's +superstition about his honesty. You knew that they held to that through +all?" + +"Most touching thing in the world," said the doctor, leaning forward to +push a fly off his horse with the limp point of his whip. "That poor old +maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it myself." + +"I don't know that I should hold him severely accountable. And I'm not +sure now that I should condemn him for writing that letter. It must have +been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say he _had_ to do it. +It's conceivable that if he had kept it on his mind any longer, his mind +would have given way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another +superstition--if it is a superstition. What do you think, doctor? Do you +believe that there was a mental twist in him?" + +"There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. What they do is so +senseless--so insane. I suppose that's the true theory of all crime. But +it won't do to act upon it, yet awhile." + +"No." + +The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of enjoyment at the +notion. "Above all, it won't do to let the defaulters act upon that +theory, and apply for admission to the insane asylums instead of taking +the express for Canada, when they're found out." + +"Oh, no," said Matt. He wondered at himself for being able to analyze +the offence of Suzette's father so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could +not relate the thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all; +he could only realize their kindred in her share of his suffering. + + + + +XIX. + + +Putney accepted Suzette's authorization of Matt with apparent +unconsciousness of anything but its immediate meaning, and they talked +Pinney's scheme intimately over together. In the end, it still remained +a question whether the energies of such an investigator could be +confined to the discovery of Northwick's whereabouts; whether his +newspaper instincts would not be too strong for any sense of personal +advantage that could be appealed to in him. They both believed that it +would not be long before Northwick followed up the publication of his +letter by some communication with his family. + +But time began to go by again, and Northwick made no further sign; the +flurry of activity which his letter had called out in the detectives +came to nothing. Their search was not very strenuous; Northwick's +creditors were of various minds as to the amount of money he had carried +away with him. Every one knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he +could not be molested there; and it seemed very improbable that he could +be persuaded to put himself within reach of the law. The law had no +terms to offer him, and there was really nothing to be done. + +Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when he held that they +must wait Northwick's motion. He professed himself willing to wait as +long as Northwick chose, though he thought they would not have to wait +long, and he contended for a theory of the man's whole performance which +he said he should like to have tested before a jury. + +Matt could not make out how much he really meant by saying that +Northwick could be defended very fairly on the ground of insanity; and +that he would enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common thing to +show that a murderer was insane; why not a defaulter? Tilted back in his +chair, with one leg over the corner of his table, and changing the +tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, the +lawyer outlined the argument which he said could be made very effective. +There was the fact to begin with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, +and had no need of more money when he began to speculate; Putney held +that this want of motive could be made a strong point; and that the +reckless, almost open, way in which Northwick used the company's money, +when he began to borrow, was proof in itself of unsound mind: apparently +he had no sense whatever of _meum_ and _tuum_, especially _tuum_. Then, +the total collapse of the man when he was found out; his flight without +an effort to retrieve himself, although his shortage was by no means +hopelessly vast, and could have been almost made up by skilful use of +the credit that Northwick could command, was another evidence of shaken +reason. But besides all this, there was his behavior since he left home. +He had been absent nearly five months, and in that time he had made no +attempt whatever to communicate with his family, although he must have +known that it was perfectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who +was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singularly attached to his +home; yet he had remained all that time in voluntary exile, and he had +left them in entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they +could accept the probability of his death by a horrible casualty. This +inversion of the natural character of a man was one of the most striking +phenomena of insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, +maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously with a jury. + +Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with +Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. +Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every +wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of the +fact. + +"I don't suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though I think I could make +out a strong case for Brother Northwick," said Putney. He seemed to +enter into it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of +Matt's uneasiness, and chose to torment him; but then apparently he +changed his mind, and dealt with other aspects of their common interest +so seriously and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with a +regret that he could not remove the last barrier between them, and tell +the lawyer that he concerned himself so anxiously in the affairs of that +wretched defaulter because his dearest hope was that the daughter of the +criminal would some day be his wife. + +But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to those who were +nearest him; and how to shape it in terms that would convey the fact and +yet hide the repulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased +him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome riddle. He +understood why his love for Suzette Northwick must be grievous to his +father and mother; how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in +some sort disastrous; and yet he felt that if there was anything more +sacred than another in the world for him, it was that love, he must be +true to it at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must begin by +being perfectly frank with those whom it would afflict, and confessing +to himself all its difficulties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of +dealing with his father; they were both men, and they could look at it +from the man's point of view. Besides, his father really cared little +what people would say; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not +change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see so much good in it +that he would be promptly and finally reconciled. + +But Matt knew that his mother was of another make, and that the blow +would be much harder for her to bear; his problem was how to lighten it. +Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten it, but let it +fall at once, and trust to her affection and good sense for the rest. +But when he found himself alone with her that night, he began by making +play and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in this perverse +effort that he was not aware of some such effort on her part, till she +suddenly dropped it, and said, "Matt, there is something I wish to speak +to you about--very seriously." + +His heart jumped into his throat, but he said "Well?" and she went on. + +"Louise tells me that you think of bringing this young man down to the +shore with you when you come to see us next week." + +"Maxwell? I thought the change might do him good; yes," said Matt, with +a cowardly joy in his escape from the worst he feared. He thought she +was going to speak to him of Suzette. + +She said, "I don't wish you to bring him. I don't wish Louise to see him +again after she leaves this place--ever again. She is fascinated with +him." + +"Fascinated?" + +"I can't call it anything else. I don't say that she's in love; but +there's no question but she's allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her +fancy to be taken; the two strongest things in her--in most girls. I +want to break it all up." + +"But do you think--" + +"I _know_. It isn't that she's with him at every moment, but that her +thoughts are with him when they're apart. He puzzles her; he piques her; +she's always talking and asking about him. It's their difference in +everything that does it. I don't mean to say that her heart is touched, +and I don't intend it shall be. So, you mustn't ask him to the shore +with you, and if you've asked him already, you must get out of it. If +you think he needs sea air, you can get him board at some of the +resorts. But not near us." She asked, in default of any response from +her son, "You _don't_ think, Matt, it would be well for the acquaintance +to go on?" + +"No, I don't mother; you're quite right as to that," said Matt, "if +you're not mistaken in supposing--" + +"I'm not; you may depend upon it. And I'm glad you can see the matter +from my point of view. It is all very well for you to have your queer +opinions, and even to live them. I think it's all ridiculous; but your +father and I both respect you for your sincerity, though your course has +been a great disappointment to us." + +"I know that, mother," said Matt, groaning in spirit to think how much +worse the disappointment he was meditating must be, and feeling himself +dishonest and cowardly, through and through. + +"But I feel sure," Mrs. Hilary went on, "that when it's a question of +your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, +and in the surroundings she had always been used to." + +"I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise's ideas," +said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface. + +"Ideas!" cried his mother. "She _has_ no ideas. She merely has impulses, +and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and +breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she +would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each +other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, +and all that; and I shouldn't at all mind his being poor. I never minded +Cyril Wade's being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because +he was one of ourselves; and this young man--Matt, you _can't_ pretend, +that with all his intellectual qualities, he's what one calls a +gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all +his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn't be; and +Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have +all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don't deny that he +has--" + +"He has some very serious faults," Matt interrupted. + +"We all have," said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. "But he might be a perfect +saint--a hero--a martyr, and if he wasn't what one calls a gentleman, +don't you see? We can't be frank about such things, here, because we +live in a republic; but--" + +"We get there, just the same," said Matt, with unwonted slang. + +"Yes," said his mother. "That is what I mean." + +"And you're quite right, as to the facts, mother." He got up, and began +to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were +sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting +to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber +where Maxwell was probably writing. "The self-made man can never be the +society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more +money, more virtue, but he's a kind of inferior, and he betrays his +inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he's successful, he's so +because he's been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of +life. That's one reason why I say that there oughtn't to _be_ any battle +of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages--I see that. He's +often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his +bread. He isn't Louise's social equal; I quite agree with you there, +mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in +danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. +I'm sorry for Maxwell, but I don't pity him, especially. He bears the +penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him +stand it! But there are others--weaker, unhappier--Mother! You haven't +asked me yet about--the Northwicks." Matt stopped in front of her chair, +and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his +acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her +perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She +was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more +and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure +to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an +expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts +and theories. + +"No," she said, "I expected to do that. You know I've seen them so very +lately, and with this about Louise on my mind--How are they? That poor +Adeline--I'm afraid it's killing her. Were you able to do anything for +them?" + +"Ah, I don't know," the young man sighed. "They have to suffer for their +misfortunes, too." + +"It seems to be the order of Providence," said Mrs. Hilary, with the +resignation of the philosophical spectator. + +"No!" Matt protested. "It's the disorder of improvidence. There's +nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. +Those women are perfectly innocent; they've only wished to do right, and +tried to do it; but they're under a ban the same as if they had shared +their father's guilt. They have no friends--" + +"Well, Matt," said his mother, with dignity, "I think you can hardly say +that. I'm sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to +reproach ourselves with. I think we've gone to the extreme to show our +good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don't like +your saying this!" + +"I beg your pardon. I certainly don't blame you, or Louise, or father. I +blame myself--for cowardice--for--for unworthiness in being afraid to +say--to tell you--Mother," he burst out suddenly, after a halt, "I've +asked Suzette Northwick to marry me." + +Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the +effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing +presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and +now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and +Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, +so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed +wholly incredible. + + + + +XX. + + +The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary +heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in +making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the +affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, +and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a +personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she +liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and +similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest +kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them +to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had +them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was +more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her +husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she +had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun +to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial +slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer +him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal +tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts +as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of +doctrine. + +"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?" + +"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his +mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know +that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected +her to refuse me." + +"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I +can't imagine it." + +"Can't imagine it? _I_ can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother +did not seem to notice his resentment. + +"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?" + +"I wish you to say everything, mother--all that you feel and +think--about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think--I +can't _let_ you think--that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed +me to suppose that my offer would be welcome." + +"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for +that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he +allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no +doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride." + +"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself. +But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I +know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it +can't be helped." + +"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always +imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur +of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people +who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons." + +"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted. + +"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family +connections that every one else has--" + +"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a +smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was +making. + +"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to +see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the +princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent +creature." + +Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly +reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to +overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled: + +"She is--she _is_--angelically!" + +"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a +good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more +to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about +their property, than for wishing to give it up." + +"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully. + +"But there, _there_ is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the +highest position. But her father! What will people say?" + +"Need we mind that, mother?" + +"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were--if he had +never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do +next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!" + +"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately. + +"Matt!" + +"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength +for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I +should be glad to stand by him!" + +"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel +about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer +anything more on that wretch's account?" + +"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my +engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass +him--compromise him, even--" + +"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know +best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or +mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable--" + +"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I +feel--" + +"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe +he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to +make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into +State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your +marriage." + +Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not +perceive so keenly. + +"I don't intend that, exactly." + +"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing +is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone." + +"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it +up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the +matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to +face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette +see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is +guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But +he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to +be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, +his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether +he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty--" + +"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious +than a self-confessed defaulter's." + +"No, I don't say--" + +"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty +with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, +though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very +differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, +nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father +was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him." + +Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world +enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She +will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of +what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way." + +"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose +it _is_ here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you +hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point +Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail +for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you +here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you +marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father +into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home." + +"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her +to run from it." + +"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, +if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he +dies. Good-night." + +Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had +sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved +one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not +rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in +dazzling illusions. + +The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; +he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew +how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his +father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt +instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more +unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother. + +But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all +his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of +meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had +done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said +it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he +said, "I shall have to take some action about it." + +"How, action?" + +"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes +known--and you wish it to be known, of course--" + +"Of course!" + +"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to +Northwick." + +"Northwick?" + +"As president of the Board, I'm _ex officio_ his enemy and persecutor. +It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that +after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It +wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board +altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a +cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty." + +"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt. + +"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise." + +"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position +so much." + +Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we +discovered Northwick's obliquities--excuse me!" + +Matt blushed. "Oh, I know he's oblique, as such things go." + +"In fact," his father resumed, "I shall be glad to be out of it, and I +don't think there'll be much opposition to my going out; I know that +there's a growing feeling against me in the Board. I _have_ tried to +carry water on both shoulders. I've made the effort honestly; but the +effect hasn't been good. I couldn't keep my heart out of it; from the +very first I pitied that poor devil's children so that I got him and +gave him all the chance I could." + +"That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like--" + +"It wasn't business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he +might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I'm +afraid this is what I've hoped, in spite of myself," said Hilary. + +This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. +He could only say, "I don't believe you've ever allowed that hope to +interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment." + +"No; but I've had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I've +had it. I've felt that; and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm not +ashamed of your choice, Matt; I'm proud of it. The thing gave me a shock +at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she's all +kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why +she hasn't done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don't believe +people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. +But if they do, they may do it, and be damned." + +Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, +upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure +that he exchanged with his son. + +"We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by +that--We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion +where he is than we have." + +"No; not the least," said Matt. "I think it's the uncertainty that's +preying upon Miss Northwick." + +"The man's behaving like a confounded lunatic," said Hilary. + +The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, "That's their lawyer's +theory of him--" + +"Oh, you've _seen_ him, have you? Odd chap." + +"Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after--after--at the request of +Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell's heard +of from a brother reporter," and Matt now unfolded Pinney's plan to his +father, and showed his letter. + +Hilary looked from it at his son. "You don't mean that this is the +blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the _Events_?" + +"Yes; the same fellow. But as to blackguard--" + +"Well, then, Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it +would be a kind of insult to those poor girls." + +"I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, I don't think he +knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself. Maxwell says he +wouldn't know. And besides, we can't help ourselves. If he doesn't go +for us, he will go for himself. We _must_ employ him. He's a species of +_condottiere_; we can buy his allegiance with his service: and we must +forego the sentimental objection. I've gone all over it, and that's the +only conclusion." + +Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help +themselves, that they could not do better. He asked, "And what did their +lawyer think of it?" + +"He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better +wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his +family." + +"I'm not so sure of that," said Hilary. "If this fellow is such a fellow +as you say, I don't see why we shouldn't make use of him at once." + +"Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?" said Matt. "I think it +would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily--" + +"Come back?" said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than +this. "Nonsense! And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I +mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out +just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in +order to make up his shortage." + +Matt now perceived the extent of his father's purpose, and on its plane +he honored it. + +"Father, you're splendid!" + +"Stuff! I'm in a corner. What else is there to do? What less could we +do? What's the money for, if it isn't to--" Hilary choked with the +emotion that filled him at the sight of his son's face. + +Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is +the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a +daughter's faith in him; for a son _knows_ whether his father is good or +not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son's opinion +than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary +valued his judgment as something ideal. + +After a moment he asked, "Can this fellow be got at?" + +"Oh, I imagine very readily." + +"What did Maxwell say about him, generally?" + +"Generally, that he's not at all a bad kind of fellow. He's a reporter +by nature, and he's a detective upon instinct. He's done some amateur +detective work, as many reporters do--according to Maxwell's account. +The two things run together--and he's very shrewd and capable in his +way. He's going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to +be worth his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion +is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of +control. He's a mixture, like everybody else. He's devotedly fond of his +wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air--" + +"My idea," Hilary interrupted, "would be not to wait for the Social +Science Convention, but to send this--" + +"Pinney." + +"Pinney at once. Will you see him?" + +"If you have made up your mind." + +"I've made up my mind. But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven's +sake bind him by all that's sacred--if there's anything sacred to +him--not to give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and offer him a +pension for his widow afterwards." + + + + +XXI. + + +Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, the prophecy in +amplitude of what her son might come to be if he did not carry the +activities of youth into his later life. She, for her part, was long +past such activities; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass grow +upon any path she had taken. She appointed the afternoon of the day +following her talk with Matt for leaving the farm and going to the +shore; Louise was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it best +to tell her why, when the girl came to say good-night, and to announce +that her packing was finished. + +"But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, mamma, all of a +sudden?" + +"We are in a hurry because--don't you really know, Louise?--because in +the crazy atmosphere of this house, one loses the sense of--of +proportion--of differences." + +"Aren't you rather--Emersonian, mamma?" + +"Do you think so, my dear? Matt's queer notions infect everybody; I +don't blame _you_, particularly; and the simple life he makes people +lead--by leading it himself, more than anything else--makes you think +that you could keep on living just as simply if you wished, everywhere." + +"It's very sweet--it's so restful," sighed the girl. "It makes you sick +of dinners and ashamed of dances." + +"But you must go back to them; you must go back to the world you belong +to; and you'd better not carry any queer habits back with you." + +"You _are_ rather sphinx-like, mamma! Such habits, for instance, as?" + +"As Mr. Maxwell." The girl's face changed; her mother had touched the +quick. She went on, looking steadily at her daughter, "You know he +wouldn't do, there." + +"No; he wouldn't," said Louise, promptly; so mournfully, though, that +her mother's heart relented. + +"I've seen that you've become interested in him, Louise; that your fancy +is excited; he stimulates your curiosity. I don't wonder at it! He _is_ +very interesting. He makes you feel his power more than any other young +man I've met. He charms your imagination even when he shocks your +taste." + +"Yes; all that," said Louise, desolately. + +"But he does shock your taste?" + +"Sometimes--not always." + +"Often enough, though, to make the difference that I'm afraid you'll +lose the sense of. Louise, I should be very sorry if I thought you were +at all--in love with that young man!" + +It seemed a question; Louise let her head droop, and answered with +another. "How should I know? He hasn't asked me." + +This vexed her mother. "Don't be trivial, don't be childish, my dear. +You don't need to be asked, though I'm exceedingly glad he _hasn't_ +asked you, for now you can get away with a good conscience." + +"I'm not sure yet that I want to get away," said the girl, dreamily. + +"Yes, you are, my dear!" her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do +at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money +enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little +nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be +different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in +as different a world from yours as if it were another planet--I want you +to think over all the girls you know--all the _people_ you know--and see +how many of them have married out of their own set, their own circle--we +might almost say, their own family. There isn't one!" + +"I've not said I wished to marry him, mamma." + +"No. But I wish you to realize just what it would be." + +"It would be something rather distinguished, if his dreams came true," +Louise suggested. + +"Well, of course," Mrs. Hilary admitted. She wished to be very, very +reasonable; very, very just; it was the only thing with a girl like +Louise; perhaps with any girl. "It would be distinguished, in a way. But +it wouldn't be distinguished in the society way; the only way you've +professed to care for. I know that we've always been an intellectual +community, and New-Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess +to think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We do invite them +somewhat, but I pass whole seasons without meeting them; and I don't +know that you could say that they are _of_ society, even when they are +_in_ it. If such a man has society connections, he's in society; but +he's there on account of his connections, not on account of his +achievements. This young man may become very distinguished, but he'll +always be rather queer; and he would put a society girl at odds with +society. His distinction would be public; it wouldn't be social." + +"Matt doesn't think society is worth minding," Louise said, casually. + +"But _you_ do," returned her mother. "And Matt says that a man of this +young man's traditions might mortify you before society people." + +"Did Matt say that?" Louise demanded, angrily. "I will _speak_ to Matt +about that! I should like to know what he means by it. I should like to +hear what he would say." + +"Very likely he would say that the society people were not worth +minding. You know his nonsense. If you agree with Matt, I've nothing +more to say, Louise; not a word. You can marry a mechanic or a +day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self-respect. I've only been +talking to you on the plane where I've always understood you wished to +be taken. But if you don't, then I can't help it. You must understand, +though, and understand distinctly, that you can't live on two levels; +the world won't let you. Either you must be in the world and of it +entirely; or you must discard its criterions, and form your own, and +hover about in a sort of Bohemian limbo on its outskirts; or you must +give it up altogether." Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where she had +been sitting, and said, "Now I'm going to bed. And I want you to think +this all carefully over, Louise. I don't blame you for it: and I wish +nothing but your good and happiness--yours and Matt's, both. But I must +say you've been pretty difficult children to provide for. Do you know +what Matt has been doing?" Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, but +she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last. + +"Something new about the Northwicks?" + +"Very decidedly--or about one of them. He's offered himself to Suzette." + +"How grand! How perfectly magnificent! Then she can give up her property +at once, and Matt can take care of her and Adeline both." + +"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a +capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to +live here on the farm with him." + +"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could +she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people +thought?" + +"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it +comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much +what her father had been--that is, society people wouldn't, _as_ society +people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and +she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be +talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived +down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage +of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us +off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some +farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say +'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is +indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must +confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged." + +"Why, _were_ you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along +that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy +would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And +then, Suzette _is_ a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's +just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of _course_ he would be taken with +her. I'm not a _bit_ surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the +world." + +"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has +seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. +Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year." + +Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad." + +"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing. + +"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in +chains, long enough to give away the bride?" + +"Louise!" said her mother. + +Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, +"for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's +money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no +matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society +man--" + +"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. +Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell--" + +"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite +rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, +which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. +She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the +light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated +it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the +moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor. + +After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell +waiting for her on the piazza. + +"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked. + +"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered. + +"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon +train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed +with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go +over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, +for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any +reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with +her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to +speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and +tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, +"Will you?" + +"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing." + +"Well, you ought to like this." + +"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating." + +They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture +and the pines. + +"Before I say it, you must _promise_ to take it in the right way," she +said. + +He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?" + +"Because--because I wish you to so much!" + +"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to +behave myself, under ordinary provocation?" + +"You may think the provocation is extraordinary." + +"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to +scramble after him. + +She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he +would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, +rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care +for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman +could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not +go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as +Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. +She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit +beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock +swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs +over them. + +"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence. + +"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for +you." + +"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when +we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?" + +"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that." + +"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were." + +"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?" + +"Because--because you seemed very worldly." + +"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with +his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I +take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm +going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss +Hilary." + +"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of +life Matt's trying to live is better?" + +"Your brother is the best man I ever knew--" + +"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!" + +"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means +business." + +"And can't you think--can't you wish--for anything better than the life +that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you +ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away +from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't +you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?" + +"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy +godmother?" asked Maxwell. + +"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. +"You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile. + +"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile +that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if +I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen +what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in +the summer." + +"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go +and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell"--she mechanically +gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to +the world again." + +"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going +to make of my patience, my docility--" + +She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. +Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house +with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the +hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength +for the battle of life as fast as you can." + +She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, +felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that +she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, +and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her +capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping +meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell +her his love. + +Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; +but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded. + + + + +PART THIRD. + + + + +I. + + +Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and +possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really +expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper +sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the +interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he +said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and +he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving +that his account of the defalcation in the _Events_ could have been +displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He +referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly +agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object. + +It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to +Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney +was disappointed in the _Events'_ people; they had not seen his proposed +excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an +enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to +invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. +This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another +calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some +minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with +gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who +attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a +partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, +though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for +it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and +which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most +valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she +did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she +believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she +would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were +lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long +run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that +she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to +look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That +would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better +than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much +good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay +quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that +was necessary. + +"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get +him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both +sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as +a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies--" + +"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked +thing! So dishonorable!" + +"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney. + +"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I _won't_. But +if you go as a detective, _go_ as a detective; and if you go as their +friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try +to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with +you; so there!" + +"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you +needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for +practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter +line. You won't object to that?" + +"No; I won't object to that." + +They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they +were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had +seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At +Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick +had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him +in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search +in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not +only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he +could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went +about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not +wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the +_Events_. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie +with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on +his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local +press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of +newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the +leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material +relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a +sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came +to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but +it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very +well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not +in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned +that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because +they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at +home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence +in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by +their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had +fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a +different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who +had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no +domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. +These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too +proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study +in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They +did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed +to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in +tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the +confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent +temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes +in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said +they had no statement to make. + +It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man +he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, +and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, +Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice +of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather +comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the +local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it +was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like +himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest +defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should +be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if +at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he +did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but +he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his +way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the _Events_ was posted. +This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone +unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he +came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such +friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, +that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to +feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them +behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing +what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an +English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down +the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in +compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by +any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the +baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting +into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the +calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through +the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as +soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, +and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, +and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole +enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had +said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means +of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it +the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he +could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish +view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and +nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only +right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the +Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; +good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which +he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and +thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only +to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found +it in lasting prosperity. + + + + +II. + + +These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left +his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number +of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had +already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not +playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale +straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal +speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were +Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was +national as well as what was individual in his talk. + +"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that +fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his +soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip +out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got +tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the +spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to +go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; +but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall +into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. +Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'" + +One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to +invest." + +"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of +thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old +Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and _he_ would +be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, +and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him." + +"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even +go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?" + +"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of +the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might +have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, +and the thousand-dollar bills--there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau +says--were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had +no faith in Oiseau--knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just +putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left +him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. +Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind +of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them +must bring money away with them, and there are business openings +everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here." + +"That _is_ odd," said the Canadian. + +"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't +know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, +except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the +only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was +a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes +to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply +rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a +safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's +business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been +able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and +he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just +_couldn't_. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend +to respect it. I can imagine just how the man _trembled_ to go into some +speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. +But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he +gets away with it, and he can't risk it." + +"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you +could have got at him," said the Canadian. + +"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock +in England." + +Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for +a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the +request as an overture to his acquaintance. + +"Brother Yank?" he suggested. + +"Boston." + +"Going over?" + +"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, +do you?" + +"No; I don't," said Markham. + +"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney. + +Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?" + +"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But +I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little +article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's +Pinney." + +"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, +going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But +don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine." + +"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a +much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the +American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing +soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely +conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, +and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and +address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was +about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half +of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then +he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission +concerning Northwick. + +"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he +asked. + +"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash +off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted +acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt +the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire +in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who +knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish +now--yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me--at Rimouski. You'd better +look him up." + +"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'll _live_ with him before +I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds." + +He had no trouble in finding Père Étienne, but after the first hopeful +encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found +him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at +Haha Bay. It became evident that Père Étienne took Pinney for a +detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for +Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he +was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison. + +Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's +caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his +authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's +acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their +parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after +several weeks, and Père Étienne knew where he was then living. But he +was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him +as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the +learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the +largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at +Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, +that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished +him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile. + +Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. André, +and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in +finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's +spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized +toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père +Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to +him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at +the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at +the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. +Northwick, I believe." + +It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since +Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when +he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was +suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much +so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face. + +"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of +taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and +of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. +Northwick, you won't open the letter." + +He handed him, not the letter which Père Étienne had given him, but the +letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he +recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter +tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched +it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of +the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," +he said, kindly, and turned away. + + + + +III. + + +When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still +holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a +kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint. + +"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If +it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me +at once?" + +"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than +Pinney had expected to find him. "But--are they well? Is it--bad news?" + +"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read +the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it +was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring +him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by +the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and +built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain +nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, +seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, +apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a +little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his +wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she +said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he +unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look +sick." + +"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the +bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he +would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it +but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety +of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that +he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy +only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done +so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would +write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that +for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better +and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him. + +When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter +open in his hand. + +"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that +had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the +hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully +established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant +to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people +ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city. + +Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of +the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to +take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir." + +Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting +mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to +speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how +Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, +and now he gave him the letter of Père Étienne, with a eulogy of the +priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how +Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly +recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the +postmark on his letter to the _Events_ that gave him the notion of going +to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect +of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him +ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and +he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." +The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, +"I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different +way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I +believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never +believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable +he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he +went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that +you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a +little." + +As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his +wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not +help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with +Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral +suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the +conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the +making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of +those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a +reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one +of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his +best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his +promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with +accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this +matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own. + +"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and +he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter +as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's +nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but +he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew +just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect +for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing +to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make +out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a +growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and +conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by +the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression +concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's +opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work +exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault +in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the +situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight +were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was +concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary +machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came +within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had +been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no +light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love +from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had +not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and +anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about +them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, +and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive +circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. +The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not +broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary +criticised for it, and he told Northwick so. + +"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he +consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he +expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and +talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added. + +Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the +fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't +know anything about the way they're living?" + +"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they +were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what +they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. +My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as +they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in +the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of +yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in +that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home." + +Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded. + +"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a +name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not +in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch +engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick--" + +"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real +name!" + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, +when he first takes another. It's natural." + +"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; +and then I was sick--They must have believed I was dead!" + +"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and +myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it +was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a +friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand +how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that +they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of +the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about +it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor +there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all +theories to the contrary--though _they_ must have been pretty well +exploded by your letter to the _Events_--and the question is what answer +are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some +word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I +won't. But if I was in your place, I know what _I_ should do." + +Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep +silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face +became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is +doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute +misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer +soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a +quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must +have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly +because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which +he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his +guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, +Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between +them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for +nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself +and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to +perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in +this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh. + +"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain +amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not +misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them." + +"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter +despair, and an openness that he had not shown before. + +Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, +Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, +joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you +believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in +good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your +daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!" + +"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation. + +"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got +to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you +just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. But _I_ think +you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for +nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all +you've brought with you,"--Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for +the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added--"and +more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when +it's needed. I can't say _how_ I know it, for I don't exactly _know_ how +I know it. But I do know it; and you know that _it's_ for you to take +the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and +where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, +with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred +to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again." + +Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought +upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as +it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, +bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, +with a kind of severity. + +"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate +it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped--" + +"Then I _was_ the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly +reflected-- + +"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a +place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you +can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, +I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four +hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, +I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for +you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your +distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a +candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's +this?" + +A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly +approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur." + +"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to +join me." + +"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They +had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was +an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, +what's this?" + +"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't +been here for several years." + +"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in +the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly +established in him. + +"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with +unresentful dignity. + +"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a +little English, after all the French you have around." + +"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father +Étienne." + +"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and +weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did +not resent the help offered him. + +"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he +explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal." + +"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney. + +"No," said Northwick, briefly. + + + + +IV. + + +Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the +local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more +freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up +toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque +details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under +attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney +with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he +took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him +that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be +both fortune and fame to him. + +They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. +"What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?" + +Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the +time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour +each day came and went. + +"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still +looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I +to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off +suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as +safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts +are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they +can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you +say?" + +Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you." + +"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your +traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much +interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a +great deal better,--get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little +nurse in _this_ world; and, as you _say_, you don't seem over and above +strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's +the _best_ baby! I've heard that child cry just _once_ since it was +born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of +tears; I believe we all do that; but _our_ baby finished up the whole +crying-business on that occasion." + +With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed +Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with +himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services +to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his +helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it +a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney +could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his +things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making +interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to +describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in +Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk +gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied +it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, +and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. +Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; +Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when +he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick +man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him +comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were +closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and +there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer +yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went +and came so softly Pinney could not hear it. + +Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a +prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of +him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. +They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and +Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed +up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when +it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. +He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home +for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked +Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing. + +Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so +deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost +the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a +fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, +with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine +emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be +fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life +he needed it. + +"And I don't believe but what it _could_ be fixed," he said. "I don't +know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the +friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume +there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those +things can always be appealed and continued and _nolle prossed_, and all +that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would +have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. +But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the +whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski +hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. +No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends +stood by you as they ought to,--I don't believe you'd get more than a +mere nominal sentence, if you got that." + +Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having +weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept +the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says +there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, +public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people +get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going +to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper +experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public +opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact +is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. +Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to +fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that +was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're +pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's +pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the +paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The +worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion +are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations +are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about +it, if you ain't too sleepy?" + +"I _am_ rather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience. + +"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. +My! It don't seem as I _was_ going back to my wife and baby. It seems +too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't +get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and +I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet." + +Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over +Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. +Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made +him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, +after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, +good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a +light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower +berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; +but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some +medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was +easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one +of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his +breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his +berth, and fell heavily asleep. + +He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be +lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying +down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled +the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick +lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned +courage to look, he found the berth empty. + +He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his +clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's +travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He +rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every +part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be +seen. + +He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said +since six o'clock. It was then eight. + +Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed +disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last +resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him +a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager. + +It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as +Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery. + +"Did you say anything about his going back?" + +"Why--in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully. + +"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, +and it's served you right." + +His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said +it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he +had better go out and get a doctor. + +It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could +be. + +"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was +putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior. + +"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, +coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, _do_ go for the doctor!" + + + + +V. + + +The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent +avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily +began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and +waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a +wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he +was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety +of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through +and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the +night. + +A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to +him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and +stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at +the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were +open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck +a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this +faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he +had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He +tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring +at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had +stolen out of it. + +One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he +stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the +change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and +he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every +detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, +and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the +desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the +doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and +hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the +stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself +that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic +expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was +nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search +of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might +well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of +risk to himself. + +He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of +the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured +face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last +night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it +gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze +his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper +die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, +and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns +showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the +coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment +through the window, and then vanished. + +Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some +homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his +confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps +sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind +reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come +and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the +action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer +before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; +it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless +charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against +him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family +one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of +them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door +without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and +looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the +bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair +which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him. + +It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a +lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his +children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and +he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone +again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to +light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window +he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on +the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man. + +"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, +anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, +'Lectra." + +Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known +Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman +beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. +Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the +least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, +especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and +deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a +knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for +mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did +not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for +a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick +felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. +Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be +dumned," said Elbridge. + +His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you +going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not +present; he stood so dumb and impassive. + +"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar +complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the +probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't +you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, +"lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, +and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, +anyhow?" + +Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him +carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his +stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, +anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this +because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to +another. + +His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the +piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to +speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he +stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to +make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, +"You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've +got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, +silently obeyed. + +"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence +which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I +blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be +afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you +against your will, you know." + +"Well, I _guess_ not," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. +"If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face +first. Bring him along, Elbridge." + +As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and +helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, +tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and +pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate. + +Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret +purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; +but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached +the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, +while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and +Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?" + +Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss +Northwick. If you're sure you're awake--" + +"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!" + +"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. +Don't call out--don't speak loud. There's somebody here--Come down, and +let him in." + +Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs +inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with +choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! +Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?" + +She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was +shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they +understood. + + + + +VI. + + +Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned +up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he +gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?" + +"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did +for them when their little boy died, if _he_ has, and I _guess_ he +hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?" + +"In the house. I was there." + +"But how did he know it?" + +"I had to have a light to see by." + +"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what I +_should_ have done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!" + +"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any +longer, when that fellow came with your letter." + +"Oh, he _found_ you," she cried, joyfully. "I _knew_ he would find you, +and I said so--Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a +cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it +always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise +Hilary bought it at the sale--I know she bought it--and gave it to me. +It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give +it up to the company." + +He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her +piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about +that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I--" + +"No! Of _course_ you didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you +suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, +through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I +knew you were just overwrought." + +Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came +closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll +of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always +kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of +it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay." + +"Oh, they _won't_ let you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the +court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will +put you in prison." + +Northwick mechanically put the money back. + +"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I +have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears. + +"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that +there's never been any disgrace on!" + +"What--what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps +overhead. + +"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, +breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and +called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, +come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be +hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; +the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you +be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton +comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we +don't mind it a bit, being alone here. I _did_ want to go into the +farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right +in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than +being afraid; but we haven't _been_ afraid; and the Newtons come all the +time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back--" She +stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, +as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, +lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to +let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what +Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and +glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary--oh, he's the +_best_ young man!--and I guess they're going to be married just as soon +as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came +down." + +Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not +appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll +speak to me?" + +"_Speak_ to you!" + +"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the +money, all but the little I've had to use--" + +There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in +the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she +flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and +kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with +a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not +simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them. + +Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over +her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their +lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity. + +Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed +to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She +praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for +advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that +last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She +praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for +doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the +Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and +she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there +never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she +wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. +He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and +Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!" + +"Go?" Adeline echoed. + +"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him. + +They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the +face. + +Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her +words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's _got_ to go! Oh, Suzette, +let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!" + +"It's prison _there_" said Northwick. "Let me stay!" + +"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What +makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as +anything, I do it." + +"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, +or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I +won't _let_ you think of me!" + +"But what would they say--Mr. Hilary say--if they sent father to +prison?" + +Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trust +_him_, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes +to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make +him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, +that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what +they please." + +Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, +as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when +Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking +about! Father, tell her you don't _wish_ to stay!" + +"I must go, Suzette; I had better go--" + +"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." +Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through +all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say +good-by! You've got to go, now--yes, you've _got_ to!--but it won't be +for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and +now we can write--be sure you write, father, when you get back there; +or, you'd better telegraph--and we can arrange--I know we can--for you +to come home, and stay home." + +"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured. + +"It seems as if he wanted to _kill_ me!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. +She took them away. "Well, _stay_, then!" she said. + +"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's +all right--all for the best. I'll go--" + +"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" +said Adeline. + +"Yes, I will." + +"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together +in Canada, as well as here." + +Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; +their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any +of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And--and I want +to get back into our place." + +He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final +conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline +would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way +of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to +be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my +goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start +from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What +shall we do?" + +"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going +back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, +and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in +words. + +"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in +the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come +for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away." + +"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!" + +Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the +dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black +Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light. + +"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's +head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the +carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, +anyway." + +"Oh, well, we _did_!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, +now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! +Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, +Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the +shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you--" + +"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped +up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going +to get the black colt's time out of the old mare." + +"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked. + + + + +VII. + + +On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some +anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was +safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for +himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He +had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in +helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put +himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the +stable after the horse was stolen. + +He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as +Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument +before breakfast. + +Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential +voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, +to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be +li'ble?" + +"Why?" asked Putney. + +"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately. + +"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought +his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and +you didn't let me know?" + +"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged. + +"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars +to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about +it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: +"Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place +myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!" + +Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was +besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours +he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had +learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, +though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held +out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat +hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that +those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him +soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she +was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if +he gave way now. + +When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew +that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and +made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he +boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the +Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, +and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards +the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the +mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, +as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were +both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit +reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for +some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to +serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and +since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking +for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not +because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly +to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests +of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked +over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some +virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a +sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of +exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so +strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own +usefulness. + +He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now +dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he +turned to go into the house. + +"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after +him. + +"Say?" + +"You know: about what I done." + +"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you +sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do." + +Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, +already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the +strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast +down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at +breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, +Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow." + + + + +VIII. + + +Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. +She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she +said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old +mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the +sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so +as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they +brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time +she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back +alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected +they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette +tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild +upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her +father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please +the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was +perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had +come over her. + +Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came +back. Then he walked to the lodge to report. + +"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him +before he could get a word out. + +"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on +his way back to Canady, again." + +"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his +home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! _Send_ for him! +Bring him _back_, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him +I said to come back! What are you standing there for?" + +She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her +bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for +the doctor. + +Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he +walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He +found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," +said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. +I shall come again later in the day." + +Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and +knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched +it. + +"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her +almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble +of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to +quiet her, broke in upon their talk. + +"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should +come back, no matter what happens?" + +"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said." + +"And you would not care if they put him in prison?" + +"I should care very much." + +"You would be ashamed of me!" + +"No! Never! What has it to do with you?" + +"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed +all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an +intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have +done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how +inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come +back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if +something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay +because--because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be +ashamed--" + +"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you +let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while +they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. +Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go +down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor +said; and if you try to stop me--" She came clattering down the stairs +in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed +her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. +Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask +him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes +back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can +take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as +long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll +say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. +Will you go?" + +"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" +Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child. + +"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm +perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my +mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what +Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father +back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs +some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon +as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want +Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon +as father is. Will you go?" + +"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to +Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to +save your father any further suffering, or yourself--" + +"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young +and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about." + +She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he +walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with +Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the +case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There +seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick +to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences +together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to +take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places +and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One +might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the +fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a +deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in +the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, +and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever +might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and +enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and +then, who should gainsay him? + +Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question +before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no +one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could +forbid him." + +"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have +a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest +thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that _true_ +love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our +impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone +knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the +higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it +won't satisfy?" + +For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of +arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house +that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them +to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt +explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic +demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be +done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding +any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; +if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, +but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You +know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily +submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the +greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined +life." + +"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and +perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the +divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God +for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could +not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure +the shame of his penalty with him--" + +"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned +to endure?" + +"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, +yourself, Matt; your family--" + +Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no +question of _me_. And if _they_ could not endure their portion,--the +mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar +people,--I should be ashamed of them." + +"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide +you!" added the priest. + +The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at +his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his +gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's +happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face. + +"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered +every point? Isn't there some chance--" + +Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he +began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, +and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his +escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?" + +"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He +supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been +willing to accept something short of it. + +"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have +kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved +off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we +could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." +Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that +he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered +with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel +sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show +it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to +convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be +a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a +retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges +against him." + +Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious +discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added +seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is +the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly +and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation +came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I +know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in +court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit +here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time +he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while +before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at +last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it +will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced +him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. +But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a +full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to +find him in Canada?" + +"He promised to let them know." + +"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. +The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts--the perfectly needless and +motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned--would be a +strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the +thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our +life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no +reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The +conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply +incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the +fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for +money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the +accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?" + +Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, +whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went +back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting +her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the +assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted +if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this +notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he +permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at +last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, +before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She +did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get +home without her; and Suzette must come, too. + + + + +IX. + + +The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at +Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, +he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the +troubled dream he had waked from. + +"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have _you_ been?" he +demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood. + +A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. +"I've been at home--at Hatboro'." + +"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference +he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at +him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could +only have it for a scoop--" + +Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and +fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney +listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest +thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it +leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent +of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and +given the whole thing away, _I_ can't ask anything for my services." + +Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had +worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested. + +"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked +Pinney. + +"Yes. Only--don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence. + +"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He +took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to +Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He +counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he +called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay +it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it." + +Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own +wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby +got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established +with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's +filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; +and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of +his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; +but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters +when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. +Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but +was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy +confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with +the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her +to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She +asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his +answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his +farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; +and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not +thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she +began to sink rapidly. + +In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had +dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come +back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. +The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, +if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about +it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know +there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he +ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside +her mother. + +The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last +words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, +whimpered too. + +"I believe he _could_ be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, +in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his +own room. + +The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in +Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, +but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a +course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his +ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he +suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he +could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. +Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business +view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great +tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both +took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms +round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good +care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his +hand at the last moment. + +Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after +these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his +own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had +with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's +forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she +proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her +undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for +a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved +of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to +Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, +recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and +expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. +If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told +heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, +it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert +might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of +Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct +in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances +which he really was. + +Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of +their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the +parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old +Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile +frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the +admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your +enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have +been more of a Roman father." + +"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper +to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over +to Rome for the winter." + +"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would +take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will +end by killing me." + + + + +X. + + +Northwick, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved +only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the +offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who +pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home +again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business +life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had +operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He +felt himself too old to begin life over; his energies were spent. Such +as he had been, he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in +familiar conditions; he had never been a man of business dash, and he +could not pick himself up and launch himself in a new career, as a man +of different make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps there had +been some lesion of the will in that fever of his at Haha Bay, which +disabled him from forming any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry +out any such purpose as he did form. Perhaps he was, in his +helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile moulds men to: a +thing of memories and hopes, without definite aims or plans. + +As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams +and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had +seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the +sentence of the law, and then go to live again in the place which, in +spite of his senses, he could only imagine clothed in the comfort and +state that had been stripped from it. Elbridge's talk, on the way to +West Hatboro', about the sale, and what had become of the horses and +cattle, and the plants, went for no more than the evidence of his own +eyes that they were all gone. He did not realize, except in the shocks +that the fact imparted at times, that death as well as disaster had +invaded his home. Adeline was, for the most part, still alive: in his +fond reveries she was present, and part of that home as she had always +been. + +He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that +compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; +he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence +that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some +punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were +all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest +could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it +was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should +seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt +guilty of wrong. + +It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were +so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came +and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems +certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home +a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be +suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought +that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in +accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might +be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first +met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation +of his action. + +In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the +chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness +to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted +him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney's +fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long +journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney's society. He liked +Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. +He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself +to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul +that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come +for him, and he was impatient till he came. + +Pinney started the instant he received Northwick's telegram, and met him +with an enthusiasm of congratulation. "Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a +great thing. It's the right thing, and it's the wise thing. It's going +to have a tremendous effect. I suppose," he added, a little tremulously, +"that you've thought it all thoroughly over?" + +"Yes; I'm prepared for the worst," said Northwick. + +"Oh, there won't be any _worst_," Pinney returned gayly. "There'll be +legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he +can't, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought +into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through +with the forms, and it'll be all over before anybody knows anything +about it. I'll see that there's no _interviewing_, and that there are no +reporters present. There'll probably be a brief announcement among the +cases in court; but there won't be anything painful. You needn't be +afraid. But what I'm anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to +bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn't urge you, and I won't; I know +I'm a little optimistic, and if you don't see this thing exactly +_couleur de rose_, don't you do it from anything _I_ say." Pinney +apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out. + +"I've looked it in the face," said Northwick. + +"And your friends know you're coming back?" + +"They expect me at any time. You can notify them." + +Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. "Well," he said, with a sort of +desperation, "then I don't see why we don't start at once." + +"Have you got your papers all right?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes," said Pinney, with a blush. "But you know," he added, +respectfully, "I can't touch you till we get over the line, Mr. +Northwick." + +"I understand that. Let me see your warrant." + +Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully +over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope +from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. "Here +is the money I brought with me." + +"Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every +confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, +and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean +business--" + +"I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it." + +Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six +hundred and forty." + +"That is right," said Northwick. "Now, another matter. Have you got +handcuffs?" + +"Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?" demanded Pinney. "I'd as +soon put them on my own father." + +"I want you to put them on _me_," said Northwick. "I intend to go back +as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate"--and he seemed to +indulge a question of the fact for the last time--"I want the atonement +to begin as soon as possible. If you haven't brought those things with +you, you'd better go out to the police station and get them, while I +attend to the tickets." + +"Oh, I needn't go," said Pinney, and his face burned. + +He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the +journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the +first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed +to have fallen. + +"By George!" said Pinney, when they started, "anybody to see us would +think _you_ were taking _me_ back." He was tenderly watchful of +Northwick's comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; +from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but +Northwick said he did not care to eat. + +They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper +on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked +Pinney what the next station was. + +Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession +of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept. + +"I haven't slept," said Northwick. "I suppose I'm rather excited. My +nerves seem disordered." + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly. + +They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, "What did you say +the next station was?" + +"I'll ask the brakeman." They could see the brakeman on the platform. +Pinney went out to him, and returned. "It's Wellwater, he says. We get +breakfast there." + +"Then we're over the line, now," said Northwick. + +"Why, yes," Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, +"You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I'm ready to meet it +half way." He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. "If I should happen +to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your +mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents +happen, and--" Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. "Or if +you don't feel quite able to travel--" + +"Let me see your warrant again," said Northwick. + +Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick +read it all once more. "I'm your prisoner," he said, returning the +paper. "You can put the handcuffs on me now." + +"No, no, Mr. Northwick!" Pinney pleaded. "I don't want to do that. I'm +not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn't necessary +between gentlemen." + +Northwick held out his wrists. "Put them on, please." + +"Oh, well, if I _must_!" protested Pinney. "But I _swear_ I won't lock +'em." He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were +noticing. "You can slip 'em off whenever you get tired of 'em." He +pushed Northwick's sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. +"Don't let people see the damned things, for God's sake!'" + +"That's good!" murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased +him. + +The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of +the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation +with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he +left him. His head had fallen on his breast. "Poor old fellow, he's +asleep," Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick's shoulder. +"I'll have to wake you here," he said. "We'll be in, now, in a minute." + +Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the +neck, and lifted his face. + +"Oh, my God! He's dead!" + +The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor. + + + + +XI. + + +After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and +it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given +up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her +father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had +made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the +sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering +from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she +was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her +own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case +forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his +last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had +committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his +creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself +to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was +dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty +in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather +a joyful relief. + +Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the +narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow +conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they +had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had +everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left +her incalculably rich. + +Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept +himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the +comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far +as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's +estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness +to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the +money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in +the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more +for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow +Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic +theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be +said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that +in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its +pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them. + +The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment +of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they +had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked +at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former +owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view +of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had +remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no +account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the +owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in +surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to +suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she +conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the +commonwealth. + +"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part +of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. +Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first +duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to +turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It +appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset +dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their +interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's +this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last +that he intended to do; and, of course, the _he_ in question is a _she_. +'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole +affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing, +beginning with my own. _I_ can look back to the time when I meant to +have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years, +waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected +somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to +justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's +counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of +grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I +wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send +him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off +on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a +little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and +against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The +directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign +from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand, +considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living, +and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope +of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the +money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. +Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William +B. Gerrish,--couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick +himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, +after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to +fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing +he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let +him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed _her_. +Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first +thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way +with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There +wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's +much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of--incident; and a pretty +common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances--like the rest of +us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. +Sometimes I think there _was_ nothing to Northwick, except what happened +to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we +fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, +and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where +it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I +suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few æons of eternal +punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate." + +"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested. + +"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and +seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll +split the difference with you and call it Mercy." + + + + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S NOVELS. + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + +AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. + +A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. + +THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. + +ANNIE KILBURN. + +APRIL HOPES. + + + + +BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. + + +AS WE WERE SAYING. + +With Portrait, and Illustrated by H.W. MCVICKAR and Others. + +So dainty and delightsome a little book may it be everybody's good hap +to possess.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +OUR ITALY. + +In this book are a little history, a little property, a few fascinating +statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and +abundant humor and charm--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD. + +A Novel. + +The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not +its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, +possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. + +A powerful picture of that phase of modern life in which unscrupulously +acquired capital is the chief agent.--_Boston Post._ + +STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, with Comments on Canada. + +Perhaps the most accurate and graphic account of these portions of the +country that has appeared, taken all in all.... A book most charming--a +book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly +prize.--_Boston Traveller._ + +THEIR PILGRIMAGE. + +Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of +the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities +peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are +as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of +the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the +brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he +mingles.--_Christian Union_, N. Y. + + + + +BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON. + + + JUPITER LIGHTS. + EAST ANGELS. + ANNE. + FOR THE MAJOR. + CASTLE NOWHERE. + RODMAN THE KEEPER. + +There is a certain bright cheerfulness in Miss Woolson's writing which +invests all her characters with lovable qualities.--_Jewish Advocate_, +N. Y. + +Miss Woolson is among our few successful writers of interesting magazine +stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of +her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local +life.--_Jewish Messenger_, N. Y. + +Constance Fentmore Woolson may easily become the novelist +laureate.--_Boston Globe._ + +Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and +conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the development of a +story is very remarkable.--_London Life._ + +Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox +novelist, but strikes a new and richly-loaded vein, which so far is all +her own; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh +sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant +task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to +her in very pleasant places; or she has, perhaps, within herself the +wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all she +writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of the +day--a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time.--_Whitehall Review_, +London. + + + + +BY MARY E. WILKINS. + + +A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. + +A HUMBLE ROMANCE, and Other Stories. + +Only an artistic hand could have written these stories, and they will +make delightful reading.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of those stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.--_Literary World_, +Boston. + +The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's +worth in every one of the delightful stories.--_Chicago Journal._ + +Miss Wilkins is a writer who has a gift for the rare art of creating the +short story which shall be a character study and a bit of graphic +picturing in one; and all who enjoy the bright and fascinating short +story will welcome this volume.--_Boston Traveller._ + +The author has the unusual gift of writing a short story which is +complete in itself, having a real beginning, a middle, and an end. The +volume is an excellent one.--_Observer_, N. Y. + +A gallery of striking studies in the humblest quarters of American +country life. No one has dealt with this kind of life better than Miss +Wilkins. Nowhere are there to be found such faithful, delicately drawn, +sympathetic, tenderly humorous pictures.--_N. Y. Tribune._ + +The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.--_Springfield Republican._ + +There is no attempt at fine writing or structural effect, but the tender +treatment of the sympathies, emotions, and passions of no very +extraordinary people gives to these little stories a pathos and human +feeling quite their own.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ + +The author has given us studies from real life which must be the result +of a lifetime of patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the +same kind of work so lovingly and so well.--_Christian Register_, +Boston. + + + + +By LEW. WALLACE + + +BEN-HUR: + +A TALE OF THE CHRIST. + +Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of +this romance does not often appear in works of notion.... Some of Mr. +Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes +described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of +an accomplished master of style.--_N. Y. Times._ + +Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at +the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and +brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we +witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman +galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the +tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman +youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of +exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing.--_N. Y. +Tribune._ + +It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and +there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., +to greatly strengthen the semblance.--_Boston Commonwealth._ + +"Ben-Hur" is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. +Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is +laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to +realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman +life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.--_Examiner_, N.Y. + +The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted +interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel and +romance.--_Boston Journal._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. 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D. Howells. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +--> + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quality of Mercy + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: September 27, 2009 [EBook #30108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUALITY OF MERCY *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from scans of public domain material +produced by Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + +<h1>THE QUALITY OF MERCY</h1> + +<h3>A NOVEL</h3> + +<h2>BY W. D. HOWELLS</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF "AN IMPERATIVE DUTY" "ANNIE KILBURN" "A HAZARD OF NEW +FORTUNES" ETC.</h3> + + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE<br /> +1892</h4> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#PART_FIRST">PART FIRST.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#I">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#II">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#III">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IV">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#V">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VI">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VII">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IX">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#X">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XI">XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XII">XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIII">XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIV">XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XV">XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVI">XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVII">XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIX">XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XX">XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXI">XXI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXII">XXII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIII">XXIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIV">XXIV.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_SECOND">PART SECOND.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#IB">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIB">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIIB">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IVB">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#VB">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIB">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIB">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIIB">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IXB">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XB">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIB">XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIIB">XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIIIB">XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIVB">XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVB">XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIB">XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIIB">XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XVIIIB">XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIXB">XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXB">XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XXIB">XXI.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_THIRD">PART THIRD.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#IC">I.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIC">II.</a><br /> +<a href="#IIIC">III.</a><br /> +<a href="#IVC">IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#VC">V.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIC">VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIC">VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#VIIIC">VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#IXC">IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#XC">X.</a><br /> +<a href="#XIC">XI.</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS">BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER">BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON">BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON.</a><br /> +<a href="#BY_MARY_E_WILKINS">BY MARY E. WILKINS.</a><br /> +<a href="#By_LEW_WALLACE">BY LEW. WALLACE</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE QUALITY OF MERCY.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick's man met him at the station with the cutter. The train was a +little late, and Elbridge was a little early; after a few moments of +formal waiting, he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the +street. As they walked they sent those quivers and thrills over their +thin coats which horses can give at will; they moved their heads up and +down, slowly and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; +the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous pace died back in +showers and falling drops of music. All the time Elbridge swore at them +affectionately, with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee +whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the halts he made at each +return to the station, he let his blasphemies bubble sociably from him +in response to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other +drivers who were waiting for the train; they had apparently no other +parlance. The drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon +were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every +other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the +merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless +maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as +he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the +professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them +with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally +speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and +skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against +counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore +a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold; +its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his +head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had +on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain +coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a +closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have +done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick +in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in +any other quality.</p> + +<p>"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked +the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been +half a mile off instead of half a rod.</p> + +<p>"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you —— —— old fool, +you?" asked Elbridge in his turn.</p> + +<p>The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the +sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and +said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any +way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full +readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him.</p> + +<p>No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most +remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same +train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed +to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, +and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While +Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove +away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the +highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line +cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid +crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment, +but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the +accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced +it and shone quivering through. The shortest days were past, but in the +first week of February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to a +finer perception there was the promise of release from the winter dark, +if not from the winter cold. It was not far from six o'clock when +Northwick mounted the southward rise of the street; it was still almost +light enough to read; and the little slender black figure of a man that +started up in the middle of the road, as if it had risen out of the +ground, had an even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in the +snow; the horses crouched back with a sudden recoil, as if he had struck +them back with his arm, and plunged the runners of the cutter into the +deeper snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight pause, long enough +to give Northwick a contemptuous glance, and then continued along the +road at a leisurely pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next +house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as Northwick had in +quieting his horses, and getting underway again. He said nothing, and +Northwick did not speak; Elbridge growled, "He's on one of his tears +again," and the horses dashed forward with a shriek of all their bells. +Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that +led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the +snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with the colt?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I +guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>"Better look after it."</p> + +<p>Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the cutter at the +flight of granite steps which rose to the ground-floor of his wooden +palace. Broad levels of piazza stretched away from the entrance under a +portico of that carpentry which so often passes with us for +architecture. In spite of the effect of organic flimsiness in every +wooden structure but a log cabin, or a fisherman's cottage shingled to +the ground, the house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There were +double windows on all round the piazzas; a mellow glow from the +incandescent electrics penetrated to the outer dusk from them; when the +door was opened to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together with +the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner.</p> + +<p>"Dinner is just served, sir," said the inside man, disposing of +Northwick's overcoat and hat on the hall table with respectful scruple.</p> + +<p>Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, and vaguely held his +hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes +below.</p> + +<p>"The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn't be home till the next +train," the man suggested, at the sound of voices from the dining-room.</p> + +<p>"They have some one with them?" Northwick asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. The rector, sir; Mr. Wade, sir."</p> + +<p>"I'll come down by and by," Northwick said, turning to the stairs. "Say +I had a late lunch before I left town."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said the man.</p> + +<p>Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed by the thickly-padded +thick carpet, and turned into the sort of study that opened out of his +bedroom. It had been his wife's parlor during the few years of her life +in the house which he had built for her, and which they had planned to +spend their old age in together. It faced southward, and looked out over +the greenhouses and the gardens, that stretched behind the house to the +bulk of woods, shutting out the stage-picturesqueness of the summer +settlement of South Hatboro'. She had herself put the rocking-chair in +the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not allowed it to be disturbed +there since her death. In an alcove at one side he had made a place for +the safe where he kept his papers; his wife had intended to keep their +silver in it, but she had been scared by the notion of having burglars +so close to them in the night, and had always left the silver in the +safe in the dining-room.</p> + +<p>She was all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had +seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, +hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the +painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and +had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive +of his own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. She was +really one of those hen-minded women, who are so common in all walks of +life, and are made up of only one aim at a time, and of manifold +anxieties at all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the days +of struggle in which she had joined it to Northwick's instinct for +getting; she lived and died in the hope, if not the belief, that she had +contributed to his prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of +valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively happy with her; since +her death, he had allowed her to return much into his thoughts, from +which her troublesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in +important matters had obliged him to push her while she lived. He often +had times when it seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, and +then he found he had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, +he realized that he missed her; but perhaps the wound was to habit +rather than affection. He now sat down in his swivel-chair and turned it +from the writing-desk which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and +looked up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intangible +presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest his soul against hers. +She was the only one who could have seen him in his wish to have not +been what he was; she would have denied it to his face, if he had told +her he was a thief; and as he meant to make himself more and more a +thief, her love would have eased the way by full acceptance of the +theories that ran along with his intentions and covered them with +pretences of necessity. He thought how even his own mother could not +have been so much comfort to him; she would have had the mercy, but she +would not have had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under all +his pretences, Northwick knew that it was not mercy which would help +him; but he wanted it, as we all want what is comfortable and bad for us +at times. With the performance and purpose of a thief in his heart, he +turned to the pictured face of his dead wife as his refuge from the face +of all living. It could not look at him as if he were a thief.</p> + +<p>The word so filled his mind that it seemed always about to slip from his +tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the +fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so +distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal +instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The +other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they +hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not +supplied them with the emotional materials for making one. The +president, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced upon +Northwick. "What does all this mean, sir? I'll tell you what it means. +It means that you're a thief, sir; the same as if you had picked my +pocket, or stolen my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall."</p> + +<p>He shook his clenched fist in Northwick's face, and seemed about to take +him by the throat. Afterwards he inclined more to mercy than the others; +it was he who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three days' +grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the directors the proof +that he had ample means, as he maintained, to meet the shortage in the +accounts. "I wish you well out of it, for your family's sake," he said +at parting; "but all the same, sir, you are a thief."</p> + +<p>He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when some others +meaninglessly shook hands with Northwick, at parting, as Northwick +himself might have shaken hands with another in his place; and he +brushed by him out of the door without looking at him. He came suddenly +back to say, "If it were a question of you alone, I would cheerfully +lose something more than you've robbed me of for the pleasure of seeing +you handcuffed in this room and led to jail through the street by a +constable. No honest man, no man who was not always a rogue at heart, +could have done what you've done; juggled with the books for years, and +bewitched the record so by your infernal craft, that it was never +suspected till now. You've given <i>mind</i> to your scoundrelly work, sir; +all the mind you had; for if you hadn't been so anxious to steal +successfully, you'd have given more mind to the use of your stealings. +You <i>may</i> have some of them left, but it looks as if you'd made ducks +and drakes of them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Employees' +Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe you're of about the intellectual +calibre of that sort of thief. I can't respect you even on your own +ground. But I'm willing to give you the chance you ask, for your +daughter's sake. She's been in and out of my house with my girl like one +of my own children, and I won't send her father to jail if I can help +it. Understand! I haven't any sentiment for <i>you</i>, Northwick. You're the +kind of rogue I'd like to see in a convict's jacket, learning to make +shoe-brushes. But you shall have your chance to go home and see if you +can pay up somehow, and you sha'n't be shadowed while you're at it. You +shall keep your outside to the world three days longer, you whited +sepulchre; but if you want to know, I think the best thing that could +happen to you on your way home would be a good railroad accident."</p> + +<p>The man's words and looks were burnt into Northwick's memory, which now +seemed to have the faculty of simultaneously reproducing them all. +Northwick remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, and the +swing of his large stomach, and just how it struck against the jamb as +he whirled a second time out of the door. The other directors, some of +them, stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their hats on, +and a sort of stunned aspect; some held their hats in their hands, and +looked down into them with a decorous absence of expression, as people +do at a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer's private +room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey rugs, leathern +arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors standing one on each side of the +hearth where a fire of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a +subdued and respectful flicker.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of the president, +Northwick might have come away from the meeting, after the exposure of +his defalcations, with an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he +felt curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing habit of his +mind enabled him to piece himself together again and resume his former +size and shape. This happened very quickly; he had conceived of himself +so long as a man employing funds in his charge in speculations sometimes +successful and sometimes not, but at all times secured by his personal +probity and reliability. He had in fact more than once restored all that +he had taken, and he had come to trust himself in the course of these +transactions as fully as he was trusted by the men who were ignorant of +his irregularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete confidence +they reposed in him, though he really felt it to be no more than his +due; he had always merited and received the confidence of men associated +with him in business, and he had come to regard the funds of the +corporation as practically his own. In the early days of his connection +with the company, it largely owed its prosperity to his wise and careful +management; one might say that it was not until the last, when he got so +badly caught by that drop in railroads, that he had felt anything wrong +in his convertible use of its money. It was an informality; he would not +have denied that, but it was merely an informality. Then his losses +suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the +first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which +the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he +considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties +which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other +operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he +dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, +especially of late, he easily satisfied them as to the nature of his +motives and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their attention to +these successful deals, and to the probability, the entire probability, +that he could be at any moment in a position to repay all he had +borrowed of the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long habit +of making himself these loans and returning them, he had come to have a +sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was +almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first +intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness +that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose +discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's +paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the +papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some +novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the +presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but +after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He +was like those fools, exactly like them, in what they had done, and in +the way of doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. All of +them had used others' money in speculation, expecting to replace it, and +then had not been able to replace it, and then had skipped, as the +newspapers said.</p> + +<p>Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, too, was a point +which he had not yet acknowledged to himself that he had decided. He +never had believed that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when +the president said he could wish him nothing better on his way home than +a good railroad accident, it flashed upon him that one of the three +alternatives before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill himself, +which was supposed to be the gentlemanly way out of his difficulties, +and would leave his family unstained by his crime; that matter had +sometimes been discussed in his presence, and every one had agreed that +it was the only thing for a gentleman to do after he had pilfered people +of money he could not pay back. There was something else that a man of +other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that was to stand his +trial for embezzlement, and take his punishment. Or a man, if he was +that kind of a man, could skip. The question with Northwick was whether +he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he would be that +kind of man; whether the skipping would make him that kind of man.</p> + +<p>The question was a cruel one for the self-respect which he had so +curiously kept intact. He had been respectable ever since he was born; +if he was born with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, +the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was all the stronger in +him, because his father had never had it; perhaps an hereditary trait +found expression in him after passing over one generation; perhaps an +antenatal influence formed him to that type. His mother was always +striving to keep the man she had married worthy of her choice in the +eyes of her neighbors; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had +been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine; in carrying on the +drug and book business of the village, he cared much more for the +literary than the pharmaceutical side of it; he liked to have a circle +of cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, and discuss +morals and religion with them; and one night, when denying the plenary +inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an +ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his +mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he +lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a +total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his +son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain +sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always +disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he +said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in +Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material +success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few +people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer +of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a +man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. +They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there +a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come +back to the village. But he had not. He had, as they had all heard, that +splendid summer place at Hatboro', where he spent his time when he was +not at his house in Boston; and when they verified the fact of his +immense prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who knew him +or knew about him, they were obscurely flattered by the fact; just as +many of us are proud of belonging to a nation in which we are enriched +by the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. They did not +blame Northwick for never coming to see his father, or for never having +him home on a visit; they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how +little he was fitted for the society of a man whose respectability, even +as it was reflected upon them, was so dazzling. Old Northwick had never +done anything for Milt; he had never even got along with him; the fellow +had left him, and made his own way; and the old man had no right to +talk; if Milt was ever of a mind to cut off his rations, the old man +would soon see.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>The local opinion scarcely did justice to old Northwick's imperfect +discharge of a father's duties; his critics could not have realized how +much some capacities, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, +contributed to that very effect of respectability which they revered. +The early range of books, the familiarity with the mere exterior of +literature, restricted as it was, helped Northwick later to pass for a +man of education, if not of reading, with men who were themselves less +read than educated. The people whom his ability threw him with in Boston +were all Harvard men, and they could not well conceive of an +acquaintance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was not college +bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which we carry through life, they knew +he was from the country, and they attributed him to a freshwater +college. They said, "You're a Dartmouth man, Northwick, I believe," or, +"I think you're from Williams," and when Northwick said no, they forgot +it, and thought that he was a Bowdoin man; the impression gradually +fixed itself that he was from one or other of those colleges. It was +believed in like manner, partly on account of his name, that he was from +one of those old ministerial families that you find up in the hills, +where the whole brood study Greek while they are sugaring off in the +spring; and that his own mother had fitted him for college. There was, +in fact, something clerical in Northwick's bearing; and it was felt by +some that he had studied for the ministry, but had gone into business to +help his family. The literary phase of the superstition concerning him +was humored by the library which formed such a striking feature of his +house in Boston, as well as his house in Hatboro'; at Hatboro' it was +really vast, and was so charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea +of a cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and rarely used +the drawing-room, which was much smaller, and was a gold and white +sanctuary on the north side of the house, only opened when there was a +large party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and went without +seeing it, and it remained shut up, as much a conjecture as the memory +of Northwick's wife. She was supposed to have been taken from him early, +to save him and his children from the mortifying consequences of one of +those romantic love-affairs in which a conscientious man had sacrificed +himself to a girl he was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that +his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she brought him, and upon +the stay her belief in him had always been. She was a church-member, as +such women usually are, but Northwick was really her religion; and as +there is nothing that does so much to sanctify a deity as the blind +devotion of its worshippers, Northwick was rendered at times worthy of +her faith by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her love; he +was not the kind of man whose affections are apt to wander, perhaps +because they were few and easily kept together; perhaps because he was +really principled against letting them go astray. He was not merely true +in a passive way, but he was constant in the more positive fashion. When +they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him +into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her +shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to +them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his +experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that +sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and +qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his +knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, +and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his +money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he +began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his +children; for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his wife's +memory, and apparently never imagined such a thing as marrying again.</p> + +<p>He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up into her pictured +face, and went to open the safe near the window. But he stopped in +stooping over to work the combination, and glanced out across his +shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the scene tempted him to +the window for what, all at once, he felt might be his last look, though +the next instant he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his +meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval and honorable +return. He must have been thinking there before the fire a long time, +for now the moon had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the +southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These were in a sort the +mechanism that transacted the life of his house, ministering to all its +necessities and pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long +stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was +the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy +mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a +ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and +dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the +hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; +in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the +coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the +dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's +business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than +half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial +consequence with regard to his place. It was really a farm in extent, +and it was mostly a grazing farm; his cattle were in the herd-books, and +he raised horses, which he would sell now and then to a friend; they +were so distinctly varied from the original stock as to form almost a +breed of themselves; they numbered scores in his stalls and pastures. +The whole group of the buildings was so great that it was like a sort of +communal village. In the silent moonlight Northwick looked at it as if +it were an expansion or extension of himself, so personally did it seem +to represent his tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of +his whole life; he realized that it would be like literally tearing +himself from it, when he should leave it. That would be the real pang; +his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded +himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate +himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he +was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the +meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was +that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the +full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a +perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must +go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,—all but +the furniture and pictures,—were the children's and could not be +touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and +cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he +must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could.</p> + +<p>After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If +he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed +himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else +of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the +forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself +possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to +be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the +very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it +to have gone with.</p> + +<p>Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his +reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a +duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured, +if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means +of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left +providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it +would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope +of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word +again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of +his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane +necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a +sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took +a turn about the room.</p> + +<p>He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised +him to find in himself, he was laboring under some strong inward stress, +and he must have relief from it if he was to carry this business +through. He threw up the window and stood with his hand on the sash, +quivering in the strong in-rush of the freezing air. But it strengthened +him, and when he put down the window after a few moments, his faintness +passed altogether. Still, he thought he would not go through that +business at once; there was time enough; he would see his girls and tell +them that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the morning.</p> + +<p>He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and his house-coat, and +went to the stair-landing outside, and listened to the voices in the +library below. He could hear only women's voices, and he inferred that +the young man who had been dining with his daughters was gone. He went +back into his bedroom, and looked at the face of an unmasked thief in +his glass. It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that he +looked; it was to see if he was pale or would seem ill to his children.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative +in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more +urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the +elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and +remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she +watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him +and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too; +and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin +and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking +frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of +circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her +parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she +preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight, +bony fingers she wore a good many rings.</p> + +<p>Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that +name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow +suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its +suggestion of coquettishness.</p> + +<p>She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he +stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she +seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to +leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her +so.</p> + +<p>"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down +before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where +the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of +the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the +face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, +he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the +morning, and I still have some things to put in shape."</p> + +<p>"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had +resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her +head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary +beauty, as a stranger might have had.</p> + +<p>"Trouble?" he echoed.</p> + +<p>"With the hands."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick, +rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question, +to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an +instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor +trouble.</p> + +<p>"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all +sorts of reports."</p> + +<p>"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said +Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground."</p> + +<p>"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the +girl, "without wearing your own life out about it."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to +acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well, +that—"</p> + +<p>He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter +said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought +to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge +told James that you almost drove over him, coming up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the +horses' feet."</p> + +<p>"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of +awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women +often feel.</p> + +<p>"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his +family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to +himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as +possible."</p> + +<p>Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the +inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard +him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home +would be a good railroad accident."</p> + +<p>He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't +for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of +others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a +very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest. +He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish +to judge him. He may have"—Northwick sighed again, and ended +vaguely—"his reasons."</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed. "How moderate you always are, papa! And how tolerant!"</p> + +<p>"I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he's got to deal with, and +that he's safe in abusing you all he likes," said Adeline. "But I don't +see how such respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell can +tolerate him. I've no patience with Dr. Morrell, or his wife, either. To +be sure, they tolerate Mrs. Wilmington, too."</p> + +<p>Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. "Well, I'm going to bed, +papa. If you'd wanted more of my society you ought to have come down +sooner. I suppose I sha'n't see you in the morning; so it's good-bye as +well as good-night. When will you be home?"</p> + +<p>"Not for some days, perhaps," said the unhappy man.</p> + +<p>"How doleful! Are you always so homesick when you go away?"</p> + +<p>"Not always; no."</p> + +<p>"Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you have to be gone a +great while, send for me, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; I will," said Northwick. The girl gave his head a hug, and +then glided out of the room. She stopped to throw him a kiss from the +door.</p> + +<p>"There!" said Adeline. "I didn't mean to let Mrs. Wilmington slip out; +she can't bear the name, and I <i>know</i> it drove her away. But you mustn't +let it worry you, father. I guess it's all going well, now."</p> + +<p>"What's going well?" Northwick asked, vaguely.</p> + +<p>"The Jack Wilmington business. I know she's really given him up at last; +and we can't be too thankful for that much, if it's no more. I don't +believe he's bad, for all the talk about him, but he's been weak, and +that's a thing she couldn't forgive in a man; she's so strong herself."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not think of Wilmington; he thought of himself, and in the +depths of his guilty soul, in those secret places underneath all his +pretences, where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered if his +child's strength would be against her forgiving his weakness. What we +greatly dread we most unquestioningly believe; and it did not occur to +him to ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary inference +from strength. He only knew himself to be miserably weak.</p> + +<p>He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his impassive, handsome +face turned toward his daughter as if he were going to speak to her. He +was a tall man, rather thin; he was clean shaven, except for the grayish +whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line with them; he had a +regular profile, which was more attractive than the expression of his +direct regard. He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and +looked into it as if he were reading his future in its lucid depths, and +then put it down again, with an effect of helplessness. When he spoke, +it was not in connection with what his daughter had been talking about. +He said almost dryly, "I think I will go up and look over some papers I +have to take with me, and then try to get a little sleep before I +start."</p> + +<p>"And when shall we expect you back?" asked his daughter, submissively +accepting his silence concerning her sister's love affairs. She knew +that it meant acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought best.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, exactly; I can't say, now. Good-night."</p> + +<p>To her surprise he came up and kissed her; his caresses were for Sue, +and she expected them no more than she invited them. "Why, father!" she +said in a pleased voice.</p> + +<p>"Let James pack the small bag for me, and send Elbridge to me in about +an hour," he said, as he went out into the hall.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this +age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of +the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. +He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which +would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or +would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. +The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the +fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the +reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but +evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This was the doctrine +which framed the man's intention if not his conduct of life, and +continued to shape it years after experience of the world, and +especially of the business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great +many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its +reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad +behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any +discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it +was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still +intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and +improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his +principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong +before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him.</p> + +<p>But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery +of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all +the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had +tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a +dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish +exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made +him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The +people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of +Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it +seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those +things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of +the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been +quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower +than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man. +Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it +was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression; +his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it +most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically +strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the +need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was +forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the +beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, +to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom +his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame +and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant +censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had +become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if +by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, impulses, fantasies, in +which he swiftly dreamed renunciation of escape. Then he knew that it +would not avail anything to remain; it would not avail anything even to +die; nothing could avail anything at once, but in the end, his going +would avail most. He must go; it would break the child's heart to face +his shame, and she must face it. He did not think of his eldest +daughter, except to think that the impending disaster could not affect +her so ruinously.</p> + +<p>"My God, my God!" he groaned, as he went up stairs. Adeline called from +the room he had left, "Did you speak, father?"</p> + +<p>He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience which becomes so active +in times of great moral obliquity, against telling a little lie, and +saying he had not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering +anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, of feeling himself +an old man forced from his home, and he had a blind reasonless +resentment of the behavior of the men who were driving him away, and +whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful of. But he threw +off this mood when he entered his room, and settled himself to business. +There was a good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for his +indefinite absence, and he used the same care in providing for some +minor contingencies in the company's affairs as in leaving instructions +to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. +Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among +those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality +of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general +conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an +interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts +which persisted at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have +been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives.</p> + +<p>The question was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it +appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful +of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it +further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of +money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider +that this money necessarily belonged to the company, any more than his +daughters' house and farm belonged to it. To be sure it was the fruit of +money he had borrowed or taken from the company and had used in an +enormously successful deal; but the company had not earned it, and in +driving him into a corner, in forcing him to make instant restitution of +all its involuntary loans, it was justifying him in withholding this +part of them. Northwick was a man of too much sense to reason explicitly +to this effect, but there was a sophistry, tacitly at work in him to +this effect, which made it possible for him to go on and steal more +where he had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the further +theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to +nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed +his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to +that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He +contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, +with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most +fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his +broker sent him that large check for his winnings in stocks the day +before, but Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the check, and +put the money in his safe instead of banking it. Now he could perceive a +leading in the whole matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant +defiance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. He seemed to +himself like a burglar, when he had locked the doors and pulled down the +curtains, and stood before the safe working the combination. He +trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a +slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the +same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out +in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: +"Hello! Who's there? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"It's me," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! Well! All right! Hold on, a minute! Ah—you can come back in +ten or fifteen minutes. I'm not quite ready for you, yet." Northwick +spoke the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood in a +frenzy of dismay; the more collected words were uttered from his desk, +where he ran to get his pistol. He did not know why he thought Elbridge +might try to force his way in; perhaps it was because any presence on +the outside of the door would have terrified him. He had time to +recognize that he was not afraid for the money, but that he was afraid +for himself in the act of taking it.</p> + +<p>Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, and said with a +little hesitation, "All right," and Northwick heard him tramp away, and +go down stairs.</p> + +<p>He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy door, whose +resistance helped him shake off his nervousness. Then he took the money +from the drawer where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the +inner pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He shut the +safe and locked it. The succession of these habitual acts calmed him +more and more, and after he had struck a match and kindled the fire on +his hearth, which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle again +to his preparations in writing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went +and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said, +carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got +to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a +strong smell of stable through the hot room.</p> + +<p>"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the +morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick +satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula; +and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the +management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his +pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said, +"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine. +You can drive me up with the black mare."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of +reluctance that did not escape Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Anything the matter?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well."</p> + +<p>"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for +him to feel.</p> + +<p>"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the +membranous crou—" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped +it down.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I <i>hope</i> not," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"He's comin' back again—he had to go off to another place—but I could +see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got +himself in hand again, and spoke clearly.</p> + +<p>Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow +thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the +earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must +telephone Simpson to come for me."</p> + +<p>"All right." Elbridge took himself away.</p> + +<p>Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the +coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the +windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck +a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have +been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought +he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people; +but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the +useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His +thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had +lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash +into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his +family ought to feel in the matter.</p> + +<p>No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found +his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. +The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his +arms thrown wildly about.</p> + +<p>"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the +mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him, +save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him +suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's +hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was +suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What +are you big, strong men good for, any—" She looked down at the child's +face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild +screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment.</p> + +<p>It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless +there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to +go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her +coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he +heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue.</p> + +<p>The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had +been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love +with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since +their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of +exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put +Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the +will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the +little boy who had just died.</p> + +<p>He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full +outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given +him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the +company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses +he must meet at such a time.</p> + +<p>Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out +to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have +liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case +Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this +possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of +Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells +before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his +bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, +but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of +that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out. +He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried +down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on +the threshold, and took his bag from him.</p> + +<p>"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?"</p> + +<p>"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and +gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I +thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for +the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the +broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the +booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin' +to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway."</p> + +<p>The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank +you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted +to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his +house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to +be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with +himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to +Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving +home—at such a time—when you've—"</p> + +<p>"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously +warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly +lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the +door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on +the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been +some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they +did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and +fixed him severely with his eye.</p> + +<p>"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?"</p> + +<p>Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing +look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I +didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses—"</p> + +<p>"It was the <span class="smcap">Law</span> you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with +a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! +You can't drive over the Law, <i>yet</i>—you haven't quite millions enough +for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of +asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it.</p> + +<p>Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set +off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and +Northwick went out and got aboard.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>The president of the Board, who had called Northwick a thief, and yet +had got him a chance to make himself an honest man, was awake at the +hour the defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a night. +He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to forget Northwick, but he +seemed to be eating and drinking him at every course. When he came home +toward eleven o'clock, he went to his library and sat down before the +fire. His wife had gone to bed, and his son and daughter were at a ball; +and he sat there alone, smoking impatiently.</p> + +<p>He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted anything that he might +go to bed; he need not sit up for the young people. Hilary had that kind +of consideration for servants, and he liked to practise it; he liked to +realize that he was practising it now, in a moment when every habit of +his life might very well yield to the great and varying anxieties which +beset him.</p> + +<p>He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from him to himself, as a +gentleman and a citizen, and he could not conceal from himself that he +had been mainly instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, when +he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. His ideals had not hitherto +stood in the way of his comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more +than they had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a kind far +above those which commercial honor permits a man to be content with. He +held himself bound, as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, +to have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He believed that +he owed it to the community to do nothing to lower its standards of +personal integrity and responsibility; and he distinguished himself by a +gratified consciousness from those people of chromo-morality, who held +all sorts of loose notions on such points. His name stood not merely for +so much money; many names stood for far more; but it meant reliability, +it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He really loved these things, +though, no doubt, he loved them less for their own sake than because +they were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect +everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they +should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value +that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him +not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort +of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even +more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he +once saw it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it.</p> + +<p>The error that he had committed in Northwick's case, if it was an error, +was one that presented peculiar difficulties, as every error in life +does; the errors love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade +as all sorts of things. There were moments when Hilary saw his mistake +so clearly that it seemed to him nothing less than the repayment of +Northwick's thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of +justice to his fellow-losers if Northwick ran away; and then again, it +looked like the act of wise mercy which it had appeared to him when he +was urging the Board to give the man a chance as the only thing which +they could hopefully do in the circumstances, as common sense, as +business. But it was now so obvious that a man like Northwick could and +would do nothing but run away if he were given the chance, that he +seemed to have been his accomplice when he used the force of his +personal character with them in Northwick's behalf. He was in a +ridiculous position, there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to +get out of it without much painful wear and tear of pride, of +self-respect.</p> + +<p>After a long time he looked at the clock, and found it still early for +the return of his young people. He was impatient to see his son, and to +get the situation in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. +He had already told him of the defalcation, and of what the Board had +decided to do with Northwick; but this was while he was still in the +glow of action, and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who came in +just as he was going out to dinner; it was before his cold fit came on.</p> + +<p>He had reached that time of life when a man likes to lay his troubles +before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, +Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, +different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger +and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, +and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, +but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. +The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go +into the mills at Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the +natural course. But one day he came home and told his father that he had +begun to have his doubts of the existing relations of labor and capital; +and until he could see his way clearer he would rather give up his +chance with the company. It was a keen disappointment to Hilary; he made +no concealment of that; but he did not quarrel with his son about it. He +robustly tolerated Matt's queer notions, not only because he was a +father who blindly doted on his children and behaved as if everything +they did was right, no matter if it put him in the wrong, but because he +chose to respect the fellow's principles, if those were his principles. +He had his own principles, and Matt should have his if he liked. He bore +entirely well the purpose of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he +wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry +on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and +published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the +expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale +of the little book as if it had cost him nothing.</p> + +<p>Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone +counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he +came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had +exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good for only a +certain degree of advance in opinion; few men are indefinitely +progressive; and Hilary had not caught on to the movement that was +carrying his son with it. But he understood how his son should be what +he was, and he loved him so much that he almost honored him for what he +called his balderdash about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at +last he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door below, and +he made lumbering haste down stairs to open and let the young people in. +He reached the door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness of +his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay welcome, and took +his daughter, all a fluff of soft silken and furry wraps, into his arms.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't kiss my nose!" she called out. "It'll freeze you to death, +papa! What in the world are you up, for? Anything the matter with +mamma?"</p> + +<p>"No. She was in bed when I came home; I thought I would sit up and ask +what sort of a time you'd had."</p> + +<p>"Did you ever know me to have a bad one? I had the best time in the +world. I danced every dance, and I enjoyed it just as much as if I had +'shut and been a Bud again.' But don't you know it's very bad for old +gentlemen to be up so late?"</p> + +<p>They were mounting the stairs, and when they reached the library, she +went in and poked her long-gloved hands well in over the fire on the +hearth while she lifted her eyes to the clock. "Oh, it isn't so very +late. Only five."</p> + +<p>"No, it's early," said her father with the security in a feeble joke +which none but fathers can feel with none but their grown-up daughters. +"It's full an hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his +cattle, if he were in Vardley." Hilary had given Matt the old family +place there; and he always liked to make a joke of his getting an honest +living by farming it.</p> + +<p>"Don't speak of that agricultural angel!" said the girl, putting her +draperies back with one hand and confining them with her elbow, so as to +give her other hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet she +dropped on both knees before it.</p> + +<p>"Was he nice?" asked the father, with confidence.</p> + +<p>"Nice! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all the dull girls he +talked with! When I think what a good time I should have with him as a +plain girl, if I were not his sister, I lose all patience." She glanced +up in her father's face, with all the strange charm of features that had +no regular beauty; and then, as she had to do whenever she remembered +them, she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture +in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed +flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with +as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She +was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; +though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery +red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. +She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself +tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect +neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't +have treated us better."</p> + +<p>"Do you hear that, Matt?" asked the father, as his son came in, after a +methodical and deliberate bestowal of his outer garments below; his +method and his deliberation were part of the joke of him in the family.</p> + +<p>"Complaining of me for making her walk home?" he asked in turn, with the +quiet which was another part of the joke. "I didn't suppose you'd give +me away, Louise."</p> + +<p>"I didn't; I knew I only had to wait and you would give yourself away," +said the girl.</p> + +<p>"Did he make you walk home?" said the father. "That's the reason your +hands are so cold."</p> + +<p>"They're not very cold—now; and if they were, I shouldn't mind it in +such a cause."</p> + +<p>"What cause?"</p> + +<p>"Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me. But +it was only three blocks, and I had my arctics." She moved a little away +toward the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where she must +have been scuffling them off under her skirts. "Ugh! But it's cold!" She +now stretched a satin slipper in toward the fire.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's a cold night; but you seem to have got home alive, and I +don't think you'll be the worse for it now, if you go to bed at once," +said her father.</p> + +<p>"Is that a hint?" she asked, with a dreamy appreciation of the warmth +through the toe of her slipper.</p> + +<p>"Not at all; we should be glad to have you sit up the whole night with +us."</p> + +<p>"Ah, now I know you're hinting. Is it business?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's business."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm just in the humor for business; I've had enough pleasure."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why Louise shouldn't stay and talk business with us, if she +likes. I think it's a pity to keep women out of it, as if it didn't +concern them," said the son. "Nine-tenths of the time it concerns them +more than it does men." He had a bright, friendly, philosophical smile +in saying this, and he stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a +patience which their father did not share. He stood something over six +feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame seemed starting out of the +dress-suit, which it appeared so little related to. His whole face was +handsome and regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a mouth of +singular sweetness.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I think so too, in the abstract," said the father. "If the +business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the +term—"</p> + +<p>"Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?" The girl put her +arms round her father's neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a +little way from her cloak and her arctics. "If you hadn't said it was +business, I should have been in bed long ago." Then, as if feeling her +father's eagerness to have her gone, she said, "Good night," and gave +him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said "Good night, Matt," and got +herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and +stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying +to follow her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>Louise's father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt +himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred +itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about +picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the +cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove +on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to +it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that +was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to +get sight of.</p> + +<p>"What in the devil is that?" he roared.</p> + +<p>"Louise's pin," said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place +for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went +and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, "It's about Northwick, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said his father, still furious from the pinprick. "I'm afraid the +miserable scoundrel is going to run away."</p> + +<p>"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly.</p> + +<p>"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might +have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at +the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all +sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him, +but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to +be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a +turnip, even by crushing the turnip."</p> + +<p>"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile.</p> + +<p>"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he +was a thief."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an +air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more.</p> + +<p>"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it +will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent +things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being +rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him +for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him +the chance he asked for."</p> + +<p>"It was really the only thing you could do."</p> + +<p>"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't +seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought +the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on +his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter +who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him +handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables."</p> + +<p>Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in +criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the +point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature."</p> + +<p>"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his +father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up +abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall, +for the time being."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't +shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on +you."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss +Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I +never quite saw what Louise found to like in her."</p> + +<p>"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently +offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a +person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I +suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like +Louise."</p> + +<p>Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that +affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to +all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get +married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to +be done with it."</p> + +<p>"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I never believed in it."</p> + +<p>"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem +the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because—"</p> + +<p>"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he +is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the +matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say +what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next +in the matter?"</p> + +<p>"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to +right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the +hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in +Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, +with a smile of sympathy:</p> + +<p>"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't +a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the +apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to +get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money +even when he's made it in large sums as our class do."</p> + +<p>The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with +himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's +rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may +fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself."</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you."</p> + +<p>"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his +own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to +me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than +I've done. I know I've made myself responsible, in a way, for +Northwick's getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give +him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won't change that fact +at all; but I can't conceal from myself that I half-expected him to +abuse it."</p> + +<p>He put this tentatively, and his son responded, "I suppose that +naturally inclines you to suppose he'll run away."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"But your supposition doesn't establish the fact."</p> + +<p>"No. But the question is whether it doesn't oblige me to act as if it +had; whether I oughtn't, if I've got this suspicion, to take some steps +at once to find out whether Northwick's really gone or not, and to mix +myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I +promised him he shouldn't be shadowed in any way till his three days +were over."</p> + +<p>"It's a nice question," said Matt, "or rather, it's a nasty one. Still, +you've only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your +fears before. I don't think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry +one into the catchpole business." Matt laughed again with that fondness +he had for his father. "Though as for any peculiar disgrace in +catchpoles as catchpoles, I don't see it. They're a necessary part of +the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I +don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as +respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who +puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is +one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in +every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's +all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in +the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board +know that you have your misgivings?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, "I +felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to <i>him</i>! And I wanted +to talk with you."</p> + +<p>"It was just as well to let them have their night's rest. There isn't +really anything to be done." Matt rose from the low chair where he had +been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. "If the man was +going he's gone past recall by this time; and if he isn't gone, there's +no immediate cause for anxiety."</p> + +<p>"Then you wouldn't do anything at present?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly shouldn't. What could you do?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"Good night," the son said, suggestively, "I suppose there isn't really +anything more?"</p> + +<p>"No, what could there be? You had better go to bed."</p> + +<p>"And you, too, I hope, father."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall go to bed—as a matter of form."</p> + +<p>The son laughed. "I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go +to sleep, too. I shall."</p> + +<p>"I sha'n't sleep," said the father, bitterly. "When things like this +happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them."</p> + +<p>"Well, I dare say Northwick's doing that."</p> + +<p>"I doubt it," said Hilary. "I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing +slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this +time."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he's only going to a +larger prison if he's going into exile. He may be on the Montreal +express, but I guess he isn't sleeping," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Yes," his father admitted. "Poor devil! He'd much better be dead."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that +day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister +that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, +but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch +with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o'clock +train.</p> + +<p>She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four +balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had +promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night.</p> + +<p>"I don't see how she lives through it," said Adeline. "And at her age, +it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud."</p> + +<p>"Louise is only twenty-three," said Suzette. "If she were married, she +would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older."</p> + +<p>"But she isn't married, and that makes all the difference."</p> + +<p>"Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of +his being with them."</p> + +<p>"Has he given up his farming? It's about time."</p> + +<p>"No; not at all, I believe. She says he's in Boston merely as a matter +of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to +go with her."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Adeline, "I should think he would want to be of <i>some</i> use +in the world; and if he won't help his father in business, he had better +help his mother in society."</p> + +<p>Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if +she had not heeded, "I think I will give a little dance here, next week. +Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We +made out the list—just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, +and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert +will matronize them; it'll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls +are concerned, but I've asked two or three buds; and some of the young +married people. It will be very pleasant, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>"Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?"</p> + +<p>Suzette smiled. "I dare say he would. I wasn't thinking of him in making +it, but I don't see why he shouldn't look in."</p> + +<p>"He might come to the supper," Adeline mused aloud, "if it isn't one of +his church days. I never can keep the run of them."</p> + +<p>"We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be +perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could +make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have +been certain to object if we had made any mistake."</p> + +<p>"I'm very glad," said Adeline. "I know father will be glad to have Mr. +Wade here. He's taken a great fancy to him."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Wade's very nice," said Suzette, coolly. "I shouldn't have liked to +have it without him."</p> + +<p>They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at +larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her +escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and +from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and +then went on talking.</p> + +<p>"Shall you have any of the South Hatboro' people?" her sister asked.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little +smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; +or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack +Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she +went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he +were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now +to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise +suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a +quarrel."</p> + +<p>Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always +afraid you'll get—"</p> + +<p>"To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly +dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in +the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, +"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put +an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't +believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the +point."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you +needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; +and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him +here."</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see +me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him +at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his +explanations."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak."</p> + +<p>"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his +weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and +didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be +explained."</p> + +<p>"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the +world, after the way he's treated you!"</p> + +<p>"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in +love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other +things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?"</p> + +<p>She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the +chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet +nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second +husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a +rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and +returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and +undying thing is a slight. That lasts—with <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from +the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant +it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced—"</p> + +<p>Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, <i>you're</i> in love with him! +Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at +the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each +rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, +across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said, +with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have +to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb—as +good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, +come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!"</p> + +<p>She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. +"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had +reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little +boy—"</p> + +<p>"Well, that's <i>like</i> you, Adeline! To bring <i>that</i> up! <i>No</i>, indeed! +It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he <i>isn't</i> quite one of the +family. What an idea!"</p> + +<p>"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise.</p> + +<p>"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl, +with some relenting. "When is it to be?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's +selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts +or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them +you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will +understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly +fib like this seemed no harm to her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the +coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead +child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it +wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me; +that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him +back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said, +and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work +to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live."</p> + +<p>The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one +lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's +watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she +can't seem to sense the comfort of it."</p> + +<p>"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon +her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more +care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you +talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and +nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up +against death, but I don't want any <i>comfort</i>. You want to see Elbridge, +Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep +about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have +to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such things to each other +as women do, big fools as they be!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity for Mrs. Newton and +expressed that she was hardly accountable for what she was saying.</p> + +<p>"He used to complain of me for lettin' Arty get out into the stable +among the horses; but I guess he won't be troubled that way <i>much</i> +more," said the mother; and then something in Miss Northwick's face +seemed to stay her in her wild talk; and she asked, "Want I should call +him for you?"</p> + +<p>"No, no," said Adeline, "I'll go right through to him, myself." She knew +the way from the coachman's dwelling into the stable, and she found +Elbridge oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged attention to +the work, which he hardly turned from to look at her. "Elbridge," she +asked, "did you drive father to the depot yesterday morning?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am, I did."</p> + +<p>"When did he say he would be back?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he said he couldn't say, exactly. But I understood in a day or +two."</p> + +<p>"Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset?"</p> + +<p>"No, ma'am, I didn't hear him say as he did."</p> + +<p>"Then it's a mistake; and of course I knew it was a mistake. There's +more than one Northwick in the world, I presume." She laughed a little +hysterically; she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with the +nervous tremor that passed over her.</p> + +<p>"Why, what is it, Miss Northwick?" said Elbridge with a perception of +the trouble in her voice through the trouble in his own heart. He +stopped pulling the greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned +towards her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing. There's been an accident on the Union and Dominion +Railroad; and of course it's a mistake."</p> + +<p>She handed him the paper, folded to the column which she wished to show, +and he took it between two finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as +possible, and stood reading it. She went on saying, "He wouldn't be on +the train if he was at Ponkwasset; I got the paper when I first came +down stairs, but I didn't happen to read the account till just now; and +then I thought I'd run out and see what father said to you about where +he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, too, and—" Her +voice growing more and more wistful, died away in the fascination of +watching the fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half-column +of scare-heads, and then followed down to the meagre details of the +dispatch eked out with double-leading to cover space.</p> + +<p>It appeared that the Northern express had reached Wellwater Junction, on +the Union and Dominion line, several hours behind time, and after the +usual stop there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the United +States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just after leaving the +Junction, run off the track. "The deadly car stove got in its work" on +the wreck, and many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the +parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list of the killed and +wounded, but several bodies were identified, and among the names of +passengers in the Pullman that of T. W. Northwick was reported, from a +telegram received by the conductor at Wellwater asking to have a seat +reserved from that point to Montreal.</p> + +<p>"It ain't him, I know it ain't, Miss Northwick," said Elbridge. He +offered to give her the paper, but took another look at it before he +finally yielded it. "There's lots of folks of the same name, I don't +care what it is, and the initials ain't the ones."</p> + +<p>"No," she said, doubtfully, "but I didn't like the last name being the +same."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't help that; and as long as it ain't the initials, and +you know your father is safe and sound at the Mills, you don't want to +worry."</p> + +<p>"No," said Adeline. "You're sure he told you he was going to the Mills?"</p> + +<p>"Why, didn't he tell <i>you</i> he was? I don't recollect just what he said. +But he told me about that note he left for me, and that had the money in +it for the fun'al—" Elbridge stopped for a moment before he added, "He +said he'd telegraph just which train he wanted me to meet him when he +was comin' back.... Why, dumn it! I guess I <i>must</i> be crazy. We can +settle it in half an hour's time—or an hour or two at the outside—and +no need to worry about it. Telegraph to the Mills and find out whether +he's there or not."</p> + +<p>He dropped his harness, and went to the telephone and called up the +Western Union operator at the station. He had the usual telephonic +contention with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but he got her +at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset Falls, asking whether +Northwick was at the Mills.</p> + +<p>"There!" he said, "I don't believe but what that'll fix it all right. +And I'll bring you in the answer myself, when it comes, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, when—"</p> + +<p>"I guess you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it +wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be +a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, +and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for +him, interpreted them aright.</p> + +<p>She stayed to add, "I don't know what he could have been on that train +for, any way, do you?"</p> + +<p>"No, and he wa'n't on it; you'll find that out."</p> + +<p>"It'll be very provoking," she said, forecasting the minor trouble of +the greater trouble's failure. "Everybody will wonder if it isn't +father, and we shall have to tell them it isn't."</p> + +<p>"Well, that won't be so bad as havin' to tell 'em it is," said Elbridge, +getting back for the moment to his native dryness.</p> + +<p>"That's true," Adeline admitted. "Don't speak to anybody about it till +you hear." She knew from his making no answer that he would obey her, +and she hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the +intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world.</p> + +<p>She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her day in Boston and +the excitement of their talk at night, which she suspected had prevented +the girl from sleeping early. Elbridge's sympathetic incredulity had +comforted her, if it had not convinced her, and she possessed herself in +such patience as she could till the answer should come from the mills. +If her father were there, then it would be all right; and in the +meantime she found some excuses for not believing the worst she feared. +There was no reason in the world why he should be on that train; there +was no reason why she should identify him with that T. W. Northwick in +the burnt-up car; that was not his name, and that was not the place +where he would have been.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between +Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an +answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony +and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could +have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether +misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned +down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain +told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended, +she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home +with her.</p> + +<p>"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her +troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning +and began to cry.</p> + +<p>"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and +with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought +it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel +for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow +to her—so sudden, and her only child."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have—have you seen +the—paper this morning?"</p> + +<p>"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I +thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?"</p> + +<p>"No, nothing. Only—only—" Adeline had not been able to separate +herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage +pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly, +but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you +see—see—" She stopped, and handed him the paper.</p> + +<p>He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her +trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of +reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the +train?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part +about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't +have been on the train at all. Only the name—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he +would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to +be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of +possibility.</p> + +<p>"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the +Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there +must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before +the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep +round after him when—"</p> + +<p>"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news +is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station, +and find out whether any answer has been—"</p> + +<p>"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will +telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you +haven't something to do, and stay with us till we—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the +accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the +horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts +with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been +on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability.</p> + +<p>Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby, +which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got +into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once; +"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at +Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some +hosses there—"</p> + +<p>"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply.</p> + +<p>Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well, +no, he hain't been, yet—"</p> + +<p>Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks.</p> + +<p>At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to +the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where +this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the +world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight +of Elbridge lifting something from the floor.</p> + +<p>"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a +little faint, and—"</p> + +<p>"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and +setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll +get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping +over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air +began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, +"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline +answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is. +Let us get her into the library on the lounge."</p> + +<p>She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried +Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly +about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come +back.</p> + +<p>Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When +she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the +clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her."</p> + +<p>"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle +eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and +physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the +morning paper, and among the passengers—the missing—was one of the +name of Northwick—"</p> + +<p>"But father is at the Mills!"</p> + +<p>"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure—and word +has come that he—isn't there."</p> + +<p>"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty +incredulity.</p> + +<p>Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving +it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to +one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while +her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came +from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity.</p> + +<p>"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the +train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at +this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and +came back to the other two.</p> + +<p>"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable—"</p> + +<p>"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at +the Mills?"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette, +scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought."</p> + +<p>"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there."</p> + +<p>"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a +little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries +there; and—"</p> + +<p>"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going +farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in +the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see +the paper first?"</p> + +<p>"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly.</p> + +<p>"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?"</p> + +<p>Adeline's silence made confession.</p> + +<p>"What I think is, we'd better all have <i>lunch</i>," said Suzette, and she +went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't +you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who +answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see +Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when +the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will +drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall +not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be +no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad +guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and +came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe +he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for +the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last +night. The express has to come up from Boston—" She stopped and ran +over the time-table of the route. "Well, he <i>could</i> get a connecting +train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did."</p> + +<p>She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then +suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready +yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and +I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father +was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before +yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph +to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home, +Adeline, till I know something definite."</p> + +<p>The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that +betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste, +and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, +untasted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till +she comes back!" she entreated.</p> + +<p>Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a +harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said.</p> + +<p>She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they +heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then +came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away.</p> + +<p>Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as +one can in the suspense of a strong emotion.</p> + +<p>"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he +were a little abashed by it.</p> + +<p>"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that +she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every +minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd—I mustn't keep +you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical +strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be +anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!"</p> + +<p>She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really +wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away, +before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and +he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early +winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl +had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be +resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had +now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the +presumptuous rumor and destroy it.</p> + +<p>Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village +from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped +into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their +feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the +side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and +saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and +the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque +sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and +then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron +filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her +to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was +another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon +liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his +astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays +nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if +fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew +it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her +friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her +brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of +it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at +the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and +he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater +now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing +is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills. +Some one was asking for him there yesterday."</p> + +<p>"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested."</p> + +<p>"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very +provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline +know."</p> + +<p>"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of +good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he +suggested to Louise.</p> + +<p>"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you. +Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we +were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous."</p> + +<p>"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep +thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this +fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she +called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add, +"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something +definite?"</p> + +<p>Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a +resolute cheerfulness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2> + + +<p>The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the +suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two +more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade +loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was +such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its +strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the +moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed +roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the +witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to +her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help +bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible.</p> + +<p>He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the +platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two +of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some +wornout rails with new ones.</p> + +<p>"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, +Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his +face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in +position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the +plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, +free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer.</p> + +<p>"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor, +even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association +with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of +the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief +just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: +in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their +work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which +ennobled the scene.</p> + +<p>When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade, +who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the +moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her +father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that +matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it. +"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or—"</p> + +<p>Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height +with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss +Northwick's father?"</p> + +<p>"Very little—nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in +the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just +met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at +the station."</p> + +<p>Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk +from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the +station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of +the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't +follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and +directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the +station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he +met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I +should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our +state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust +can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the +business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that +doesn't belong to him?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick +was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked."</p> + +<p>"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe +that?"</p> + +<p>"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss +Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I +was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that +wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt +that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In +fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut +their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding +defaulter."</p> + +<p>"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These +things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind +of—" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's +revery in which he seemed to have been far absent.</p> + +<p>"Have you seen much of the family this winter?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've +been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at +their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with +the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I +don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all +kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was +willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that <i>she</i> kept the +family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture."</p> + +<p>"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared +anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her."</p> + +<p>Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean, +Matt? Is there anything besides—"</p> + +<p>"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him +steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary +tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something +that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what +Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their +suspicions."</p> + +<p>"Right?"</p> + +<p>"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter +to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the +directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the +face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make +up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best +thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke +his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the +defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no +question about it."</p> + +<p>"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts +which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible—do you +suppose—imagine—that it was really he who was in that burning car? +What an awful fate!"</p> + +<p>"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe +ground in regard to a thing of that kind—the only ground."</p> + +<p>"The only ground?"</p> + +<p>"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of +the Board—called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names—and told +him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident +on his way home."</p> + +<p>"Ah!"</p> + +<p>"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this +morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he +was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused +his death—I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything +of the kind."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Wade, compassionately.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the +devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean +anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any +superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a +friend—or a victim—of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way +out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke +from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been +telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his +business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my +coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two +poor women."</p> + +<p>"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst +always seems to do."</p> + +<p>"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to +fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be +when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that +awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was +running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it."</p> + +<p>"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?"</p> + +<p>"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but +sorrow and shame have to come out—I don't know why, but they do. Then, +when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the +cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in +silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in +words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that +bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she +took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating +with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it +was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!"</p> + +<p>"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was +very good of her to come."</p> + +<p>"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head +up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her +friendship with Miss Northwick—she's so much younger than I, and they +came together when I was abroad—but I've fancied she wasn't much liked +among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read +that report, nothing would do but she must come."</p> + +<p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a +sacrifice for him to let us come."</p> + +<p>"I don't understand."</p> + +<p>"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick; +and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to +cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a +rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have +some interest in getting him out of the way."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as +Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even +from the man's son.</p> + +<p>"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach +to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt.</p> + +<p>Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the +case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor +sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so +little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to +make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins +to God!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I'm with you <i>there</i>!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther +through his friend's arm.</p> + +<p>They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for +mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life, +which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had +thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to +verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good +deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points +in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life. +Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard +they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was +not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured +in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them: +Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his +back on manufacturing.</p> + +<p>They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the +calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their +sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the +victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so +much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick +old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of +her doom which Matt tried to put into words.</p> + +<p>"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I +don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when +I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were +taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and +I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with +my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the +most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why, +just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They +will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up +everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the +world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her +head!"</p> + +<p>Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of +course she won't be allowed to come to want."</p> + +<p>"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a +disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve +everything."</p> + +<p>"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade.</p> + +<p>"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that +you—" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed +nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get +Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is."</p> + +<p>They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a +head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet +of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and +then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could.</p> + +<p>"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks +best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. +Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your +sister."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll +see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch."</p> + +<p>The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to +meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it +to Matt and promptly turned his back on him.</p> + +<p>Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car +passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at +Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst."</p> + +<p>Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no. +This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting. +And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go +up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to +send if anything else comes."</p> + +<p>"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left +the station. "I'm going to my study, there."</p> + +<p>They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more +elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow.</p> + +<p>From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous +little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I +beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly +transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to +Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is +impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car."</p> + +<p>"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be +<i>our</i> Mr. Northwick. Er—good-morning, sir."</p> + +<p>He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked +Wade, "Who in the world is that?"</p> + +<p>"He's a Mr. Gerrish—keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant +type."</p> + +<p>Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so +low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business +standing."</p> + +<p>"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar +of material success."</p> + +<p>Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is +simply seething with curiosity."</p> + +<p>Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down +to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was +alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble.</p> + +<p>"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply.</p> + +<p>Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater.</p> + +<p>"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. +"It's perfectly ridiculous! <i>Why</i> should he have been there? I think +there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating +false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the +train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some +horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm +going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's +bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out."</p> + +<p>"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you +back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she +handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell +them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes."</p> + +<p>The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the +paper in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully +backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing +from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater +Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's +the worst, I want to know the worst."</p> + +<p>Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to +gain time.</p> + +<p>"Of course! At such a time, I would <i>rather</i> be alone."</p> + +<p>At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he +said he would like to speak with her there.</p> + +<p>She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, +"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my +sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this +week. What have you heard?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? +Must you go back?"</p> + +<p>"No—not exactly."</p> + +<p>"Not exactly? What are you driving at?"</p> + +<p>"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go +up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she +wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose +she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she +do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the +accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was—"</p> + +<p>"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She +mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her +go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this +point. "She must send somebody—some of their men. She mustn't go. It's +too hideous!"</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go."</p> + +<p>"You!"</p> + +<p>"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I +can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible +suspense for her."</p> + +<p>"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that +poor, sick old maid."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left +her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for +her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more."</p> + +<p>"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, +Matt. <i>You</i> couldn't do <i>less</i>! It's magnificent of you. Have you told +her, yet, that you would go?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay +here till you come back—"</p> + +<p>"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. +"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for +them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts +with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to +Canada to escape arrest."</p> + +<p>He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her.</p> + +<p>"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope +he's killed."</p> + +<p>Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much +the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way."</p> + +<p>"When must it come out?"</p> + +<p>"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may +come out—some rumor of it—in the morning papers. The question is +whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be +wise, or useful."</p> + +<p>"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a +thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me +get away alive. I must go at once!"</p> + +<p>She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up +a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from.</p> + +<p>"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without +telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would +insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>that</i> was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to +get away."</p> + +<p>"I hope you won't let her suspect—"</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>think</i> you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning +round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as +sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a +warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he +was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and +he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, +fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other +than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from +her friend.</p> + +<p>Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library.</p> + +<p>"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at +Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would +be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the +same farm."</p> + +<p>The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head +in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, +she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe +herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an +apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable."</p> + +<p>"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no +news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to +that."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were +red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears +came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. +Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time +we went to Quebec?"</p> + +<p>Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at +least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?"</p> + +<p>Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. +"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map +of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal +and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the +Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get +to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly +frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of +<i>course</i>, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's +usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans—"</p> + +<p>She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and +began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at +the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might +not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the +Springfield train at Wellwater."</p> + +<p>"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the +ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a +man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot +help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time +does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train—if I +don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear."</p> + +<p>A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette +went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing +the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on, +and her jacket over her arm.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you—I had to do that—but we +both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences." +Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite +know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she +spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, +she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell +you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time +for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could +out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about +all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But +remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can +send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm +simply waiting. Will you remember that—<i>whatever</i> happens?"</p> + +<p>Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in +formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of +them than it could to the other.</p> + +<p>"Come, Matt!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they +would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then +Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and +wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette."</p> + +<p>"That is a good idea," said Louise.</p> + +<p>"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston +alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!"</p> + +<p>"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive, +I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him +I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall +be set down at our door in perfect safety."</p> + +<p>They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined +reluctantly in it.</p> + +<p>When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she +will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she +will trust you enough to turn to us?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall +come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections, +as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But +I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?"</p> + +<p>"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at +the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country +person."</p> + +<p>"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise.</p> + +<p>Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven +knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation +of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see +him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits +seem ugly."</p> + +<p>They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked +up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father +might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question +whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief +for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided +motive.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said +Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt +answered.</p> + +<p>There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, +released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station +an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming +and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with +envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were +both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their +fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of +good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against +whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help +carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to +help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality +she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the +front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell +plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed +with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls +who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a +young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; +she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated +operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was +no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why +he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second +glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a +studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his +clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however +he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned +from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came +up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, +and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went +to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for +Miss Northwick.</p> + +<p>She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it +up."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's," +said Matt.</p> + +<p>"All right."</p> + +<p>Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting +quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the +station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short +of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as +observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from +the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the +awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of +the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called +from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the +depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have a telegram."</p> + +<p>"Oh, give it to me!"</p> + +<p>He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But +if isn't what you expected, will you let—will you allow me—"</p> + +<p>As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from +his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been +there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously +in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins.</p> + +<p>Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn't. You—you must let me go."</p> + +<p>"You?"</p> + +<p>"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I +can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn't do. +Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I +solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or +forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish +done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if +you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you've borne +with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust +me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go +in your place on such an errand, but it really isn't so. You ought to +know that I wouldn't offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all +that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!"</p> + +<p>He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without +strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she +answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of +assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping +his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that +day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he +stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the +rise of ground to the southward.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2> + + +<p>The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight +thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to +Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and +shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young +man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of <i>The +Boston Events</i>' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far +from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young +man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a +woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual +sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching +the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in +rows on either side of the room.</p> + +<p>She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for +his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "let's see. No use asking if you've got coffee?" He +inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a +deep breath.</p> + +<p>"Baked beans?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't think there's anything much better than baked beans. Do +you?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not when you git 'em <i>good</i>," the woman admitted. "<i>Ril</i> good."</p> + +<p>"And what's the matter with a piece of mince pie?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see's there's any great deal. Hot?"</p> + +<p>"Every time."</p> + +<p>"I <i>thought</i> so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I'd as soon +eat a piece of I don't know what as a piece o' <i>cold</i> mince pie."</p> + +<p>"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I +guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor +round inside of five minutes."</p> + +<p>The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship +established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need +to. Nothin' else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot +plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them +on the table before the young man, "Your pie's warmin' for you; I got +you some rolls; they're just right out the oven; and here's some the +best butter I ever put a knife to, if I <i>do</i> say so. It's just as good +and sweet as butter can be, if it <i>didn't</i> come from the Northwick place +at a dollar a pound."</p> + +<p>"Well, now, I should have thought you'd have used the Northwick butter," +said the young man with friendly irony.</p> + +<p>"You know the Northwick butter?" said the woman, charmed at the +discovery of another tie.</p> + +<p>"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a +fancy brand for the table."</p> + +<p>The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I'll bet you +grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy +which he did not disallow.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm pretty particular," said the young man. "But I <i>have</i> to be, +to find anything to find fault with in the way <i>my</i> wife manages. I +don't suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick butter, now."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Why, if he was killed in that accident—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I guess there ain't anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it +was some other Northwick. Their coachman—Elbridge Newton—was tellin' +my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at +some hosses there. He's always buyin' more hosses. I guess he must have +as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don't place any dependence on +that report."</p> + +<p>"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at +the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?"</p> + +<p>"What fellow?"</p> + +<p>"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and +blazing, as you may say."</p> + +<p>"Oh,—Mr. Putney! That's just one of his jokes. He's always down on Mr. +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble +there."</p> + +<p>"Labor trouble?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so."</p> + +<p>The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" +and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor +trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward +inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the <i>Events</i>' +young man.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost +so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston +to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles."</p> + +<p>"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm a reporter—same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps +you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in +Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the +<i>Events</i>' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee +caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the +drug store that seemed to be pretty happy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife."</p> + +<p>"Who <i>is</i> Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the <i>Events</i>' man.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for +instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the +old Hatboro' Putneys, here."</p> + +<p>"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much +liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man +perceived that he had struck a false note.</p> + +<p>"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more +bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a +month on a strict prohibition basis."</p> + +<p>The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, +I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is +bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way +you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in +every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as +anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband."</p> + +<p>"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go +ahead of him, well, not in <i>this</i> town," said the husband.</p> + +<p>"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes +him so down on Mr. Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I dunno," said the host, "<i>what</i> it is. He's always been so. I +presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is +anything else."</p> + +<p>"Why, what kind of a man <i>is</i> Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man +asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had +now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's +only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never +did have much to do with the place, before."</p> + +<p>"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?"</p> + +<p>"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered.</p> + +<p>His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue +Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be +merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more +available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose +slippers require constant attention?"</p> + +<p>"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as +that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the +workin' folks, since Mr. Peck."</p> + +<p>"Who was Mr. Peck?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here +two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort +of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union."</p> + +<p>"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. +"Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard +history of co-operation."</p> + +<p>"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly.</p> + +<p>"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he +isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on +that big place of his; and give work."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the +neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The +hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been +quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a +man of the reporter's wide observation. "<i>He</i> thinks Hatboro' was better +off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place."</p> + +<p>"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and +he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. +Northwick, personally?"</p> + +<p>The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a +moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had +anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything +against him. I guess he's a pretty good man."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he <i>was</i> going +to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. +With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to +throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, +sarcastically.</p> + +<p>"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on +in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line +of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed.</p> + +<p>"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion +road there. Then it's on a branch."</p> + +<p>"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. +<i>What</i> did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick +family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up +his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. +"Married man myself, you know."</p> + +<p>"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her +husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk +in the corner of the room, and brought back the change.</p> + +<p>"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" +the young man asked, in pocketing his money.</p> + +<p>"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. +"There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the +hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. +Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, +either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't +suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to +talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell."</p> + +<p>"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter.</p> + +<p>"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see: second wife. Then <i>he's</i> the young man, heigh!"</p> + +<p>The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat +the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en."</p> + +<p>The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, +and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he +had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. +Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband +long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth +crying for.</p> + +<p>The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of +accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so +much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his +own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist +the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended +himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular +belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one +else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if +you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was +what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the +happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, +and on his own exceptional good fortune in it.</p> + +<p>He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat +he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the +pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in.</p> + +<p>The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You +onto it, too?"</p> + +<p>"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion.</p> + +<p>"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him +alone.</p> + +<p>"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." +Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting +Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably +shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, +"some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He +rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and +pressed his fingers against his temples.</p> + +<p>"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one +another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take +something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache."</p> + +<p>The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth +while?"</p> + +<p>"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?"</p> + +<p>"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of +the news with us," he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney.</p> + +<p>"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, +Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an +object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the +consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away."</p> + +<p>"The what is?" asked Pinney.</p> + +<p>"The consensus."</p> + +<p>"Anything like the United States Census?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't spelt like it."</p> + +<p>Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my +own wherever I find it, as George Washington said."</p> + +<p>"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't +know what the word means."</p> + +<p>"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his +book.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had +revived himself with a sip or two.</p> + +<p>"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do +you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have +you. There are no scoops in it."</p> + +<p>"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly.</p> + +<p>Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a +detective—in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, +like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney.</p> + +<p>"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a +space-man can't do."</p> + +<p>"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and +superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at +trifles."</p> + +<p>"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt +up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their +emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome +to it."</p> + +<p>"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name +and—"</p> + +<p>"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind."</p> + +<p>"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, +anyhow. It's not a personal thing."</p> + +<p>"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, +but it makes the man's face burn."</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that +stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay +there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for +a reporter. When are you going to Boston?"</p> + +<p>"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously.</p> + +<p>"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the +cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your +diffidence is infectious, Maxwell."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2> + + +<p>Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it +appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to +pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him +suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They +would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see +him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all +the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family +required him to use every means for making copy.</p> + +<p>He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably +doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly +well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden +palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the +inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of +baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance +gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or +a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring.</p> + +<p>"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney +in, and in his absence, the representative of the <i>Events</i> made note of +the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and +of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The +inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he +returned with his card still in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at +home."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see +Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. +She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence +of an interviewer.</p> + +<p>"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card +which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. +Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words <i>Representing the Boston +Events</i>. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and +business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a +certain shade of authority.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some +conversation with you in regard to this—this rumor—accident. Can you +tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?"</p> + +<p>"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. +She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the +mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to +its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She +wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do +this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not +telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; +and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to +have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this +reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior.</p> + +<p>"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days."</p> + +<p>"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney.</p> + +<p>"Yes, three or four. There <i>is</i> one train, at half-past-twelve, I +think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you +there in three hours."</p> + +<p>"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?"</p> + +<p>"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often +take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the +Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses +from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have +run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any +reliance on that story"—she gasped the rest out—"about—that +accident."</p> + +<p>"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those +flying rumors—they get the names all mixed up, those country +operators."</p> + +<p>"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. +"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs."</p> + +<p>"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are +they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed +questionings.</p> + +<p>"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, +and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the +Falls."</p> + +<p>"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope +you'll find out it's all a mistake about—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman—a friend of ours—has +just gone up to Wellwater to see about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. +I suppose you've telegraphed?"</p> + +<p>"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went."</p> + +<p>It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did +not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, +"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to +see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd +taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, +smiling.</p> + +<p>There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by +seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They +take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; +their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts +warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use +to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about +him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five +minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later.</p> + +<p>When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't +at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the +troubles."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her +relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, +in summer, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been +enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long +time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to +their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and +to warrant her father's safety.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my +wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the +country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have +to live there."</p> + +<p>Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the +vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper +from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to +your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth +in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She +thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and +keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to +ask him not to do so.</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to—it's very kind of +you—I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely +human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away +from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now +suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home +life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, +he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, +it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him +down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given +him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; +on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and +dropped them into the deep snow.</p> + +<p>His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success +he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an +enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done.</p> + +<p>She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, +you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the <i>Abstract</i> clear out +of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and +the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on +the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the +world."</p> + +<p>Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are +ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big +default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a +chance to make up his shortage—it's the old story. I've got just the +setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the +word to go ahead—"</p> + +<p>"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall +do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute."</p> + +<p>Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her +enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why +he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective +authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. +"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm +going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. +There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, +any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell +you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk.</p> + +<p>His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work +on the table there. It's bigger than this desk."</p> + +<p>"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and +followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their +simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" +He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into +it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!"</p> + +<p>"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a +pathetic little mouth.</p> + +<p>Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he +was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his +dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, +of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter +which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which +enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do +justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's +home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with +a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit +in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when +he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as +plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would +sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his +daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't +quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently +hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to +Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!"</p> + +<p>His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. +"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure +out of it for <i>me</i>; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of +his family, I can't help you any more."</p> + +<p>"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I +guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall +handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. +"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it +hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to +Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I +knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so +I didn't go."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes +upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back."</p> + +<p>"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he +asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, +and the love he saw in them.</p> + +<p>Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take +air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife +often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she +saw him.</p> + +<p>This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, +when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the <i>Events</i>. She +had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in +a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up +the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main +dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the +clerks.</p> + +<p>At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in +the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready +to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, +and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under +his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more +like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He +wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they +began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the +summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first +meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. +They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social +splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that +they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value +each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the +greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they +were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was +good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great +deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a +virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual +devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great +merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they +prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so +deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of +altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and +content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married +on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been +rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their +happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2> + + +<p>Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached +the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house +his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told +her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work.</p> + +<p>"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying +round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. +You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks +it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the +defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't +<i>do</i> that."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to +have you."</p> + +<p>"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young +fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a +business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is +getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an +owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years."</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother.</p> + +<p>"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at +this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a +wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and +he's sure to get on."</p> + +<p>"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged +soothingly.</p> + +<p>"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my +own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of +working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first +thing is to earn your bread."</p> + +<p>"Well, you <i>do</i> earn yours, my son—and no one works harder to earn +it."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my son!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the +rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the +door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar +and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to +leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he +finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on +the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! +He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only +chance for a scoop."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a +gentleman."</p> + +<p>"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the +room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of +business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I +intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to +pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps <i>he</i> isn't +a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to +write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility +with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it."</p> + +<p>"He's very kind to you, Brice."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my +life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every +now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room +in independent journalism?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning +the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had +not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to +put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call.</p> + +<p>The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, +but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He +tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat +and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather +haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, +and led him in there.</p> + +<p>Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after +dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange +experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and +comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over +the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the +contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', +with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she +remembered.</p> + +<p>The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood +irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father."</p> + +<p>"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very +soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along +unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for +the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes +were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her +nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far +as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of +man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, +and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's +very cold out, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an +illogical sense of acquaintance with him.</p> + +<p>"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the +beginning of February."</p> + +<p>"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than +she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold +weather after the January thaw."</p> + +<p>"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought +of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes +any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the +proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be +a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some +of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a +walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her +father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision +gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, +he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he +found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, +as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking +up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's +library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which +was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare +Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes +without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a +scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say +next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with +no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what +he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the +country."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town."</p> + +<p>"And how dreary," he added.</p> + +<p>"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be +debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this +rate."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, +to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color +and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the +literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to +get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall +below.</p> + +<p>Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that +brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the <i>Daily +Abstract</i>, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about +this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick."</p> + +<p>"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about +the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! +Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?"</p> + +<p>"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out.</p> + +<p>"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how <i>could</i> you treat him so?"</p> + +<p>"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! +What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of +my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?"</p> + +<p>"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!"</p> + +<p>"Saw that he was a gentleman?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not—not a common reporter +at <i>all</i>!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, +and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous +experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father +who had not been the gentleman. "You—you might have been a little +kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether +you would say anything. He didn't persist."</p> + +<p>"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw +always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find +himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and +admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the +way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for +you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What +does it all mean?"</p> + +<p>The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: +"Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I +should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I +<i>could</i>. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if +you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you +did."</p> + +<p>Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as +you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise +gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a +tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have +been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters +after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this +bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to +Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and +more?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was +going alone. He couldn't do less."</p> + +<p>"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He +turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a +strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's +this?"</p> + +<p>He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, +"Of course he will come back for it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll—I'll write him a note," Hilary +groaned.</p> + +<p>Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor +fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? +It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, +and meet all kinds of rebuffs."</p> + +<p>"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, +with some return to his grudge.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean <i>you</i>, papa," said Louise, sweetly.</p> + +<p>The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came +up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his +note-book, he—"</p> + +<p>Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it +is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2> + + +<p>Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in the little triptych +mirror against one of the shelves. Her hair was not tumbled, and she +completed her toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending the +edge of her skirt over them where she stood.</p> + +<p>Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and she smiled a fresh +greeting to him. "We—I had just picked your note-book up. I—I'm glad +you came back, I—was a little short with you a moment ago. I—I—Mayn't +I offer you a cigar?"</p> + +<p>"No, thanks. I don't smoke," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Then a glass of—It's pretty cold out!"</p> + +<p>"Thank you; I never drink."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's good! That's—sit down; sit down!—that's a very good +thing. I assure you, I don't think it's the least use, though I do both. +My boy doesn't, he's a pattern to his father."</p> + +<p>In spite of Hilary's invitation Maxwell remained on foot, with the +effect of merely hearing him out as he went on.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm sorry I haven't anything to tell about that accident. I've been +telegraphing all day, without finding out anything beyond the fact as +first reported; and now my son's gone up to Wellwater, to look it up on +the ground. It may have been our Mr. Northwick, or it may not. May I ask +how much you know?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I'm quite free to say," answered Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Oh!"</p> + +<p>"And I didn't expect you to say anything unless you wished to make +something known. It's a matter of business."</p> + +<p>"Exactly," said Hilary. "But I think I might been a little civiller in +saying what I did. The rumor's been a great annoyance to me; and I like +to share my annoyances with other people. I suppose your business often +brings you in contact with men of that friendly disposition? Heigh?" +Hilary rolled the cigar he was about to light between his lips.</p> + +<p>"We see the average man," said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his +poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that +from the bore it is to interview."</p> + +<p>"I dare say that's often the worst part of it," said Hilary, lighting +his cigar, and puffing out the first great clouds. "Well, then, I may +congratulate myself on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn't know I +should come off so handsomely."</p> + +<p>There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell did not attempt to make +conversation. Hilary offered him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve +the parting of abruptness, "If you care to look in on me again, later +on, perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Maxwell, and he turned to go. Then he turned back, and +after a moment's hesitation, bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, +"Good-evening!" and went out.</p> + +<p>Louise fetched a deep breath. "Why didn't you keep him longer, papa, and +find out all about him?"</p> + +<p>"I think we know all that's necessary," said her father, dryly. "At +least he isn't on my conscience any longer; and now I hope you're +satisfied."</p> + +<p>"Yes—yes," she hesitated. "You don't think you were too patronizing in +your reparation, papa?"</p> + +<p>"Patronizing?" Hilary's crest began to rise.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean that; but I wish you hadn't let him see that you +expected him to leap for joy when you stooped to excuse yourself."</p> + +<p>Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the violence he was about to +permit himself. "The next time, if you don't like my manner with people, +don't stay, Louise."</p> + +<p>"I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how beautifully you could do +it; and you <i>did</i> do it beautifully. It was magnificent—perhaps <i>too</i> +magnificent." She began to laugh and to kiss away the vexation from her +father's face, keeping her hands behind her with her shoes she had +picked up again, in them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat.</p> + +<p>"And did I want you to stay and entertain him here till I came in?" he +demanded, to keep from being mollified too soon.</p> + +<p>"No," she faltered. "<i>That</i> was a work of necessity. He looked so sick +and sad, that he appealed to my sympathy, and besides—Do you think I +could trust you with a secret, papa?"</p> + +<p>"What are you talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you see I thought he was a walking-delegate at first."</p> + +<p>"And was that the reason you stayed?"</p> + +<p>"No. That was what frightened me, and then interested me. I wanted to +find out what they were like. But that isn't the secret."</p> + +<p>"It's probably quite as important," Hilary growled.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see it's such a good lesson to me! I had slipped off my shoes +when I was lying down, and I couldn't get away, he came in so suddenly."</p> + +<p>"And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you were talking to that +reporter all the time in—"</p> + +<p>"How should he know it? You didn't know it yourself, papa. I couldn't +get my shoes on after he came, of course!" She brought them round before +her in evidence.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous! I never come in after +you've been here without finding some part of your gear lying +round—hair-pins, or gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or +something—and I won't have it. I want you to understand that I think +it's disgraceful. I'm ashamed of you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Not <i>ashamed</i>, papa!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am!" said her father; but he had to relent under her look of +meek imploring, and say, "or I ought to be. I don't see how you could +hold up your head."</p> + +<p>"I held it very <i>high</i> up. When you haven't got your shoes on—in +company—it gives you a sort of—internal majesty; and I behaved very +loftily. But it's been a fearful lesson to me, papa!" She made her +father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, and kissed him for +his amiability.</p> + +<p>She said at the end of this rite, "He didn't seem much impressed even +after you had apologized, do you think, papa?"</p> + +<p>"No, he didn't," Hilary grumbled. "He's as stiff-necked as need be."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Louise, thoughtfully. "He must be proud. How funny proud +people are, papa! I can't understand them. That was what always +fascinated me with Suzette."</p> + +<p>Hilary's face saddened as it softened. "Ah, poor thing! She'll have need +of all her pride, now."</p> + +<p>"You mean about her father," said Louise, sobered too. "Don't you hope +he's got away?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean, child? That would be a very rascally wish in me."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'd rather he had got away than been killed?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course, of course," Hilary ruefully assented. "But if Matt +finds he wasn't—in the accident, it's my business to do all I can to +bring him to justice. The man's a thief."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, <i>I</i> hope he's got away."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't say such things, Louise."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>no</i>, papa! Only <i>think</i> them."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2> + + +<p>Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look +into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It +was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have +three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have +justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing +to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way. +Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same +errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with +them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in +agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end; +but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith +with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could +have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do, +and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. +The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck. +There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely +swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to +the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent +and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of +derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the +locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that +had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a +wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were +ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing +to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter +and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of +passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the +operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved +in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but +those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his +death.</p> + +<p>This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to +Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it +left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt +struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself +in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind +he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and +whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real +course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide +his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If +the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that +Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all. +But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must +be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In +any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who +must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were +really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other +fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family; +he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only +thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming +a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive; +but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse +when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her +father was dead.</p> + +<p>She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they +were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell +them so.</p> + +<p>Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he +urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was +not in the accident.</p> + +<p>She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no +difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her +father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by +this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was +doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when +they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight +change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to +his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them +know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very +suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else.</p> + +<p>Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he +thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that +he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered +nothing, she did not ask him.</p> + +<p>It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that +she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she +will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a +slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline +jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes; +but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief. +She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and +she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister.</p> + +<p>Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved, +when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel +it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of +hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help +those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it; +these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their +bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude.</p> + +<p>Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to +linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell. +Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was +astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last.</p> + +<p>"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never! +Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I +wonder you could do it!"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as +well as their loss, and were of one mind about it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it—"</p> + +<p>"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because <i>you</i> would have +done it for any one! But you have done it for <i>us</i>; and as long as I +live I shall remember that! Oh"—She broke off; and dropped her face +with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he +was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after +they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of +encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had +accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be +born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make +women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his +heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity +that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from +every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from +that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He +went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned +from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was +respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was +foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for +them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he +had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it +was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair.</p> + +<p>The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away +from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and +followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the +night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all +that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him +to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick +was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his +name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all +the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he +had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his +misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal +justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his +stand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2> + + +<p>For forty-eight hours longer the fact of the defalcation was kept back; +but then, in view of the legal action urged by those who did not accept +the theory of Northwick's death, it had to come out, and it broke all +bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity.</p> + +<p>Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and it was weeks before +the editorial homilies ceased. From time to time, fresh details and +unexpected revelations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the +interest of the original fact. There were days when there was nothing +about it in the papers, and then days when it broke out in vivid +paragraphs and whole lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was +singular in its features; these were common to most of the defalcations, +great and small, which were of daily fame in the newspapers. But the +doubt as to the man's fate, and the enduring mystery of his whereabouts, +if he were still alive, were qualities that gave peculiar poignancy to +Northwick's case. Its results in the failure of people not directly +involved, were greater than could have been expected; and the sum of his +peculations mounted under investigation. It was all much worse than had +been imagined, and in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral +gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts stolen and indirectly +lost by it. There was a great deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that +the crime should have been that of a man whom no one would have dreamed +of suspecting, and there was some sufficiently ridiculous consternation +at the presence of such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial +life of Boston.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Events</i>, Pinney made his report of the affair the work of art +which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's +masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with +its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to +page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In +the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a +devotion to the interests of the <i>Events</i> and its readers. With every +hour the painful impressions of his interview with Miss Northwick grew +fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no +color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening +the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow +upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the +family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly +on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the +victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the +facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the +capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force +the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase +widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the +library into which "the <i>Events</i>' representative was politely ushered," +was furnished with "all the appliances of a cultured taste." The works +of the standard authors in costly bindings graced its shelves; +magnificent paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and +alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously received the <i>Events</i>' +reporter, was suitably enriched; her years were discounted, and her +beauty approached to the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about +Pinney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial grandeur upon the +Northwick place, outside as well as inside. He imparted a romantic +consequence to Hatboro' itself: "A thriving New England town, proud of +its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern prosperity, with a +population of some five or six thousand souls, among whose working men +and women modern ideas of the most advanced character had been realized +in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-operative kitchen and +its clientèle of intelligent members and patrons."</p> + +<p>People of all occupations became leading residents in virtue of taking +Pinney into their confidence, and "A Prominent Proletarian" achieved the +distinction of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of J. M. +Northwick's character among the working-classes. "The Consensus of +Public Feeling," in portraying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the +proprietary word he had seized, formed the subject of some dramatic +paragraphs; and the whole formed a rich and fit setting for the main +facts of Northwick's undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures +which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate.</p> + +<p>Pinney's masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could write only at that +moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the <i>Events</i> could publish +only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was +flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by +accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But +it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more +philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>The <i>Abstract</i> addressed a different class of readers, and aimed at a +different effect in its treatment of public affairs. We look upon +newspapers as having a sort of composite temperament, formed from the +temperaments of all the different men employed on them; but, as a matter +of fact, they each express the disposition and reflect the temperament +of one controlling spirit, which all the other dispositions and +temperaments yield to. This is so much the case that it is hard to +efface the influence of a strong mind from the journal it has shaped, +even when it is no longer actively present in it. A good many years +before the time of the Northwick defalcation, the <i>Events</i> had been in +the management of a journalist, once well-known in Boston, a certain +Bartley Hubbard, who had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who +had thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After he left it, the +owner tried several devices for elevating and reforming it, but failed, +partly because he was himself a man of no ideals but those of the +counting-room, and largely because the paper could not recover from the +strong slant given it without self-destruction. So the <i>Events</i> +continued what Bartley Hubbard had made it, and what the readers he had +called about it liked it to be: a journal without principles and without +convictions, but with interests only; a map of busy life, indeed, but +glaringly colored, with crude endeavors at picturesqueness, and with no +more truth to life than those railroad maps where the important centres +converge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, and leave +rival roads wriggling faintly about in uninhabited solitudes. In +Hubbard's time the <i>Abstract</i>, then the <i>Chronicle-Abstract</i>, was in +charge of the editor who had been his first friend on the Boston press, +and whom he finally quarreled with on a point which this friend +considered dishonorable to Hubbard. Ricker had not since left the paper, +and though he was called a crank by some of the more progressive and +reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal of a conscience in +journalism; he gave the Abstract a fixed character and it could no more +have changed than the <i>Events</i>, without self-destruction. The men under +him were not so many as Cæsar's soldiers, and that, perhaps, was the +reason why he knew not only their names but their qualities. When +Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which the detectives had +entrusted to him for provisional use, and asked to be assigned to the +business of working it up, Kicker consented, but he consented +reluctantly. He thought Maxwell was better for better things; he knew he +was a ravenous reader of philosophy and sociology, and he had been early +in the secret of his being a poet; it had since become an open secret +among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both honor and +dishonor.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't think you'd like to do it, Maxwell," said Ricker, kindly. +"It isn't in your line, is it? Better give it to some of the other +fellows."</p> + +<p>"It's more in my line than you suppose, Mr. Ricker," said the young +fellow. "It's a subject I've looked up a great deal lately. I once +thought"—he looked down bashfully—"of trying to write a play about a +defaulter, and I got together a good many facts about defalcation. +You've no idea how common it is; it's about the commonest fact of our +civilization."</p> + +<p>"Ah! Is that so?" asked Ricker with ironical deference to the bold +generalizer. "Who else is 'onto' this thing?"</p> + +<p>"Pinney, of the <i>Events</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, he's a dangerous rival, in some ways," said Ricker. "When it +comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for +him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker +pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his +forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and +Maxwell knew that he was authorized to do the work.</p> + +<p>He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the +affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had +expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he +worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at +theirs. He waited till the next morning to begin, however, for he was +too fagged after he came home from the Hilarys'; he rose early and got +himself a cup of tea over the gas-burner; before the house was awake he +was well on in his report. By nightfall he had finished it, and then he +carried it to Ricker. The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave +Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two +separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts +which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set +down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone +which the <i>Abstract</i> affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the +facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he +saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, +"Hello, young man! Who invited you to take the floor?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody. I found I couldn't embody my general knowledge of defalcation +in the report without impertinence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my +mind somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don't expect you to take +it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere."</p> + +<p>Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explanation. He went on reading +the manuscript, and when he ended, he took up the report again, and +compared it with the editorial in length. "If we printed these things as +they stand it would look like a case of the tail wagging the dog."</p> + +<p>Maxwell began again, "Oh, I didn't expect—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report +was at least physically inadequate."</p> + +<p>"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like +padding or faking, and I don't myself."</p> + +<p>Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now +handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do +you think you could weld these two things together?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know."</p> + +<p>"Suppose you try."</p> + +<p>"As editorial, or—"</p> + +<p>"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here."</p> + +<p>He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat +down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of +kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory +sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the +editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in +half an hour he handed the result to Ricker.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil +in his hand.</p> + +<p>Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his +article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his +pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire +paragraphs.</p> + +<p>When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it +now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I <i>must</i> +say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it."</p> + +<p>Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here, +young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying +them?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know—"</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know. I know you <i>didn't</i>. Every one of them rang false. They were +there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But +by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking +them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you +ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you +didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish; +he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on: +"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have +killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have +suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out +of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique, +and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made +any secret of my belief that you have talent."</p> + +<p>"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The +surgeon's knife hurts though it cures.</p> + +<p>When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the +young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and +we're not going to have any report."</p> + +<p>"I told you it was good!"</p> + +<p>Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said, +"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue +pencil. It's perfectly dead."</p> + +<p>It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it +did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he +was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work, +and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was +not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its +symmetry and force, as he read and read it again.</p> + +<p>He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter, +and had accused the structure of society. There must be something +rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning +brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our +country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their +employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and +corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our +commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that +while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in +business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create +surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of +which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the +<i>Abstract</i> reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home, +and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was +universally believed that he had run away with other people's money +merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting +for his whereabouts.</p> + +<p>At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit +to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a +vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the +historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and +manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a +closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the +first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions +and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and +proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout +so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote +in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical +comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had +been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and +quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young +fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it +when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt +afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere +accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for +his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their +material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and +strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all +off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised +Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or +unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he +admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one +except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane +temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the +play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the +conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred +instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted +perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the +compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the +reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact +that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without +peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for +the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers, +cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the +uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They +were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune; +they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth; +they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not +belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans +they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace +the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to +make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some +shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand +their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada.</p> + +<p>In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than +to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those +cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to +observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon +the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker +employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of +almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black +pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was +adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the +leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the +listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife +and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on +his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and +in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to +come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same +crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this +soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there +nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected +to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to +business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned +that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle +for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had +opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. +The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the +same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape +the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to +consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do +without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a +paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without +such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the +semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank +socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing +sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative +shape.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h2> + + +<p>The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as they chose. When Matt +was at home, his mother and he were usually first; then his father came, +and Louise last. They took the <i>Events</i>, as many other people did, +because with all its faults it was a thorough newspaper; and they +maintained their self-respect by taking the <i>Abstract</i>. The morning that +the defalcation came out, Matt sent and got all the other papers, which +he had glanced through and talked over with his mother before his father +joined them at nine o'clock.</p> + +<p>Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of +his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's +Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it +was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers +were atrocious, but that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing +more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in that of the +directors, who gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of +publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were +fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against +his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had +suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised +the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, +even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these +blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called +him. He got through the various accounts in the various papers, by +broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these +terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he +came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over.</p> + +<p>"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final +effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered +from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort."</p> + +<p>"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to +pick yourself up."</p> + +<p>"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or +rather, at the copy of the <i>Abstract</i> which Matt was hiding behind, and +he said, "What have you got there, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most +uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!"</p> + +<p>"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently; +and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as +Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood; +its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly +refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so +enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the +writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading +was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined +Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such +cases.</p> + +<p>"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept +from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added, +"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told +them."</p> + +<p>"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't +be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them +shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers +are so bad—"</p> + +<p>"Not bad!" cried his father.</p> + +<p>"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They +probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about +the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used +to. But I wish I knew who did this <i>Abstract</i> article; I should like to +thank him."</p> + +<p>"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them +there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were +willing to have them come to us, no matter <i>what</i> happened?"</p> + +<p>"Louise and I both tried to do that," said her son, "when we were there +together; and when I reported to them after Wellwater, I told them again +and again what our wish was."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, "I am glad we have done everything we could. +At first I doubted the wisdom of your taking Louise to see them; but now +I'm satisfied that it was right. And I'm satisfied that your father did +right in getting that wretched creature the chance he abused."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Matt. "That was right. And I'm thoroughly glad he's out +of it. If he's still alive, I'm glad he's out of it."</p> + +<p>Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his various remorses and +misgivings, but now he broke out. "And I think you're talking abominable +nonsense, Matt. I didn't get Northwick given that chance to enable him +to escape the consequences of his rascality. Why shouldn't he be +punished for it?"</p> + +<p>"Because it wouldn't do the least good, to him or to any one else. It +wouldn't reform him, it wouldn't reform anything. Northwick isn't the +disease; he's merely the symptom. You can suppress him; but that won't +cure the disease. It's the whole social body that's sick, as this +article in the <i>Abstract</i> implies."</p> + +<p>"I don't see any such implication in it," his father angrily retorted. +"Your theory would form an excuse for the scoundrelism of every +scoundrel unhung. Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it +doesn't begin at home, with every man in it? I tell you, it would be a +very good thing for Northwick, and every rogue like him, if he could be +made serve his term in State's prison."</p> + +<p>The controversy raged a long time without departing from these lines of +argument on either side. Mrs. Hilary listened with the impatience women +feel at every absence from the personal ground, the only ground of +reality. When Matt had got so far from it as to be saying to his father, +"Then I understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for +his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the +same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in +upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and +wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, +who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw +that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman +always wants some one punished; some woman, first, or then some other +woman's men kindred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and Mrs. +Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk between her son and husband, +because she felt Matt to be doubly wrong.</p> + +<p>But when she spoke, her husband roared at her, "Don't interrupt, Sarah!" +and then he roared at Matt, "I tell you that the individual is not +concerned in the matter! I tell you that it is the interest, the +necessity of the community to punish A for his sins without regard to B, +and for my part, I shall leave no stone unturned till we have found +Northwick, dead or alive; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to +have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment." He shouted these +words out, and thumped the breakfast table so that the spoons clattered +in the cups, and Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was saying +just inside the door.</p> + +<p>"To see Mr. Hilary? A lady? Did she send her card?"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't give her name, ma'am; she said she didn't wish to, ma'am. +She wished to see Mr. Hilary just a moment in the reception-room."</p> + +<p>Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another bang with his fist, +but his wife succeeded in stopping him, with a repetition of Patrick's +message.</p> + +<p>"I won't see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're +in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are +claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your +sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a +brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other +letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's +little game has landed him in jail."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I admit that the A's had better suffer for their sins; but I doubt +if the punishment which a man gets against his will is the right kind of +suffering. If this man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear +the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would have been a good +thing for himself and for everybody else; it would have been a real +warning. But he ran away."</p> + +<p>"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry +come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of +your company."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, +as I've told you."</p> + +<p>"What <i>I</i> did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I +gave him a chance to make himself an honest man—"</p> + +<p>"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you <i>must</i> go and get rid of that woman, +at least; or let <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look +about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out +of the room.</p> + +<p>His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a +dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed," +before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For +the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the +apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with +the demand:</p> + +<p>"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with +her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could +say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other.</p> + +<p>"Is it true?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do +it. "Why, we hope—we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about +his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't <i>that</i>. It's worse than that. It's that other thing—that the +papers say—that he was a defaulter—dishonest. Is <i>that</i> true?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he +felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would +have been possible. "Those newspapers—confound them!—you know how they +get things all—You needn't mind what the papers say."</p> + +<p>"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when +he's—What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and +so I came to you—as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would +tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how +<i>good</i> he is! I—You know that he never wronged any one—that he +<i>couldn't</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to +me—quite right. How—how is your sister? You must stay, now—Louise +isn't down, yet—and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary +at the table. You must join us. She can assure you—Matt is quite +confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to +the—He—"</p> + +<p>Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, +and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she +dropped into a chair, and he had to stay.</p> + +<p>"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest +foundation for what the papers say this morning?"</p> + +<p>"How, foundation? My dear child—"</p> + +<p>"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?"</p> + +<p>"Well—well, there are always questions arising."</p> + +<p>"Is there any question of my father's accounts—his honesty?"</p> + +<p>"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much—want of +confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to +time."</p> + +<p>"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one +suspect him?"</p> + +<p>Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring +to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us—some of +the directors—have had doubts—"</p> + +<p>"Have <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"My dear girl—my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly +say, that when this examination—when the subject came up for discussion +at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father +should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed +that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the +girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his +part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing +for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, +and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm +is meant, and none is done—unless—unless the venture turns out +unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was +getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; +but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and +that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole +affair was very well put in the <i>Abstract</i>. Have you seen it? You must +see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. +Hilary—we have the paper—"</p> + +<p>Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has +been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?"</p> + +<p>"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point—"</p> + +<p>"Do <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I can't say—I don't think he meant——He expected to restore it, of +course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he +thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the +company's funds in his private enterprises."</p> + +<p>"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the +room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise +coming down the stairs.</p> + +<p>"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms +around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a +woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and +sympathizes utterly with her.</p> + +<p>Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise."</p> + +<p>"No, no! You shan't go. I want you—you must stay with us, now. I know +Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report."</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another +report—don't you know it?—in the paper this morning." Louise tried to +look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And +your father has been saying my father is a thief."</p> + +<p>"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out.</p> + +<p>It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave +a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he +could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.</h2> + + +<p>The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to +Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any +sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and +accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, +that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to +work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to +establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could +shake.</p> + +<p>Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused +him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. +But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in +business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would +not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed +other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his +own, and could not; that was all.</p> + +<p>With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they +were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they +encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. +But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, +when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly +establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this +servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. +She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she +willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her +husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and +tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not +freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the +Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had +always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind.</p> + +<p>Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in +the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of +their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the +house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the +consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of +mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages +and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that +the next time she hoped to see him.</p> + +<p>One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her +winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, +upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she +failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with +urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second +attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of +Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity +which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. +Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished +himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the +directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband +forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief +in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused +him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the +railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came +upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced +before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick +had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in +seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was +now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', +those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty +leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to +his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and +exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But +Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. +He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing +to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive.</p> + +<p>"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to +the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance +conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, +in Boston, who has shielded and—and protected him from the start, +and—and right along. I don't know <i>why</i>; but if I was one of the +Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I <i>should</i>. I should make a point of +inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had +plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on."</p> + +<p>The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one +cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, +I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate +belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The +listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother +Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have +done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of +the soldier's monument."</p> + +<p>"I <i>never</i> wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr. +Gerrish retorted angrily.</p> + +<p>Putney's spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the +contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he +was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by +which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects +and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the +worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went +on, now: "Didn't you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl +they've got there in circus-clothes." They all laughed; Putney had a +different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier's monument +every time he spoke of it. "And it would suggest what those poor fellows +really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a +whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don't have to +be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a +necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the +courts if there were no rogues? We must <i>have</i> Northwicks. It's a pity +that the Northwicks should have families; but I don't blame the +Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure +to end in. I'm glad the roof can't be taken from over those women's +heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding +the property to them."</p> + +<p>"It's downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!" Gerrish +shouted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, it isn't, Billy. It's law. You must respect the law and the +rights of property. You'll be wanting the strikers to burn down the +shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You're getting awfully +incendiary, Billy."</p> + +<p>Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the +group, and there were many people in Hatboro', including most of the +women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with +Northwick's case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those +girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their +father's crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest +people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where +the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the +houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not +even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro' shops who +said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much +about them, and the noise of Northwick's misdeeds died first amid the +din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the +respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded +envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, +and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and +that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those +daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak +to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset +Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and +perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to +do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they +learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the +Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not +long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in +the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see +the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy +of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of +judging or of meting with the fullest measure.</p> + +<p>In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands +were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but +Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of +sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men +of Hatboro' a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded +as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, +but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be +expected of a man in Northwick's position; it happened every day +somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did +not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were +fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, +reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them +regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot +of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to +gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, +and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the +matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely +believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the +same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were +mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the +railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing +his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue's Rest, as Putney called the +Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick's +survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When +Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something +like, "Well, Joel, how's cremation, this morning?"</p> + +<p>"Just booming, Squire. That stock's coming up, right along. Bound to be +worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin', yet." This, or +something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he +asked, "Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They +say—paper does—that the reason the president hung off from making a +complaint was that he didn't rightly see how he could have the ashes +indicted. <i>He</i> believes in it, any way."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Putney, "the fathers of New England all died in the blessed +hope of infant damnation. But that didn't prove it."</p> + +<p>"That's something so, Squire. Guess you got me there," said Gates.</p> + +<p>"I can understand old Hilary's not wanting to push the thing, under the +circumstances, and I don't blame him. But the law must have its course. +Hilary's got his duty to do. <i>I</i> don't want to do it for him."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h2> + + +<p>Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he +was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the +persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was +really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as +any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the +tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But +still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was +all talked over in Hilary's family, where he was pitied and forgiven in +that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks +we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, +and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had +tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed +that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when +he did not talk of it, no one must mention it.</p> + +<p>Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly +because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. +He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business +repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the +defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the +wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed +that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a +public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that +Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice +but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could +not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick's escape.</p> + +<p>He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would +work Northwick's daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette +answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went +away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally +appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever +warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that +they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were +generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a +thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go +to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate +her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She +treated her own father's course as something above suspicion, as +something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have +returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to +her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day +his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home +where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it +from them.</p> + +<p>Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might +have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father's +regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and +she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the +sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression +in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The +sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their +forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like +compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her +will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked +and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve +themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited +wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her +mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; +she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom +the girl saw.</p> + +<p>Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did +not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of +truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the +sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started +to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go +to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take +Louise back to the station.</p> + +<p>It was a clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and +some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out +of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot.</p> + +<p>They talked at arm's length of the weather; and then Suzette said +abruptly, "Of course, Louise, your father will have to do what they want +him to, against—papa. I understand that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Sue—"</p> + +<p>"Don't! I should wish him to know that I wasn't stupid about it."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Louise adventured, "he would do anything to help you!"</p> + +<p>Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good feeling. "We don't +believe papa has done anything wrong, or anything he wouldn't have made +right if he had lived. We shall not let them take his property from us +if we can help it."</p> + +<p>"Of course not! I'm sure papa wouldn't wish you to."</p> + +<p>"It would be confessing that they were right, and we will <i>never</i> do +that. But I don't blame your father, and I want him to know it."</p> + +<p>Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it +seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had +never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a +misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people +would listen to reason.</p> + +<p>Sue released herself, and said, looking away from her friend: "It has +been hard. He is dead; but we haven't even been allowed to see him laid +in the grave."</p> + +<p>"Oh, perhaps," Louise sobbed out, "he <i>isn't</i> dead! So many people think +he isn't—"</p> + +<p>Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. "Do you think that if he +were alive he would leave us without a word—a sign?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! He couldn't be so cruel! I didn't mean that! He is dead, and I +shall always say it."</p> + +<p>They walked on without speaking, but at the gate Suzette offered to +return Louise's embrace. The tears stood in her eyes, as she said, "I +would like to send my love to your mother—if she would care for it."</p> + +<p>"Care for it!"</p> + +<p>"And tell your brother I can never forget what he did for us."</p> + +<p>"He can never forget that you let him do it," said Louise, with eager +gratitude. "He would have liked to come with me, if he hadn't thought it +might seem intrusive."</p> + +<p>"<i>Intrusive!</i> Your <i>brother</i>!" Sue spoke the words as if Matt were of +some superior order of beings.</p> + +<p>The intensity of feeling she put into her voice brought another gush of +tears into Louise's eyes. "Matt <i>is</i> good. And I will tell him what you +say. He will like to hear it." They looked down the road, but they could +not see Simpson coming yet. "Don't wait, Sue," she pleaded. "Do go back! +You will be all worn out."</p> + +<p>"No, I will stay till your carriage comes," said Suzette; and they +remained a moment silent together.</p> + +<p>Then Louise said, "Matt has got a new fad: a young man that writes on +the newspapers—"</p> + +<p>"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very +handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, +but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's +awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't +have to interview people any more—he came to interview papa, the first +time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got +some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what +he wrote about—about, your—troubles, Sue."</p> + +<p>"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel."</p> + +<p>"His wasn't cruel. It was in the <i>Abstract</i>."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered +unrelentingly.</p> + +<p>"Did he? I thought he only said <i>if</i> he did. I don't believe he said +more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad +health. But he's awfully clever."</p> + +<p>The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving +furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms +round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come +home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have +you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all +the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore +it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We +shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the +lodge here."</p> + +<p>Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would +be beautiful.</p> + +<p>"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can +move back into the house in the winter."</p> + +<p>This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, and she parted from her +friend in more comfort than she could have imagined when they met. She +carried her feeling of elation home with her, and was able to report Sue +in a state of almost smiling prosperity, and of perfect resignation, if +not acquiescence, in whatever the company should make Hilary do. She +figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of ally of the +Northwicks, and she was disappointed that he seemed to derive so little +pleasure from Sue's approval. But he generally approved of all that she +could remember to have said for him to the Northwicks, though he did not +show himself so appreciative of the situation as Matt. She told her +brother what Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to intrude +upon her, and she added that now he must certainly go to see her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h2> + + +<p>A day or two later, when Matt Hilary went to Hatboro', he found Wade in +his study at the church, and he lost no time in asking him, "Wade, what +do you know of the Miss Northwicks? Have you seen them lately?"</p> + +<p>Wade told him how little he had seen Miss Northwick, and how he had not +seen Suzette at all. Then Matt said, "I don't know why I asked you, +because I knew all this from Louise; she was up here the other day, and +they told her. What I am really trying to get at is, whether you know +anything more about how that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you +know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble about her father +came out?"</p> + +<p>Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, as usual, and it really +related so wholly to Suzette in the thoughts of both the young men, that +neither of them found it necessary to limit it explicitly.</p> + +<p>"I feel quite sure he hasn't," said Wade, "though I can't answer +positively."</p> + +<p>"Then that settles it!" Matt walked away to one of Wade's gothic +windows, and looked out. When he turned and came back to his friend, he +said, "If he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he would have +tried to see her at such a time, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine his not doing it. I never thought him a cad."</p> + +<p>"No, nor I."</p> + +<p>"He would have done it unless—unless that woman has some hold that +gives her command of him. He's shown great weakness, to say the least. +But I don't believe there's anything worse. What do the village people +believe?"</p> + +<p>"All sorts of lurid things, some of them; others believe that the affair +is neither more nor less than it appears to be. It's a thing that could +be just what it is in no other country in the world. It's the phase that +our civilization has contributed to the physiognomy of scandal, just as +the exile of the defaulter is the phase we have contributed to the +physiognomy of crime. Public opinion here isn't severe upon Mrs. +Wilmington or Mr. Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I'm not prepared to quarrel with it on that account," said Matt, with +the philosophical serenity which might easily be mistaken for irony in +him. "The book we get our religion from teaches leniency in the judgment +of others."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't teach cynical indifference," Wade suggested.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps that isn't what people feel," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Sometimes I dread to think how deeply our demoralization +goes in certain directions."</p> + +<p>Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and +Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal +ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further +considered in regard to her?"</p> + +<p>"In regard to Miss Sue Northwick? I don't know whether I quite +understand what you mean."</p> + +<p>"I mean, is it anybody's duty—yours or mine—to go to the man and find +him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make +an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's +holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he +could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be +everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely +more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman—What +do you think? He could be reparation, protection, safety, everything!"</p> + +<p>Wade shook his head. "It would be useless. Wilmington knows very well +that such a girl would never let him be anything to her now when he had +slighted her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in love with +her, which I doubt, he couldn't do it."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose not," said Matt. After a little pause, he added, "Then I +must go myself."</p> + +<p>"Go, yourself? What do you mean?" Wade asked.</p> + +<p>"Some one must try to make them understand just how they are situated. I +don't think Louise did; I don't think she knew herself, how the legal +proceedings would affect them; and I think I'd better go and make it +perfectly clear."</p> + +<p>"I can imagine it won't be pleasant," said Wade.</p> + +<p>"No," said Matt, "I don't expect that. But I inferred, from what she +said to Louise, that she would be willing to see me, and I think I had +better go."</p> + +<p>He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade said heartily, "Why, of +course. It's the only thing," and Matt went away with a face which was +cheerful with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure.</p> + +<p>He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, and coming forward +with the magnificent, haughty movement she had. As she caught sight of +him, she started, and then almost ran toward him. "Oh! <i>You</i>!" she said, +and she shrank back a little, and then put her hand impetuously out to +him.</p> + +<p>He took it in his two, and bubbled out, "Are you walking somewhere? Are +you well? Is your sister at home? Don't let me keep you! May I walk with +you?"</p> + +<p>Her smile clouded. "I'm only walking here in the avenue. How is Louise? +Did she get home safely? It was good of her to come here. It isn't the +place for a gay visit."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Miss Northwick! It was good of you to see her. And we were very +happy—relieved—to find that you didn't feel aggrieved with any of <i>us</i> +for what must happen. And I hope you don't feel that I've taken an +advantage of your kindness in coming?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!"</p> + +<p>"I've just been to see Wade." Matt reddened consciously. "But it doesn't +seem quite fair to have met you where you had no choice but to receive +me!"</p> + +<p>"I walk here every morning," she returned, evasively. "I have nowhere +else. I never go out of the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, +sometimes. But I can't meet people."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Matt, with caressing sympathy; and his head swam in the +sudden desire to take her in his arms, and shelter her from that shame +and sorrow preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them that made +him ache with pity; he recognized, as he had not before, that they were +the translation in feminine terms, of her father's eyes. "Poor Wade," he +went on, without well knowing what he was saying, "told me that he—he +was very sorry he had not been able to see you—to do anything—"</p> + +<p>"What would have been the use? No one can do anything. We must bear our +burden; but we needn't add to it by seeing people who believe that—that +my father did wrong."</p> + +<p>Matt's breath almost left him. He perceived that the condition on which +she was bearing her sorrow was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it +could not have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, and it +required no effort in her to frame the theory of her father's innocence; +perhaps no other hypothesis was possible to her, and evidence had +nothing to do with the truth as she felt it.</p> + +<p>"The greatest comfort we have is that none of <i>you</i> believe it; and your +father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't +make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did. +It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that +was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I +would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is +going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have +the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I +thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his +kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us."</p> + +<p>Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust +and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her +right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her +through her love, her pride.</p> + +<p>She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her +freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our +father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every +one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be +punished as they deserve."</p> + +<p>She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the +impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it +all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last +an effort to enlighten her.</p> + +<p>"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't +be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his +solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't +allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage."</p> + +<p>She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't +cleared up?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid—I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly +understand."</p> + +<p>"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," +the girl returned.</p> + +<p>"But a lawyer—indeed you ought to see a lawyer!—could explain how such +a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case +against your father, but against <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Against us? What do they say we have done?"</p> + +<p>Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if +it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take +everything here that belonged to your father—everything on the place, +to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I +can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your +rights in the case."</p> + +<p>"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything +to us!"</p> + +<p>"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his +debts."</p> + +<p>"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have +paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed +of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one."</p> + +<p>Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was +essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure +effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much +was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to +wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred +from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have +been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face +seemed to stay her.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in +every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as +her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the +last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever +wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it."</p> + +<p>"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I <i>know</i> +what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any reassurance. I'm sorry +to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank +you very much for the kind advice you have given me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to +you—all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see +that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you +couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has +said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, +or—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we +understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I +think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, +and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained +staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She +suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say +that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you +have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these +words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then +whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h2> + + +<p>That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner +they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving +out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating +their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for +them."</p> + +<p>"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, passively. +Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her +why; each knew why the other cried.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, +that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell +some of the cattle."</p> + +<p>"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours."</p> + +<p>"Not ours?"</p> + +<p>"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over."</p> + +<p>Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which +they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to +speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when +a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, +and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, +they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but +they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning +such matters, and they did not know his name.</p> + +<p>Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept +from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister +went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and +let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had +left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given +her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said +that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely +enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces +were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her +death.</p> + +<p>Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely +village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her +heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her +mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of +his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed +that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time +she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came +to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, +and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her +against the right in her interest than a friendlier person.</p> + +<p>Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he +was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her. +"Can I see—see—see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some—some +law business?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He +led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and +placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for +her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch.</p> + +<p>"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave +him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know +what it means."</p> + +<p>"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit +against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot +sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares +him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his +debts."</p> + +<p>"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they +will suffer," cried Adeline.</p> + +<p>"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of +the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors."</p> + +<p>"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our +house—mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me +long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill.</p> + +<p>Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endorsement before +he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears +till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the +buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's +creditors can't touch them."</p> + +<p>The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair +and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, +gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?"</p> + +<p>"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers +together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an +anxiety she could not keep out of her voice.</p> + +<p>"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you +showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried +to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for +her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I'm not at all afraid—"</p> + +<p>"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and +plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it.</p> + +<p>Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it +seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without +help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, +early spring night.</p> + +<p>After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice +I <i>should</i> like to give you."</p> + +<p>"Well?" she quavered, meekly.</p> + +<p>"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this +case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply +involved—"</p> + +<p>"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline +hastened to put in, nervously.</p> + +<p>"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could +safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his +creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything +but the real estate."</p> + +<p>"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We +intended just to let it go."</p> + +<p>"That's the best way," Putney said.</p> + +<p>"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place +from us."</p> + +<p>"That was right, and I assure you they can't touch either. If you get +anxious, come to me again—as often as you like."</p> + +<p>"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let +him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the +house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, +with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if +she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested.</p> + +<p>"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better +act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think +just as you do, Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor.</p> + +<p>When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, +Ralph?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Ralph, what <i>do</i> you mean?"</p> + +<p>He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange +phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her +coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, +you know, Ellen."</p> + +<p>"Ralph!"</p> + +<p>"Oh. I may have spent my whole natural life in denouncing him as +demoralization incarnate, and a curse to the community, but I always +<i>liked</i> him, Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely waiting for +him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, to find out just how +<i>much</i> I loved him. I've no doubt but if we could have him among us +again, in the attractive garb of the State's-prison inmates, I should be +hand and glove with brother Northwick."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h2> + + +<p>Adeline's reasons for going to Putney in their trouble had to avail with +Suzette against the prejudice they had always felt towards him. In the +tangible and immediate pressure that now came upon them they were glad +to be guided by his counsel; they both believed it was dictated by a +knowledge of law and a respect for justice, and by no regard for them. +They had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely relied upon +it, as in some sort the advice of an honest and faithful enemy. They +remembered that the last evening he was with them, their father had +spoken leniently of Putney's infirmity, and admiringly of his wasted +ability. Now each step they took was at his suggestion. They left the +great house before the creditors were put in possession of the personal +property, and went to live in the porter's lodge at the gate of the +avenue, which they furnished with the few things they could claim for +their own out of their former belongings, and from the ready money +Suzette had remaining in her name at the bank. They abandoned everything +of value in the house they had left, even to their richer dresses and +their jewels: they preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw +that it saved them more than it cost them in their helpless pride.</p> + +<p>The Newtons continued in their quarters unmolested; the furniture was +theirs and the building belonged to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons +called them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to get going in +their new place, and Elbridge and she lived there for a few weeks with +them, till they said they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood +guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain them in the +spoliation that had to come. He locked the avenue gate against the +approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter +and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways +he rendered himself obstructive and inconvenient.</p> + +<p>His deference to the law was paid entirely through Putney, whose +smartness inspired Elbridge with a respect he felt for no other virtue +in man. Putney arranged with him to take the Northwick place and manage +it on shares for the Northwick girls; he got for him two of the old +horses which Elbridge wanted for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. +The rest of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round about, who had +fancies for costly cattle: the horses, good, bad and indifferent, were +sent to a sale-stable in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all +that was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the place, of its +former equipment, except the few farm implements, a cart or two, and an +ancient carryall that Putney bid off for Newton's use.</p> + +<p>Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house to let for a term +of years, and failing a permanent tenant before the season opened, he +rented it to an adventurous landlady, who proposed to fill it with +summer boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it monthly, in +advance, that would enable the Northwick girls to live on, in the +porter's lodge, without fear of want. For the future, Putney imagined a +scheme for selling off some of the land next the villas of South +Hatboro', in lots to suit purchasers. That summer sojourn had languished +several years in uncertainty of its own fortunes; but now, by a caprice +of the fashion which is sending people more and more to the country for +the spring and fall months, it was looking up decidedly. Property had so +rapidly appreciated there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot +for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the acre.</p> + +<p>In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of his clients, he had +to reconcile his practice with theories he had held concerning unearned +land-values; and he justified himself to his crony, Dr. Morrell, on the +ground that these might be justly taken from such rich and idle people +as wanted to spend the spring and fall at South Hatboro'. The more land +at a high price you could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro' +was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the town tax, the +better for the land that working men wanted to get a living on. In +helping the Northwick girls to keep all they could out of the clutches +of their father's creditors, he held that he was only defending their +rights; and any fight against a corporation was a kind of holy war. He +professed to be getting on very comfortably with his conscience, and he +promised that he would not let it worry other people. To Mr. Gerrish he +made excuses for taking charge of the affairs of two friendless women, +when he ought to have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their +father's sins, as any respectable man would. He asked Gerrish to +consider the sort of fellow he had always been, drinking up his own +substance, while Gerrish was thriftily devouring other people's houses, +and begged him to make allowance for him.</p> + +<p>The anomalous relation he held to the Northwicks afforded him so much +excitement and enjoyment, that he passed his devil's dividend, as he +called his quarterly spree. He kept straight longer than his fellow +citizens had known him to do for many years. But Putney was one of those +men who could not be credited by people generally with the highest +motives. He too often made a mock of what people generally regarded as +the highest motives; he puzzled and affronted them; and as none of his +most intimate friends could claim that he was respectable in the +ordinary sense of the word, people generally attributed interested +motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. Adeline Northwick profited +by a call she made upon Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to +sound him in regard to Putney's management of her affairs; and if the +doctor's powders had not so distinctly done her good, she might not have +been able to rely upon the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting +wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her sister.</p> + +<p>"He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes," she said.</p> + +<p>But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in everything, not so much +because she implicitly trusted him, as because she knew no one else to +trust. The kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the first of +their trouble, had, of course, become impossible to both the sisters. He +had, in fact, necessarily ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had +steadily rejected all the overtures Louise made her since they last met. +Louise wanted to come again to see her; but Sue evaded her proposals; at +last she would not answer her letters; and their friendship outwardly +ceased. Louise did not blame her; she accounted for her, and pitied and +forgave her; she said it was what she herself would do in Sue's place, +but probably if she had continued herself, she would not have done what +Sue did, even in Sue's place. She remembered Sue with a tender constancy +when she could no longer openly approach her without hurting more than +she helped; and before the day of the assignee's sale came, she thought +out a scheme which Wade carried into effect with Putney's help. Those +things of their own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bidden +off, and restored to them in such a way that it was not possible for +them to refuse to take back the dresses, the jewels, the particular +pieces of furniture which Louise associated with them.</p> + +<p>Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort; Adeline simply +exulted in getting her things again; Sue gave all hers into Adeline's +keeping, and bade her never let her see them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IB" id="IB"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick kept up the mental juggle he had used in getting himself away +from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he +was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. +He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his +destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he +let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset +Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in +the pretence that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, to look +after some business of his quarries. He verified his pretence by +speaking of it to the conductor who knew him; he was not a person to +take conductors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account to +the man for his apparent change of mind. He was at some trouble to make +it seem casual and insignificant, and he wondered if the conductor meant +to insinuate anything by saying in return that it was a pretty brisk day +to be knocking round much in a stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, +"It was, rather;" he watched the conductor to see if he should betray +any particular interest in the matter when he left him. But the +conductor went on punching the passengers' tickets, and seemed to forget +Northwick as soon as he left him. At the next station, Northwick +followed him out on the platform to find if he sent any telegram off. +When he had once given way to this anxiety, which he knew to be +perfectly stupid and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He +took his bag with him each time he left the car, and he meant not to go +back if he saw the conductor telegraphing. It was intensely cold, and in +spite of the fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost +gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, when it stopped and +started, as if it were crunching along on a bed of dry snow; the noises +of the wheels seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and then +Northwick held his breath for fear one of them might be broken. He had a +dread of accident such as he had never felt before; his life had never +seemed so valuable to him as now; he reflected that it was so because it +was to be devoted now to retrieving the past in a new field under new +conditions. His life, in this view, was not his own; it was a precious +trust which he held for others, first for his children, and then for +those whom he was finally to save from loss by the miscarriage of his +enterprises. He justified himself anew in what he was intending; it +presented itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he +was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was a defaulter who +had used the money in his charge, and tampered with the record so as to +cover up the fact, and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off +a large sum of money that was not morally his. At one of the stations +where he got out to see whether the conductor was telegraphing, he +noticed the conductor eyeing his bag curiously; and he knew that he +believed there was money in it. Northwick felt a thrill of gratified +cunning in realizing how mistaken the conductor was; but he was willing +the fellow should think he was carrying up money to pay off his quarry +hands.</p> + +<p>He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this conductor would leave +the train, and it would continue northward in the charge of another man; +he seldom went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new conductor +would hardly know him. He meant to go on to Blackbrook Junction, and +take the New England Central there for Montreal; but he saw the +conductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junction, and it +suddenly occurred to him that he must not go to Montreal by a route so +direct that any absconding defaulter would be expected to take it. He +had not the least proof that the conductor's dispatch had anything to do +with him; but he could not help acting as if it had. He said good-day to +the conductor as he passed him, and he went out of the station, with his +bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched till he saw the +conductor go off in another direction, and then he came back, and got +aboard the train just as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that +he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness of stealth was +such that he felt as if he were followed, and that he must act so as to +baffle and mislead pursuit.</p> + +<p>At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no +one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, +and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He +perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could +not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there +was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely +anywhere, by any road.</p> + +<p>But he had now let the New England Central train leave without him, and +it only remained for him to push on to Wellwater, where he hoped to +connect with the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Dominion +road. He remembered that this train divided at Wellwater, and certain +cars ran direct to Quebec, up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He +meant to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned whether he +had better not go straight on from Wellwater; when he recalled the long, +all-night ride without a sleeper, which he had once made on that route +many summers before, he said to himself that in his shaken condition, he +must not run the risk of such a hardship. If he were to get sick from +it, or die, it would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now made +him think of what Hilary had said; Hilary who had called him a thief. He +would show Hilary whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he would +make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary retracting and apologizing +in the presence of the whole Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and +Northwick forgave him, while it was also passing through his mind that +he must reduce the risks of railroad accident to a minimum, by +shortening the time. They reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, +by reducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the safest. If +he could get to Montreal from Wellwater in four or five hours, when it +would take him twelve hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty +to go to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of danger of +every kind. He must not even fatigue himself too much; and he decided to +telegraph on to Wellwater, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to +Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the ordinary car, and he had +found it very rough.</p> + +<p>It suddenly occurred to him that he must now assume a false name; and he +reflected that he must take one that sounded like his own, or else he +would not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose Warwick, and he +kept saying it over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the +station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the +Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his +own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he +congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of +something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did +not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like +something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. +The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if +Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the +other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his +love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, +and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the +demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his +children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint +of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight +of himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face betrayed +nothing; it looked, as it always did, like the face of a kindly, +respectable man, a financially reliable face, the face of a leading +citizen. He gathered courage and strength from it to put away the +remorse that was devouring him. If that was the way he looked that was +the way he must be; and he could only be leaving those so dear to him +for some good purpose. He recalled that his purpose was to clear the +name they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it; to rehabilitate +himself; to secure his creditors from final loss. This was a good +purpose, the best purpose that a man in his place could have; he +recollected that he was to be careful of his life and health, because he +had dedicated himself to this purpose.</p> + +<p>He determined to keep this purpose steadily in mind, not to lose thought +of it for an instant; it was his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized +him; a doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew that he had +signed that dispatch Northwick and not Warwick; he saw just how his +signature looked on the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now +he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending any dispatch. He +cursed himself under his breath, and in the same breath he humbly prayed +to God for some way of escape. His terror made it certain to him that he +would be arrested as soon as he reached Wellwater. That would be the +next stop, the conductor told him, when he halted him with the question +on his way through the cars. The conductor said they were behind time, +and Northwick knew by the frantic pull of the train that they were +running to make up the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the +car; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In his prayer he +bargained with God that if He would let him escape, he would give every +thought, every breath to making up the loss of his creditors; he half +promised to return the money he was carrying away, and trust to his own +powers, his business talent in a new field, to retrieve himself. He +resolved to hide himself as soon as he reached Wellwater; it would be +dark, and he hoped that by this understanding with Providence he could +elude the officer in getting out of the car. But if there were two, one +at each end of the car?</p> + +<p>There was none, and Northwick walked away from the station with the +other passengers, who were going to the hotel near the station for +supper. In the dim light of the failing day and the village lamps, he +saw with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the strong, still +cold of the winterland he had been journeying into. The white drifts +were everywhere; the vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from +the hotel like a sea of snow; on its edge lay the excursion steamer in +which Northwick had one summer made the tour of the lake with his +family, long ago.</p> + +<p>He was only a few miles from the Canadian frontier; with a rebound from +his anxiety, he now exulted in the safety he had already experienced. He +remained tranquilly eating after the departure of the Montreal train was +cried; and when he was left almost alone, the head-waiter came to him +and said, "Your train's just going, sir."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," he answered, "I'm going out on the Quebec line." He wanted +to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were +made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at +the next station, which was still within the American border, on that +line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half +an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch +asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in +starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and +waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long +all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to +Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his +journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal +with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any +possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had +prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, +with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every +faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that +perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he +was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed +his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer +agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him; +and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but +should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent +of others in the effort to retrieve his losses.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIB" id="IIB"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their +talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an +interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying +personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made +themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers. +They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends +were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked +freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and +they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of +them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the +Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in +Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter shocked +Northwick; it seemed immoral; he remembered that though he might seem a +defaulter, he was a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But he +listened eagerly; if their enterprise were one that approved itself to +his judgment, the chance of their discussing it before him might be a +leading of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence +had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier +safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the +agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to +study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed +first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was +the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. Gold had always +been found there, but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine it +than it was worth; but with the application of his new process of +working up the tailings, there was no doubt of the result. It was simply +wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.</p> + +<p>Northwick had heard that song before; and he fell back in his seat, with +a smile which was perhaps too cynical for a partner of Providence, but +which was natural in a man of his experience. He knew something about +processes to utilize the tailings of gold mines which would not +otherwise pay for working; he had paid enough for his knowledge: so much +that if he still had the purchase-money he need not be going into exile +now, and beginning life under a false name, in a strange land.</p> + +<p>By and by he found himself listening again, and he heard the Canadian +saying, "And there's timber enough on the tract to pay twice over what +it will cost, even if the mine wasn't worth a penny."</p> + +<p>"Well, we might go down and see the timber, any way," said one of the +party who had not yet spoken much. "And then we could take a look at +Markham's soap-mine, too. Unless," he added, "you had to tunnel under a +hundred feet of snow to get at it. A good deal like diggin' the north +pole up by the roots, wouldn't it be?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of +an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties +that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the +autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you +could in the early part of January, when I was down there."</p> + +<p>"The hole hadn't run away?"</p> + +<p>"No. It was just where we left it."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's encouragin'. But I say, Markham, how do you get down there +in the winter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. Lots of fellows in the +lumber trade do it all winter long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne's, +about twenty miles below Quebec—from Quebec you have your choice of +train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a clean thing of it, and do it all +by sleigh. I take it by easy stages, and so I take the long route: there +is a short cut, but the stops are far between. You make your twenty +miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day; eighteen to St. Joachim, the +next; thirty-nine to Baie St. Paul, the next; twenty to Malbaie, the +next; then forty to Tadoussac; then eighteen to Rivière Marguerite. You +can do something every day at that rate, even in the new snow; but on +the ice of the Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there's a pull of sixty miles; +you're at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you know it. Good +feed, and good beds, all along. You wrap up, and you don't mind. Of +course," Markham concluded, "it isn't the climate of Stanstead," as if +the climate of Stanstead were something like that of St. Augustine.</p> + +<p>"Well, it sounds a mere bagatelle," said the more talkative of the other +two, "but it takes a week of steady travel."</p> + +<p>"What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Golconda's yours when you get +there?" said Markham. "Why, Watkins, the young spruce and poplar alone +on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the whole. A +pulp-mill, which you could knock together for a few shillings, on one of +those magnificent water-powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a +single summer."</p> + +<p>"And what would it do in the winter when your magnificent water-power +was restin'?"</p> + +<p>"Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set an example of industry to +all the lazy <i>habitans</i> in the country. You could get your fuel for the +cost of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar in under your +furnace, and have it come out paper pulp at the other end of the mill."</p> + +<p>Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud haw-haws at Markham's +drolling, and Watkins said, "I say, Markham, weren't you born on the +other side of the line?"</p> + +<p>"No. But my father was; and I wish he'd stayed there till I came. Then +I'd be going round with all the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for +a chance to put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out the +knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging you not to slap your +everlasting fortune in the face."</p> + +<p>They now all roared together again, and at Sherbrooke they changed cars.</p> + +<p>Northwick had to change too, but he did not try to get into the same car +with them. He wanted to think, to elaborate in his own mind the +suggestion for his immediate and remoter future which he had got from +their talk; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly he dreaded the +misgiving, that might come from hearing more of their talk. He thought +he knew, now, just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be +swerved from it.</p> + +<p>He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. He bore very well the +long waits that he had to make both at Sherbrooke and Richmond; but when +the train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled himself in +his seat with a solider content than he had felt before, and gave +himself up to the pleasure of shaping the future, that was so obediently +plastic in his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at the end of +the car with fuel, and Northwick did not suffer from the cold that +strengthened and deepened with the passing night outside, though he was +not overcoated and booted for any such temperature as his +fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were all Canadians, and they +talked now and then in their broad-vowelled French, but their voices +were low, and they came and went quietly at the country stations. The +car was old and worn, and badly hung; but in spite of all, Northwick +drowsed in the fervor of the glowing stove, and towards morning he fell +into a long and dreamless sleep.</p> + +<p>He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that surprised him, and found +the train pulling into the station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like +a soft lamp through the thick frost on the car-window; when he emerged, +he found it a cloudless splendor on a world of snow. The vast landscape, +which he had seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty rivers +to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue distance, showed rounded +and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid +the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the +currents below. The villages of the <i>habitans</i> sparkled from tinned roof +and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a +thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping +swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and +speckled the expanse of glistening white with single figures and groups +of men and horses.</p> + +<p>It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a thrill of boyish +delight. He wondered for a moment why he had never come to Quebec in +winter before, and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut-faced +driver of one of the carrioles which waited outside the station to take +the passengers across the river, and tossed his bag into the bottom of +the little sledge. He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and +the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over the space of ice +which was kept clear of snow by diligent sweeping with fir-tree tops, +and then up the steep incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were +roadways from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels of +thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow; and the foot passengers, muffled to +the eyes against the morning cold, came and went among the vehicles in +the middle of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, to +keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight snow that slipped here +and there from the steep tin roofs.</p> + +<p>Northwick's unreasoned gladness grew with each impression of the beauty +and novelty. It quickened associations of his earliest days, and of the +winter among his native hills. He felt that life could be very pleasant +in this latitude; he relinquished the notion he had cherished at times +of going to South America with his family in case he should finally fail +to arrange with the company for his safe return home; he forecast a +future in Quebec where he could build a new home for his children, among +scenes that need not be all so alien. This did not move him from his +fixed intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the courage of +indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was bent upon the scheme he had +in mind, and as soon as he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare +for it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIIB" id="IIIB"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>The inn he had chosen was one which he remembered, from former visits to +Quebec, as having seemed a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. +He got a room, and went to it long enough to count the money he had with +him, and find it safe. Then he took one of the notes from the others, +and went to a broker's to get it changed.</p> + +<p>The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but he concerned himself +only with the genuineness of the greenback, and after a keen glance at +Northwick's unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars in +Canadian bills. "We used to make your countrymen give us something +over," he said with a smile in recognition of Northwick's nationality.</p> + +<p>"Yes; that's all changed, now," returned Northwick. "Do I look so very +American?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know that," said the broker, with an airy English +inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all +wear fur caps in such weather."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's a good idea," said Northwick. He spoke easily, but with a +nether torment of longing to look at the newspaper lying open on the +counter. He could see that it was the morning paper; there might be +something about him in it. The thought turned him faint; but he knew +that if the paper happened to have anything about him in it, any rumor +of his offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear it. He +could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to the self he had put behind +him, but he could not bear anything less. The papers seemed to thrust +themselves upon him; newsboys followed him up in the street with them; +he saw them in all the shops, where he went for the fur cap and fur +overcoat he bought, for the underclothing and changes of garments that +he had to provide; for the belt he got to put his money in. This great +sum, which he dared not bank, must be carried about with him; it must +not leave him night or day; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and +worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt was really for gold, +but the forty-two thousand-dollar notes, which were not a great bulk, +would easily go into it.</p> + +<p>He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, and put the belt on. +Then he felt easier, and he looked up the landlord to ask about the +route he wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it was one very +commonly travelled by lumber merchants going down into the woods to look +after their logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; but the +landlord said it was just as well to go by train to St. Anne, and save +that much sleighing; you would get enough of it then. Northwick thought +so too, and after the early dinner they gave him he took the cars for +St. Anne.</p> + +<p>He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and strong. He thought he +might get a nap on the way; but he remained vividly awake; and even that +night he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of his mind, as +if it were something separate from him, and were struggling to get +beyond the control of his will. The hotel in the little native village +was very good in its way; he had an excellent supper and an easy bed; +but he slept brokenly, and he was awake long before the early breakfast +which he had ordered for his start next day. The landlord wished to +persuade him that there was no need of such great haste; it was only +eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he was to make his first stop, and +the road was so good that he would get there in a few hours. He had +better stop and visit the church, and see the sick people's offerings, +which they left there every year, in gratitude to the saint for healing +them of their maladies. The landlord said it was a pity he could not +come some time at the season of the pilgrimage; his countrymen often +came then. Northwick perceived that in spite of his fur cap and +overcoat, and his great Canadian boots, he was easily recognizable for +an American to this man, though he could not definitely decide whether +his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell whether it was in +earnest or in irony that he invited him to try St. Anne for any trouble +he happened to be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, while +his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of hanging that money-belt at +her altar, and so easing himself of all his pains. He grotesquely +imagined the American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage to St. +Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral disease to her: forged notes, +bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part +of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the +gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for +himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his +own way and at his own time.</p> + +<p>In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in some ways, Northwick +found him a kindly young fellow. He treated Northwick with a young +fellow's comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped him forget +the hurts to his respectability which rankled so when he remembered +them. He explained the difference between the two routes from Malbaie +on, and advised him to take the longer, which lay through a more settled +district, where he would be safer in case of any mischance. But if he +liked to take the shorter, he told him there were good <i>campes</i>, or +log-house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he would find +excellent meals and beds, and be well cared for by people who kept them +in the winter for travellers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that +route, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were +carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers.</p> + +<p>This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in +government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he +would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a +tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to +Chicoutimi with him.</p> + +<p>After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on +runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and +back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air +which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole, +sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light +shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at +noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after +dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow +to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the +name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was +silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man +might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his +belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within +his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began, +except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin' +freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and +which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally +shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at +regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of +a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He +wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not +let him stop; he had to keep tolling.</p> + +<p>Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was +drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the +death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched +himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go +again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric +lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn +Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like +barking, and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of the +habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled +with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in +a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion.</p> + +<p>Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate +and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength +away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the +greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue +stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but +it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from +the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two +rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he +had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand +much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them +speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his +being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild +and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and +children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it.</p> + +<p>The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he +went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the +younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the +guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his +host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down +before the fire with the carriole driver.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IVB" id="IVB"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself; +and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, +but he got through without much interruption. The following day, +however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the +twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the +journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that +first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt +well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed +to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm +stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first +his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of +a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not +tell where he was going, or why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact +that he had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond pursuit, +but beyond the temptation to return voluntarily and give himself up. He +knew, in those days before the treaty, that he was safe from +extradition; but he feared that if a detective approached he would yield +to him, and go back, especially as he could not always keep before +himself the reasons for not going back. When from time to time these +reasons escaped him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in +case he went home and restored to the company the money he had brought +away. It needed a voluntary operation of logic to prove that this +partial restitution would not avail; that he would be arrested, and +convicted. He would not be allowed to go on living with his children in +his own house. He would be taken from them, and put in prison.</p> + +<p>He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wakeful night. His driver +wished to break the forty mile journey midway, but Northwick would not +consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got +through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because +it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the +river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, +and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was +twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been +nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its +summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier now than it seemed in the +summer. The lamps shone from the windows where he had seen them then, +when he walked about a little just after supper; the village store had a +group of <i>habitans</i> and half-breeds about its stove, and there was as +much show of life in the streets as there used to be at the same hour +and season in the little White Mountain village where his boyhood was +passed. It did not seem so bad; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live +there well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He imagined +bringing his family there after his mills had got successfully going; +then probably other people from the outside world would be living there.</p> + +<p>He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep well, and in the +night he was feverish. He thought how horrible it would be if he were to +fall sick there; he might die before he could get word to his children +and they reach him. He thought of going back to Quebec, and sailing for +Europe, and having his children join him there. They could sell the +place at Hatboro', and with what it brought, and with what he had, they +could live comfortably in some cheap country which had no extradition +treaty with the United States. He remembered reading of a defaulter who +went to a little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, and was +safe there; he found the President treading his own grape vats; and it +cost nothing to live there, though it was dull, and the exile became so +homesick that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered that he had +not thought of that place before; then he reflected that no ships could +make their way from Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He +would be arrested if he left any American port, or arrested as soon as +he reached England. He remembered the advertisement of a line of +steamships between Quebec and Brazil; he must wait for the St. Lawrence +to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morning must go back to Quebec.</p> + +<p>But in the morning he felt so much better that he decided to keep on to +Chicoutimi. He could not bear the thought of being found out by +detectives at Quebec, and by reporters who would fill the press with +paragraphs about him. He must die to the world, to his family, before he +could hope to revisit either.</p> + +<p>The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the glare of the snow hurt +his eyes. He went to the store to get some glasses to protect them, and +he bought some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he should be +wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha Bay, but the road on the +frozen river was good, and he could do a long stretch of it. From +Rivière Marguerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, and the +going would be smooth and easy.</p> + +<p>All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it in that far-off summer. +The tops of the interminable solitudes that walled the river in on both +sides appeared lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, but +doubtless they had grown beyond their real height in his memory. They +had lost the mystery of the summer aspect when they were dimmed with +rain or swathed in mist; all their outlines were in plain sight, and the +forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that +unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their +stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of +white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a +fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the +photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, +and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white +between the ranges of extinct volcanoes.</p> + +<p>At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for the snow to lodge +on; then their rocky faces shone harsh and stern; and sometimes the +springs that gushed from them in summer were frozen in long streams of +ice, like the tears bursting from the source of some Titanic grief. +These monstrous icicles, blearing the visage of the rock, which he +figured as nothing but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he +nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole in front of the +great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and silently pointed at them with his +whip. He had no need to name them, the fugitive would have known them in +another planet. It was growing late; the lonely day was waning to the +lonely night. While they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from +the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and repeated itself in the +echo that wandered from depth to depth of the frozen wilderness, and +seemed to die wailing away at the point where it first tore the silence.</p> + +<p>Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point or a recess where +a saw-mill stood, with a few log houses about it, and with signs of +human life in the smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their +chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the doorways as the +carriole passed. At the next of these beyond the capes, the driver +proposed to stop and pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt +worn out by his day's journey; his nerves were spent as if by a lateral +pressure of the lifeless desert he had been travelling through, and by +the stress of his thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran +back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By this time, long +before this time, they must be wild with anxiety about him; by this time +their shame must have come to poison their grief. He realized it all, +and he realized that he could not, must not help them. He must not go +back to them if ever he was to live for them again. But at last he asked +why he should live, why he should not die. There was laudanum enough in +that bottle to kill him.</p> + +<p>As he walked up from the carriole at the river's edge to the door of the +saw-miller's cabin, he drew the cork of the vial, and poured out the +poison; it followed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on the +snow, that the miller's dog smelt at and turned from in offence. That +night he could not sleep again; toward morning, when all the house was +snoring, he gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. He heard +the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in their dreams; then they +were still, and he fell into a deep sleep.</p> + +<p>They let him sleep late; and he had a dream of himself, which must have +been caused by the nascent consciousness of the going and coming around +him. People were talking of him, and one said how old he was; and +another looked at his long, white beard which flowed down over the +blanket as far as his waist. He told them that he wore it so that they +should not know him when he got home; and he showed them how he could +take it off and put it on at pleasure. He started awake, and found his +carriole driver standing over him.</p> + +<p>"You got you' sleep hout, no?"</p> + +<p>"What time is it?" said Northwick, stupidly, scanning the man to make +sure that it was he, and waiting for a full sense of the situation to +reach him.</p> + +<p>"Nine o'clock," said the man, and he turned away.</p> + +<p>Northwick got up, and found the place empty of the men and dogs. A +woman, who looked like a half-breed, brought him his breakfast of fried +venison and bean-coffee; her little one held by her skirt, and stared at +him. He thought of Elbridge's baby that he had seen die. It seemed ages +ago. He offered the child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its +mother's dress. The driver said, "'E do'n' know what money is, yet," but +the mother seemed to know; she showed her teeth, and took it for the +child. Northwick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it was not +to know what money was; it had never occurred to him before; he asked +himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to +pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have +no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of +childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for +his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You +could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and +supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went +out to see Elbridge's sick boy; when Elbridge left the dead child to +drive him to the station. It was something else that came in there; but +that thing and money were the same, after all: he had proved his love +for his children by making money for them; if he had not loved them so +much he would not have tried to get so much money, and he would not have +been where he was.</p> + +<p>His mind fought away from his control, as the sledge slipped along over +the frozen river again. It was very cold, but the full sun on his head +afflicted him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up from the +snow, too. His head felt imponderable; and yet he could not hold it up. +It was always sinking forward; and he woke from naps without being sure +that he had been asleep.</p> + +<p>He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi; but his start was so +late that it seemed to him as if they would never get to Haha Bay. When +they arrived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress thither faded +away; it was as if the starting and stopping were one, or contained in +the same impulse. It might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to +Chicoutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the beginning; the +wish could involve its accomplishment only at the end. He said to +himself that this was unreasonable; it was a poor rule that would not +work both ways.</p> + +<p>This ran through his mind in the presence of the old man who bustled out +of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger +than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered +curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in +birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which +branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his +left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face +was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition +went through Northwick. He knew the man for the talkative Canadian who +had taken him and his wife a drive over the hills around the bay, in the +morning, when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with them at +this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass of milk. Northwick's wife +liked the man, and said she would like to live in such a house in such a +place, and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her was so +terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were there; but Northwick said +to himself that he must not let the man know that he had ever seen him +before. The resolution cost him something, for he felt so broken and +weak that he would have liked to claim his kindness as an old +acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals +for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha +Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former +meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently +knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there +before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting.</p> + +<p>"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me +'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English +with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but +it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They +are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live. +No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for +you, sir."</p> + +<p>Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But +hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two +rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always +ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick +in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' +'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to +his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right."</p> + +<p>"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the +same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to +Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would +like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird—<i>Oiseau</i>? +You have been here before?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and +gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed +that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There +was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden, +with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was +the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the +frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now.</p> + +<p>He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there, +and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak; +and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the +sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his grave, and be done with +it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VB" id="VB"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the +chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I +wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff +and on. I am born at Quebec"—in his tremulous inattention, Northwick +was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years +before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon +him—"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the +Americans know me. I used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots +of bear in the bush when I first came; now they get pretty scarce. I +have the best moose-dog. But I don't care much for the hunting now; I am +too hold. That's a fact. I am sixty; and forty winters I 'ave pass at +Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I +don't hear much ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here in +the summer; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chicoutimi; and more gold in +the 'ills."</p> + +<p>He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he +knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at +once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real +motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, +and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart +from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose +he was there to look into the question of the mines; but there was +something else that seemed to go with that intention; something like a +wish to get away from the past so remotely and so completely that no +rumor of it should reach him till he was willing to let it; to be absent +from all who had known him so long that no one of them would know him if +he saw him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but to grow a +beard that should effectually disguise him. He recalled how he had +looked with that long beard in his dream; he put his hand to his chin +and felt the eight days' stubble there, and he wondered how much time it +would take to grow such a beard.</p> + +<p>Bird went on talking. "I know that Chicoutimi Company. I told Markham +about the gold when he was here for bear. He is smart; but he don't know +heverything. You think he can make it pay with that invention? I doubt, +me. There is one place in those 'ills," and Bird came closer to +Northwick, and dropped his voice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with +the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you +want capital."</p> + +<p>He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which +he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove +hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny +thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you +can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the +ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it +had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe. +Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. +But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is +to be 'omesick."</p> + +<p>The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his +consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with +self-pity.</p> + +<p>"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more. +I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down +those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep +the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead! +Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some +capital—ten, fifteen thousand dollars—I would hopen that mine, and +take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by, +Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want +nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough +there to pay, and I can hire those <i>habitans</i> cheap, like dirt. What is +their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is +the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time."</p> + +<p>Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed +aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps, +and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He +knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and +then he would not have to go.</p> + +<p>"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted."</p> + +<p>"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe +and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed.</p> + +<p>"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. He +was very gentle and light-handed, like a woman; but Northwick felt one +touch on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help.</p> + +<p>He let his host carry his two bags into the next room for him; the bag +that he had brought with the few things from home, when he pretended +that he was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that he had got in +Quebec to hold the things he had to buy there. When Bird set them down +beside his bed he could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed +it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the bed, and pulled +the bearskin robe that he found on it up over him, and fell into a thin +sleep, that was not so different from his dim waking that he was sure it +had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp.</p> + +<p>"Been 'aving a little nap?" he asked, looking gayly down on Northwick's +bewildered face. "Well, that is all right! We have supper, now, pretty +soon. You hungry? Well, in a 'alf-hour."</p> + +<p>He went out again, and Northwick, after some efforts, made out to rise. +His skull felt sore, and his arms as if they had been beaten with hard +blows. But after he had bathed his face and hands in the warm water Bird +had brought with the lamp, he found himself better, though he was still +wrapped in that cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or +waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, white walls: the Seven +Stations of the Cross, in colored prints; a lithograph of Indians +burning a Jesuit priest. Over the bed's head hung a chromo of Our Lady, +with seven swords piercing her heart; beside the bed was a Parian +crucifix, with the figure of Christ writhing on it.</p> + +<p>These things made Northwick feel very far and strange. His simple and +unimaginative nature could in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, +this alien language. He heard soft voices of women in the next room, the +first that he had heard since he last heard his daughters'. A girl's +voice singing was severed by a door that closed and then opened to let +it be heard a few notes more, and again closed.</p> + +<p>But he found Bird still alone in the next room when he returned to it. +"Well, now, we go to supper as soon as Father Étienne comes. He is our +curate—our minister—here. And he eats with me when he heat anywhere. I +tell 'im 'e hought to have my appetite, if he wants to keep up his +spiritual strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, no? Well, +you let that foundation tumble hin, and then where you got you' soul, +heigh? But Father Étienne speaks very good English. Heducate at Rome. I +am the only other educated man at Haha Bay. You don't 'appen to have +some papers in you' bag? French? English? It is the same!"</p> + +<p>"Papers? No!" said Northwick, with horror and suspicion. "What is in the +papers?"</p> + +<p>"That is what I like to find hout," said Bird, spreading his hands with +a shrug.</p> + +<p>The outer door opened, and a young man in a priest's long robe came in. +Bird introduced his guest, and Northwick shook hands with the priest, +who had a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, like a +girl's. He might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine; he had the spare +figure of a man under thirty who leads an active life; his features were +refined by study and the thought of others. When he smiled the innocence +of his face was more than girlish, it was childlike. Points of light +danced in his large, soft, dark eyes; an effect of trusting, alluring +kindness came from his whole radiant visage.</p> + +<p>Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He shrank away from the +priest, and at the table he left the talk to him and his host. They +supped in a room opening into a sort of wing; beyond it was a small +kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the dishes, and where that +girl whom he heard singing kept trilling away as if she were excited, +like a canary, by the sound of the frying meat.</p> + +<p>Bird said, by way of introduction, that the woman was his niece; but he +did not waste time on her. He began to talk up his conjecture as to +Northwick's business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained fact. +Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him to it. They discussed the +question of gold in the hills, which the young father treated as an old +story of faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor of fresh +excitement. The priest spoke of the poor return from the mines at +Chaudière, but Bird claimed that it was different here. Northwick did +not say anything: he listened and watched them, as if they were a pair +of confidence-men trying to work him. The priest seemed to be anxious to +get the question off the personal ground into the region of the +abstract, and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, a ruse +to throw him from his guard, and commit him to something. He made up his +mind to get away as early as he could in the morning; he did not think +it was a safe place.</p> + +<p>"Very well!" the priest cried, at one point. "Suppose you had the +capital you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is +there, and you were rich. What would you do?"</p> + +<p>"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay +to-morrow morning!"</p> + +<p>"And where would you go?"</p> + +<p>"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!"</p> + +<p>The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned +with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men +in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In +what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into +himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed.</p> + +<p>"Where do they live?"</p> + +<p>Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as +if to restrain a burst of information from him.</p> + +<p>"I suppose most of them live in New York."</p> + +<p>"All the time?"</p> + +<p>"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar +Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and +they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their +yachts."</p> + +<p>"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea. +My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the +advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again +in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him +lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen +it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a +moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those +rich people in Europe, by inheritance?"</p> + +<p>"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used +to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They +made it."</p> + +<p>"How? Excuse me!"</p> + +<p>"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the +rise in land-values."</p> + +<p>"What causes the land to rise in value?"</p> + +<p>"The demand for it. The necessity."</p> + +<p>"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man +loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are +the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are +miserable. Is it so?"</p> + +<p>Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these +questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion +of Bird than as an expression of his own opinions; but in his dazed +intelligence he could not find the answers.</p> + +<p>Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other +world—an angel—a mere imbecile—about business!" The priest threw +himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful +teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few +thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish +work to every man in Haha Bay—to hundreds. Are the miners more +miserable than those <i>habitans</i>, eh?"</p> + +<p>"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At +least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out. +What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile.</p> + +<p>"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Père +Étienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to +Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal—"</p> + +<p>"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling +very well—I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of +what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at +Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a +third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both.</p> + +<p>It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped +to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made +shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with +lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a +little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. +Afterwards he appeared to have come back.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIB" id="VIB"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two +Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really +leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into +that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he +could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to +decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he +pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the +reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness; +but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him.</p> + +<p>Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in +his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he +would like to have some breakfast; perhaps he would like a cup of tea +and some toast.</p> + +<p>Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in a few minutes the tea +was brought him by a young girl, whom Bird called Virginie; he said she +was his grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not disturbed the +gentleman: she always sang; one could hardly stop her; but she meant no +harm. He stayed to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to put +away the suspicion Bird's kindness roused in him. He was in such need of +kindness that he did not wish to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched +Bird narrowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he listened +warily when he began to talk of the priest and to praise him. It was a +pleasure, Bird said, for one educated man to converse with another; and +Father Étienne and he often maintained opposite sides of a question +merely for the sake of the discussion; it was like a game of cards where +there were no stakes; you exercised your mind.</p> + +<p>Northwick understood this too little to believe it; when he talked, he +talked business; even the jokes among the men he was used to meant +business.</p> + +<p>"Then you haven't really found any gold in the hills?" he asked, slyly.</p> + +<p>"My faith, yes!" said Bird. "But," he added sadly, "perhaps it would not +pay to mine it. I will show you when you get up. Better not go to +Chicoutimi to-day! It is snowing."</p> + +<p>"Snowing?" Northwick repeated. "Then I can't go!"</p> + +<p>"Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best," Bird suggested. "Try to get +some sleep. Sleep is youth. When we wake we are old again, but some of +the youth stick to our fingers. No?" He smiled gayly, and went out, +closing the door softly after him, and Northwick drowsed. In a dream +Bird came back to him with some specimens from his gold mine. Northwick +could see that the yellow metal speckling the quartz was nothing but +copper pyrites, but he thought it best to pretend that he believed it +gold; for Bird, while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was +feeling with the other for the buckle of Northwick's belt, as he sat up +in bed. He woke in fright, and the fear did not afterwards leave him in +the fever which now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was aware +that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared for, and that his host and +all his household were his devoted watchers and nurses; when he knew the +doctor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this he perceived +cloudily, and as with a thickness of some sort of stuff between him and +the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was +always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when +the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did +not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion +was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan.</p> + +<p>The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open +doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of +the men met.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not +speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not +misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then +reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick. +"You think you are among some Yankee defal<i>ca</i>tor?" he asked, for sole +resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have +imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick +man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay +across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?"</p> + +<p>Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the +thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the +pouch of the belt.</p> + +<p>"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you +see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?"</p> + +<p>Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills +made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me."</p> + +<p>"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud +air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly +confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call.</p> + +<p>Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he +could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the +air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern +land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare +hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an +illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its +first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales +sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of +his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by +that time. It was then the time of the apple-blossoms there; with his +homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops of his orchard, all +pink-white. He thought how the apples smelt when they first began to +drop in August on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It +seemed to him that if he could only be there again for a moment he would +be willing to spend the rest of his life in prison. As it was, he was in +prison; it did not matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from +his home. He hated the vastness of the half world where he could come +and go unmolested, this bondage that masked itself as such ample +freedom. To be shut out was the same as to be shut in.</p> + +<p>In the first days of his convalescence, while he was yet too weak to +leave his room, he planned and executed many returns to his home. He +went back by stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown in his +sickness, and tried to see what change had come upon it; but he could +never see it different from what it was that clear winter night when he +escaped from it. This baffled and distressed him, and strengthened the +longing at the bottom of his heart actually to return. He thought that +if he could once look on the misery he had brought upon his children he +could bear it better; he complexly flattered himself that it would not +be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Sometimes when this wish +harassed him, he said to himself, to still it, that as soon as the first +boat came up the river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and +arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and abandon the +struggle.</p> + +<p>But as he regained his health, he began to feel that this was a rash and +foolish promise: he thought he saw a better way out of his unhappiness. +It appeared a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of his. He +was restored to this feeling in part by the respect, the distinction +which he enjoyed in the little village, and which pleasantly recalled +his consequence among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was +declared out of danger he began to receive visits of polite sympathy +from the heads of families, who smoked round him in the evening, and +predicted a renewal of his youth by the fever he had come through +safely. Their prophecies were interpreted by Bird and Père Étienne, as +with one or other of these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, +the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to +furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got +ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere +Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor +render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the +treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the +priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not +the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a +great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral, +agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American +scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished +to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was +impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was +too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he +bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's +reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all +respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought +in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself +that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the +victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and +would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money +by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort +of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would +have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have +accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The +doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with +Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to +Père Étienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing +with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIB" id="VIIB"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man +of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly +decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the +things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and +purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only +the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of +money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and +from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he +was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with rare plants. But the +flowers were possessions, not passions; he did not speak of them as if +they afforded him any artistic or scientific delight. The young priest +learned that he had put a good deal of money in pictures; but then the +pictures seemed to have become investments, and of the nature of stocks +and bonds. He found that this curious American did not care to read the +English books which Bird offered to lend him out of the little store of +gifts and accidents accumulated in the course of years from bountiful or +forgetful tourists; the books in French Père Étienne proposed to him, +Northwick said he did not know how to read. He showed no liking for +music, except a little for the singing of Bird's niece, Virginie, but +when the priest thought he might care to understand that she sang the +ballads which the first voyagers had brought from France into the +wilderness, or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its hard +life, he saw that the fact said nothing to Northwick, and that it rather +embarrassed him. The American could not take part in any of those +discussions of abstract questions which the priest and the old woodsman +delighted in, and which they sometimes tried to make him share. He +apparently did not know what they meant. It was only when Père Étienne +gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly and arid to be +borne, that he began to love him as a brother; when he could make +nothing of Northwick's mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul.</p> + +<p>Père Étienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, and he had his +misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the +American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating +to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there +a pure and unworldly heart, such as Père Étienne bore in his breast, +with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of +the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious +stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he +knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that +Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of an uneasy +conscience in its possession. Why had he come to that lonely place in +midwinter with a treasure such as that; and why did he keep the money by +him, instead of putting it in a bank? Père Étienne talked these +questions over with Bird and the doctor, and he could find only one +answer to them. He wondered if he ought not to speak to Northwick, and +delicately offer him the chance to unburden his mind to such a friend as +only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any +approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the +church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and +reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy +necessary to the good which Père Étienne wished to do the lonely and +silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a piece of +writing, which he always locked carefully into his bag when he left his +room, and which he copied in part or in whole again and again, burning +the rejected drafts in the hearth-fire that had now superseded the +stove, and stirring the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was +left distinguishable on it.</p> + +<p>One day there came up the river a bateau from Tadoussac, bringing the +news that the ice was all out of the St. Lawrence. "It will not be long +time, now," said Bird, "before we begin to see you' countrymen. The +steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of June."</p> + +<p>Northwick responded to the words with no visible sensation. His +sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more and more, and intolerably deepened +the mystification of his failure to do any of the things with his +capital which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citizens. He no +longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, that was true, and there was not +the danger of his putting his money into Markham's enterprise there; but +neither did he show any interest or any curiosity concerning Bird's +discovery of the precious metal at Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as +well as Père Étienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his guest, +even with the intention of making their joint fortune.</p> + +<p>A few days later there came to Père Étienne a letter, which, when he +read it, superseded the interest in Northwick, which Bird felt gnawing +him like a perpetual hunger. It was from the curé at Rimouski, where +Père Étienne's family lived, and it brought word that his mother, who +had been in failing health all winter, could not long survive, and so +greatly desired to see him, that his correspondent had asked their +superior to allow him to replace Père Étienne at Haha Bay, while he came +to visit her. Leave had been given, and Père Étienne might expect his +friend very soon after his letter reached him.</p> + +<p>"Where is Rimouski?" Northwick asked, when he found himself alone with +the priest that evening.</p> + +<p>"It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first point where the +steamers touch in going and coming between Quebec and Liverpool." Père +Étienne had been weeping, and his heart was softened and emboldened by +the anxiety he felt. "It is my native village—where I lived till I went +to make my studies in the Laval University. It is going home for me. +Perhaps they will let me remain there." He added, by an irresistible +impulse of pity and love, "I wish you were going home, too, Mr. +Warwick!"</p> + +<p>"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't—yet."</p> + +<p>"This is a desert for you," Père Étienne pressed on. "I can see that. I +have seen how solitary you are."</p> + +<p>"Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted.</p> + +<p>"My son," said the young priest to the man who was old enough to be his +father, and he put his hand on Northwick's, where it lay on his knee, as +they sat side by side before the fire, "is there something you could +wish to say to me? Something I might do to help you?"</p> + +<p>In a moment all was open between them, and they knew each other's +meaning. "Yes," said Northwick, and he felt the wish to trust in the +priest and to be ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his +heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too innocent, too unversed +in the world and its ways to know his offence in its right proportion; +to know it as Northwick himself knew it; to be able to account for it +and condone it. The affair, if he could understand it at all, would +shock him; he must blame it as relentlessly as Northwick's own child +would if her love did not save him. With the next word he closed that +which was open between them, a rift in his clouds that heaven itself had +seemed to look through. "I have a letter—a letter that I wish you would +take and mail for me in Rimouski."</p> + +<p>"I will take it with great pleasure," said the priest, but he had the +sadness of a deep disappointment in his tone.</p> + +<p>Northwick was disappointed, too; almost injured. He had something like a +perception that if Père Étienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he +could have told him everything, and saved his own soul by the +confession.</p> + +<p>About a month after the priest's departure the first steamboat came up +the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. +Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he +would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it +should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to +the piety of the <i>habitans</i> as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to +Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity +which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye +on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps +both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps +prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave +out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his +wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it +was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon +him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the +community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at +him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he +would. Northwick could not have moved himself. He was like one benumbed. +He let the days go by, and made no attempt to realize the schemes for +the retrieval of his fortunes that had brought him to that region.</p> + +<p>The sound of the steamboat's whistle was a joyful sound to Bird. He rose +and went into Northwick's room. Northwick was awake; he had heard the +whistle, too.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you' name," said Bird, with trembling +eagerness, "that is the boat. I want you take you' money and go hout my +'ouse. Yes, sir. Now! Pack you' things. Don't wait for breakfast. You +get breakfast on board. Go!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIIB" id="VIIIB"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>The letter which Père Étienne posted for Northwick at Rimouski was +addressed to the editor of the <i>Boston Events</i>, and was published with +every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist +newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room +proofs of his efficiency in the line of the <i>Events</i>' greatest +successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands was +capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the effect was disappointing, +not only in the figure of the immediate sales, but in the cumulative +value of the recognition of the fact that the <i>Events</i> had been selected +by Northwick as the best avenue for approaching the public. The +<i>Abstract</i>, in copying and commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed +its esteemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of its prime importance +as the organ of the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after +questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as +a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many +defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the +despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several +of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the +picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an +effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his +death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it +experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter +himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public, +but his own family, concerning his fate.</p> + +<p>The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those +belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are +closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and +Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before +opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living <i>en garçon</i>. +There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to +question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its +absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his +guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the +beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man +and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It +isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. +Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of +other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that +he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was +found out, and ran away. That's all."</p> + +<p>"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression +that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was <i>not</i> one of your +most remarkable men."</p> + +<p>Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our +<i>least</i> remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which +we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman, +he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made +man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands +of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and now by this +unconsciously hypocritical and nauseous letter. He's what the +commonplace American egotist must come to more and more in finance, now +that he is abandoning the career of politics, and wants to be rich +instead of great."</p> + +<p>"Really?" said the Englishman.</p> + +<p>Among Hilary's guests was Charles Bellingham, a bachelor of pronounced +baldness, who said he would come to meet Hilary's belated Englishman, in +quality of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Corey, a +society veteran of that period when even the swell in Boston must be an +intellectual man. He was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom +left town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner whenever he was +asked. Bellingham came to the rescue of the national repute in his own +fashion. "I can't account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, +when you invited me, unless you knew where you could steal some more."</p> + +<p>"Ah, it isn't quite like a gentleman's stealing a few spoons," old Corey +began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary +sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more +heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as +something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so +does birth; but they're not commonplace."</p> + +<p>"They're not so frequent as defalcation with us, quite—especially +birth," suggested Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"No," Corey went on, "every fact of this sort is preceded by the slow +and long decay of a moral nature, and that is of the most eternal and +tragical interest; and"—here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, +whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him—"if it's very common with +us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we +excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed +moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that +it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our +bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world; our habit of +defalcation hasn't resulted yet in any ethical compensation. Sewell, +here, used to preach about such things, but I'll venture to say we shall +have no homily on Northwick from him next Sunday."</p> + +<p>The Rev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. "What is the use?" +he asked, with a certain sadness. "The preacher's voice is lost in his +sounding-board nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are crying aloud +from twenty-eight pages illustrated."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps <i>they</i> are our moralists," Corey suggested.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," Sewell assented.</p> + +<p>"By the way, Hilary," said Bellingham, "did you ever know who wrote that +article in the <i>Abstract</i>, when Northwick's crookedness first appeared?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary. "It was a young fellow of twenty-four or five."</p> + +<p>"Come off!" said Bellingham, in a slang phrase then making its way into +merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like +it in the <i>Abstract</i>."</p> + +<p>"No, and I'm afraid you're not likely to. The fellow was a reporter on +the paper at the time; but he happened to have looked up the literature +of defalcation, and they let him say his say."</p> + +<p>"It was a very good say."</p> + +<p>"Better than any other he had in him. They let him try again on +different things, but he wasn't up to the work. So the managing editor +said—and he was a friend of the fellow's. He was too literary, I +believe."</p> + +<p>"And what's become of him?" asked Corey.</p> + +<p>"You might get <i>him</i> to read to you," said Bellingham to the old man. He +added to the company, "Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. +He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds their society +oppressive."</p> + +<p>"Why," Hilary answered with a little hesitation, "he was out of health, +and Matt had him up to his farm."</p> + +<p>"Is he Matt's only beneficiary?" Corey asked, with a certain tone of +tolerant liking for Matt. "I thought he usually had a larger colony at +Vardley."</p> + +<p>"Well, he has," said Hilary. "But when his mother and sister are +visiting him, he has to reduce their numbers. He can't very well turn +his family away."</p> + +<p>"He might board them out," said Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose," asked Sewell, as if he had not noticed the turn the +talk had taken, "that Northwick has gone to Europe?"</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt he wishes me to suppose so," said Hilary, "and of course +we've had to cable the authorities to look out for him at Moville and +Liverpool, but I feel perfectly sure he's still in Canada, and expects +to make terms for getting home again. He must be horribly homesick."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Sewell suggested.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Not because he's a man of any delicacy of feeling, or much real +affection for his family. I've no doubt he's fond of them, in a way, but +he's fonder of himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he's +trying to make interest for himself, and that he's quite willing to use +his children if it will tell on the public sympathies. He knows very +well that they're provided for. They own the place at Hatboro'; he +deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known to have begun; +and his creditors couldn't touch it if they wished to. If he had really +that fatherly affection for them, which he appeals to in others, he +wouldn't have left them in doubt whether he was alive or dead for four +or five months, and then dragged them into an open letter asking +forbearance in their name, and promising, for their sake, to right those +he had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent."</p> + +<p>Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond +question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to +him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp +rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which +he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for +him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, +Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out +of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got +to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to +remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay +the people he had defrauded."</p> + +<p>"Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell.</p> + +<p>"No? Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep +up."</p> + +<p>"He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said +Hilary.</p> + +<p>"That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. +"Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the +newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays."</p> + +<p>"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village +down the St. Lawrence—"</p> + +<p>"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite +different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the +wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to +leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save +their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; +a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false."</p> + +<p>"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they +all laughed.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. +You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to +principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless +creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he +can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, +but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would +come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in +greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!"</p> + +<p>"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that +Northwick is cracked."</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every +wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the +last state of the wicked."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to +have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?"</p> + +<p>"What a question!" said Hilary. "You're <i>as</i> bad as my daughter. She +asked me the same thing."</p> + +<p>"I wish I were no worse," said the old man.</p> + +<p>"You speak of his children," said the Englishman. "Hasn't he a wife?"</p> + +<p>"No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the other a young girl, whom my +daughter knew at school," Hilary answered.</p> + +<p>"I saw the young lady at your house once," said Bellingham, in a certain +way.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She's been here a good deal, first and last."</p> + +<p>"Rather a high-stepping young person, I thought," said Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"She is a proud girl," Hilary admitted. "Rather imperious, in fact."</p> + +<p>"Ah, what's the pride of a young girl?" said Corey. "Something that +comes from her love and goes to it; no separable quality; nothing that's +for herself."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not sure of that," said Hilary. "In this case it seems to +have served her own turn. It's enabled her simply and honestly to deny +the fact that her father ever did anything wrong."</p> + +<p>"That's rather fine," Corey remarked, as if tasting it.</p> + +<p>"And what will it enable her to do, now that he's come out and confessed +the frauds himself?" the Englishman asked.</p> + +<p>Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Bellingham, "Charles, I want you +to try some of these crabs. I got them for you."</p> + +<p>"Why, this is touching, Hilary," said Bellingham, getting his fat head +round with difficulty to look at them in the dish the man was bringing +to his side. "But I don't know that I should have refused them, even if +they had been got for Corey."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IXB" id="IXB"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in +Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the +stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a +part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the +provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death. +He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such +a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their +doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that +they had <i>never</i> believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who +acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to +cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his +faith restored him to the esteem of many.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said +Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of +his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an +early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public +opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public +confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good +intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no +question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions—if you will +excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for +repentance—when he makes the first payment to his creditors—I will +believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not <i>till</i> then."</p> + +<p>"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to +say to all this. Can he feel that <i>his</i> skirts are quite clean, acting +that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to +say against him?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on +the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr. +Putney on any subject."</p> + +<p>In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not +discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their +father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through +Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's +character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack +Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not +obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it."</p> + +<p>"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used +to say against Mr. Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington.</p> + +<p>"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger +appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery +of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in +it.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?"</p> + +<p>"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> don't know. What do <i>you</i> think, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who +avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a +look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too.</p> + +<p>"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on. +"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved +in Hatboro'—not among the ladies at least."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's +the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men +in my family to say a word against her."</p> + +<p>Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. +Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul +of a man."</p> + +<p>"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that +they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," +Mrs. Wilmington teased.</p> + +<p>"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. +Munger alone to his aunt.</p> + +<p>"<i>Do</i> you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, +with cosey confidentiality.</p> + +<p>"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very +poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to +her?"</p> + +<p>"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do <i>like</i> a manly man!"</p> + +<p>She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a +further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one +she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of +the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road +so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it.</p> + +<p>"Doctor," she called out, "what <i>do</i> you think of this extraordinary +letter of Mr. Northwick's?"</p> + +<p>Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the +<i>Events</i>? Do you think Northwick wrote it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, don't <i>you</i>, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal +grievance in her voice.</p> + +<p>"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he <i>did</i> +write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood +you thought he was burned in that accident last winter."</p> + +<p>"Now, <i>doctor</i>!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said +always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I +know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. <i>She</i> +will tell me what you think."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all +well."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though, +with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr. +Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself +to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it +be romantic?"</p> + +<p>"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to +see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. +He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by."</p> + +<p>She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South +Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, +where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely +drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs. +Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and +in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own +emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South +Hatboro'.</p> + +<p>Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat +crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door +that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her +hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter +in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be +crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, +who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he +had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us, +and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead, +long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's +just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell +us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything +we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do +it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't +complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, +what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that +he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he +didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you +think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and +tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one +where he was? That <i>shows</i> he's out of his mind. I always thought that +if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied +about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that +was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that +we trusted so much, had broken his word to <i>us</i>. That is what kills me."</p> + +<p>The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at +dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, +as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief +responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if +her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs.</p> + +<p>Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it +of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. +"We must give it up!"</p> + +<p>"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back.</p> + +<p>"The house—and the farm—and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours."</p> + +<p>"Not ours?"</p> + +<p>"No. That letter makes it theirs—the people's whose money he took. We +must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know +how."</p> + +<p>Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but +Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!"</p> + +<p>"That was <i>before</i>. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we +should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give +it to us when he did?"</p> + +<p>"Suzette!"</p> + +<p>"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to +go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because +he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it +up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my +father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to +me, <i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such +natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about +father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his +mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away +because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him +that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to +blame himself. That's the way I look at it."</p> + +<p>"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You +<i>know</i> you don't believe that!"</p> + +<p>Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist +in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's +confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at +last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it, +Suzette; and I have a right."</p> + +<p>"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't +belong to us till father comes back to prove it."</p> + +<p>"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!"</p> + +<p>"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he +isn't—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Don't you dare!"</p> + +<p>"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong +to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be +seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole +world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if +we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look <i>you</i> in the +face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either +of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room.</p> + +<p>"Wait! I can't let you—yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline.</p> + +<p>"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat +in her rocking-chair.</p> + +<p>"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering +strength of resistance in her heart. "Because <i>you've</i> been thinking of +it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was +mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for +both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did +use their money—and I don't believe he did—I don't see why I should +give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said, +"And I won't."</p> + +<p>"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so."</p> + +<p>"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr. +Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves +on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so +terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send +Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any +squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the +property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you +don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I +will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to +you. Do you promise?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of +tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give +it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall +never say that I wanted you should do it."</p> + +<p>"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you +say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft +throat. "<i>I</i> do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I +care as much for them as you do."</p> + +<p>In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive +whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession +of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it," +she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep +it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up."</p> + +<p>Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had +been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained, +"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they +have on my house and lot?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I don't care for the law."</p> + +<p>"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father +is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions +made in the letter he has published."</p> + +<p>"I understand that," said the girl.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the +bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing +to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property."</p> + +<p>He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and +Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the +property, they'd let father come back?"</p> + +<p>Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have +got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been +indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There +can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial."</p> + +<p>"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would +make them easier with him?"</p> + +<p>"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't +like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless +you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property."</p> + +<p>"And do you think it has a moral claim?"</p> + +<p>Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked +his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some +peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing +company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a +sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it +makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who +buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns +its bread by the sweat of its capital—neither better nor worse." +Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from +the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative +economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the +Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral +obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a +clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold +on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a +body that hadn't a soul for that purpose."</p> + +<p>Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then +recollected himself, and put it back.</p> + +<p>"There, Suzette!" said Adeline.</p> + +<p>Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with +her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that. +I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the +company, and if you would do it for me at once."</p> + +<p>"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow +morning and see their attorney."</p> + +<p>"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary."</p> + +<p>"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, +if you wish."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the +company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr. +Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my +sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks +you. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, +I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole +place must be sold?"</p> + +<p>Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place +sold?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?"</p> + +<p>"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm."</p> + +<p>Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the +world. I—" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on +piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But +I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, +need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw +up the writings."</p> + +<p>"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; if you wish."</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"It won't be necessary."</p> + +<p>"I wish it."</p> + +<p>Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt +justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl +freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of +course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of +conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought +to make any one else obey one's conscience?"</p> + +<p>"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why +should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the +frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just +as it does?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood."</p> + +<p>"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of +pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the +right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. +She would do anything for that. She's as <i>hard</i>!"</p> + +<p>"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XB" id="XB"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. +"I haven't slept all night—I don't see how <i>you</i> could—and I want you +shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I +want to think it over, first."</p> + +<p>"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first +word.</p> + +<p>Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing +to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. +Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the +writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. +I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like."</p> + +<p>"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated.</p> + +<p>"<i>No</i>, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's +right; and I want to do what <i>I</i> think is right. I'm almost sick. I want +Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She +broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! <i>Do</i> give me a little +more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do—"</p> + +<p>They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and +they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, +as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. +Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on +her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him +hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't +agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. +Putney from writing till you think as <i>I</i> do. But be still, now!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with +you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me! +And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down +sick."</p> + +<p>She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, +dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, +now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up +and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not +slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened +her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a +bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in +it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the +day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very +difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to +compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world +where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from +thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till +now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for +the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser +wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly +within herself before she spoke with Adeline again.</p> + +<p>That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found +as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over +Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; +heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most +pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely. +But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to +excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade +asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is +something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this +letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you +once about Jack Wilmington—"</p> + +<p>Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm +sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have +shown it long ago!"</p> + +<p>"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if +it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a +time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried +tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her +so much more than I; and I didn't know—Is it possible—Perhaps I ought +to ask if <i>you</i> are at all—if <i>you</i> care for her?"</p> + +<p>"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! <i>Why</i> do +you ask?"</p> + +<p>"Because <i>I</i> do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that +when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a +wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength +between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind +made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a +hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him +from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I +thought—I thought that if you, old fellow—But now, it's all right—all +right—"</p> + +<p>Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A +great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their +way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a +cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and +which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow +when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was +scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he +could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no +more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by +his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick +was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants +often find themselves in, but his final perception of his +impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's +hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the +purpose when another wishes to do the talking.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got +anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my +way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and +can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere +bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he +walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of +anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for +the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted +sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I +don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; +summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, +anything like <i>this</i>. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad +to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good +sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization." +He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor +father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him."</p> + +<p>Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the +thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he +must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all +rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile +for the purpose of this question.</p> + +<p>"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it +must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise +and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever +been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, +though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," +Matt ended, philosophically.</p> + +<p>Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your +family, do they know of your—feeling?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like +a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added, +despondently.</p> + +<p>Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the +aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to +share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said, +presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation +to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it +very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think +there are very few men like my father?"</p> + +<p>"There are none, Matt!" said Wade.</p> + +<p>"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of +them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered +man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever +loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can."</p> + +<p>"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!"</p> + +<p>"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said +Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I +couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that +she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her +of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I +think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up +altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have +her to <i>give</i> up. Then it's an easy sacrifice."</p> + +<p>"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's +self-satire.</p> + +<p>Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and +looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk. +"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once—to leave her to suffer +it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No +real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might +gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to +think she had given herself through that need—No, it wouldn't do! My +father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and +Louise can be her friend—What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle +it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather +cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I +suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all +the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't +bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I +think I ought to wait."</p> + +<p>"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's +a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and +Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation.</p> + +<p>"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid +it might look calculating and self-interested—"</p> + +<p>"You self-interested, Matt!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little? +If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and +mother, brother and sister, before all the world?"</p> + +<p>"If you are sure she loves you, yes."</p> + +<p>Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little +condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now. +I've just run over from the farm to see you—"</p> + +<p>"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the +rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly +improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were +immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of +yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as +yourself, to take time before speaking."</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade +of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I +should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in +adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much +obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and +helping me to see it in the right light."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation.</p> + +<p>"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think +you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article +on the defalcation in the <i>Boston Abstract</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it, +very humanely—too humanely, perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of +that article—a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds +with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no +health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily +newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the +time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who +recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell—that's the fellow's name—and +since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But +he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's +out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative +friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of +the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type—the artistic type +cynicised by the hard conditions of life—newspaper conditions, and then +economic conditions."</p> + +<p>Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful +formulation of Maxwell.</p> + +<p>Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any +use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon +Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he +said, "I think you've decided <i>so</i> wisely, Matt; and justly and +unselfishly."</p> + +<p>"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said +Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of +his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think +it would seem unfeeling—or out of taste, at all—if I went to see her +at such a time?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I can't imagine <i>your</i> doing anything out of taste, Matt."</p> + +<p>"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some +messages by me to her. Will you take them, or—"</p> + +<p>"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's +messages yourself."</p> + +<p>"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIB" id="XIB"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>Matt took the lower road that wound away from Wade's church toward the +Northwick place; but as he went, he kept thinking that he must not +really try to see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time; out of +all propriety, of all decency; it would be taking advantage of her +helplessness to intrude upon her the offer of help and of kindness which +every instinct of her nature must revolt from. There was only one thing +that could justify his coming, and that was impossible. Unless he came +to tell her that he loved her, and to ask her to let him take her burden +upon him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love's sake, he had +no right to see her. At moments it seemed as if that were right and he +could do it, no matter how impossible, and then he almost ran forward; +but only to check himself, to stop short, and doubt whether not to turn +back altogether. By such faltering progresses, he found himself in the +Northwick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from the mansion, +which the farm road had brought him to, until he reached the cottage at +the avenue gate. On the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set +his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and he floundered +on till he made out that this languid figure was Adeline. He could have +laughed at the irony, the mockery of the anti-climax, if it had not been +for the face that the old maid turned upon him at the approach of his +footfalls, and the pleasure that lighted up its pathos when she +recognized him.</p> + +<p>"<i>Oh</i>, Mr. Hilary!" she said; and then she could not speak, for the +twitching of her lips and the trembling of her chin.</p> + +<p>He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural for him to do that +reverent and tender thing which is no longer a part of our custom; he +bent over it and kissed the chill, bony knuckles.</p> + +<p>She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief and wipe her tears. "I +suppose you've come to see Suzette; but she's gone up to the village to +talk with Mr. Putney; he's our lawyer."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I presume I don't need to talk to you about that—letter. I think,—and +I believe Suzette will think so too in the end,—that his mind is +affected, and he just accuses himself of all these things because +they've been burnt into it so. How are your father and mother? And your +sister?"</p> + +<p>She broke off with these questions, he could see, to stay herself in +what she wished to say. "They are all well. Father is still in Boston; +but mother and Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their love, and +they are anxious to know if there is anything—"</p> + +<p>"Thank you. Will you sit down here? It's so close indoors." She made +room for him on the threshold, but he took the step below.</p> + +<p>"I hope Miss Suzette is well?"</p> + +<p>"Why, thank you, not very well. There isn't anything really the matter; +but we didn't either of us sleep very well last night; we were excited. +I don't know as I ought to tell you," she began. "I don't suppose it's a +thing you would know about, any way; but I've got to talk to somebody—"</p> + +<p>"Miss Northwick," said Matt, "if there is anything in the world that I +can do for you, or that you even hope I can do, I <i>beg</i> you to let me +hear it. I should be glad beyond all words to help you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know as anything can be done," she began, after the fresh +gush of tears which were her thanks, "but Suzette and I have been +talking it over a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your +father about it. You see, Suzette can't feel right about our keeping the +place here, if father's really done what he says he's done. We don't +believe he has; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, and +made to give up the money he says he has got. Suzette thinks we ought to +give up the money we have got in the bank—fifteen hundred or two +thousand dollars—and she wanted I should let her give up her half of +the place, here; and at first I <i>did</i> say she might. But come to find +out from Mr. Putney, the whole place would have to be sold before it +could be divided, and I couldn't seem to let it. That was what +we—disputed about. Yes! We had a dispute; but it's all right now, or it +will be, when we get the company to say they will stop the lawsuit +against father, if he will give up the money he's got, and we will give +up the place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company couldn't stop it; +but I don't see why a rich corporation like that couldn't do almost +anything it wanted to with its money."</p> + +<p>Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor her scheme for defeating +justice; but he smiled forlornly at the hopelessness of it. "I'm afraid +Mr. Putney is right." He was silent, and then at the despair that came +into her face, he hurried on to say, "but I will see my father, Miss +Northwick; I will go down to see him at once; and if anything can be +honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am sure he will try to +do it for your sake. But don't expect anything," he said, getting to his +feet and putting out his hand to her.</p> + +<p>"No, no; I won't," she said, with gratitude that wrung his heart. +"And—won't you wait and see Suzette?"</p> + +<p>Matt reddened. "No; I think not now. But, perhaps, I will come back; +and—and—I will come soon again. Good-by!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary!" she called after him. He ran back to her. "If—if your +father don't think anything can be done, I don't want he should say +anything about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; certainly not."</p> + +<p>"And, Mr. Hilary! Don't <i>you</i> let Suzette know I spoke to you. <i>I'll</i> +tell her."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course."</p> + +<p>On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less and less impossible +to Matt; but he really knew nothing of the legal complications; and when +he proposed it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. "I don't +believe it could be done. The man's regularly indicted, and he's in +contempt of court as long as he doesn't present himself for trial. +That's the way I understand it. But I'll see our counsel. Whose scheme +is this?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Miss Northwick told me of it; but I fancied Miss +Suzette—"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Hilary. "It must have cost her almost her life to give up +her faith in that pitiful rascal."</p> + +<p>"But after she had done that, it would cost her nothing to give up the +property, and as I understood Miss Northwick, that was her sister's +first impulse. She wished to give up her half of the estate +unconditionally; but Miss Northwick wouldn't consent, and they +compromised on the conditions she told me of."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Hilary, "I think Miss Northwick showed the most sense. But +of course, Sue's a noble girl. She almost transfigures that old +scoundrel of a father of hers. That fellow—Jack Wilmington—ought to +come forward now and show himself a man, if he <i>is</i> one. <i>Any</i> man might +be proud of such a girl's love—and they say she was in love with him. +But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his uncle's wife. He +isn't good enough for her, and probably he always knew it."</p> + +<p>Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his father, to go and +look at the picture over the mantel. It was not a new picture; but he +did not feel that he was using his father quite frankly; and he kept +looking at it for that reason.</p> + +<p>"If those poor creatures gave up their property, what would they do? +They've absolutely nothing else in the world!"</p> + +<p>"I fancy," said Matt, "that isn't a consideration that would weigh with +Suzette Northwick."</p> + +<p>"No. If there's anything in heredity, the father of such a girl must +have some good in him. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to suffer."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that the company would regard the fact that it had no legal +claim on the property, and would recognize it in their behalf?"</p> + +<p>"The company!" Hilary roared. "The company has <i>no</i> right to that +property, moral <i>or</i> legal. But we should act as if we had. If it were +unconditionally offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of +charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man Jack of us would +hold out for a right to it that didn't exist, and we should take it as +part of our due; and I should be such a coward that I couldn't tell the +Board what I thought of our pusillanimity."</p> + +<p>"It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously in a corporate +capacity, or even humanely," said Matt. "But I don't know but there +would be an obscure and negative justice in such action. It would be +right for the company to accept the property, if it was right for +Northwick's daughter to offer it, and I think it is most unquestionably +right for her to do that."</p> + +<p>"Do you, Matt? Well, well," said Hilary, willing to be comforted, +"perhaps you're right. You must send Louise and your mother over to see +her."</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps not just now. She's proud and sensitive, and perhaps it +might seem intrusive, at this juncture?"</p> + +<p>"Intrusive? Nonsense! She'll be glad to see them. Send them right over!"</p> + +<p>Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went +away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of +till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain +the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own +children.</p> + +<p>What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave his love for her +unconscious approval; but at the same time it created a sort of comedy +situation, and Matt was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from +the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going direct to her, he +hated to be going, like the hero of a novel, to offer himself to the +heroine at the moment her fortunes were darkest; but he knew that he was +only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and humbly her lover, +who wished in any way or any measure he might, to be her friend and +helper. He thought he might put his offer in some such form as would +leave her free to avail herself a little if not much of his longing to +comfort and support her in her trial. But at last he saw that he could +do nothing for the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to +give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend. He did not go +back to Hatboro', as he longed to do. He went back to his farm, and +possessed his soul in such patience as he could.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIIB" id="XIIB"></a>XII.</h2> + + +<p>Suzette came back from Putney's office with such a disheartened look +that Adeline had not the courage to tell her of Matt's visit and the +errand he had undertaken for her. The lawyer had said no more than that +he did not believe anything could be done. He was glad they had decided +not to transfer their property to the company, without first trying to +make interest for their father with it; that was their right, and their +duty; and he would try what could be done; but he warned Suzette that he +should probably fail.</p> + +<p>"And then what did he think we ought to do?" Adeline asked.</p> + +<p>"He didn't say," Suzette answered.</p> + +<p>"I presume," Adeline went on, after a little pause, "that you would like +to give up the property, anyway. Well, you can do it, Suzette." The joy +she might have expected did not show itself in her sister's face, and +she added, "I've thought it all over, and I see it as you do, now. +Only," she quavered, "I do want to do all I can for poor father, first."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Suzette, spiritlessly, "Mr. Putney said we ought."</p> + +<p>"Sue," said Adeline, after another little pause, "I don't know what +you'll think of me, for what I've done. Mr. Hilary has been here—"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He came over from his farm—"</p> + +<p>"Oh! I thought you meant his father." The color began to mount into the +girl's cheeks.</p> + +<p>"Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they all want to do +anything they can; and—and I told Mr. Hilary what we were going to try; +and—he said he would speak to his father about it; and—Oh, Suzette, +I'm afraid I've done more than I ought!"</p> + +<p>Suzette was silent, and then, "No," she said, "I can't see what harm +there could be in it."</p> + +<p>"He said," Adeline pursued with joyful relief, "he wouldn't let his +father speak to the rest about it, till we were ready; and I know he'll +do all he can for us. Don't you?"</p> + +<p>Sue answered, "I don't see what harm it can do for him to speak to his +father. I hope, Adeline," she added, with the severity Adeline had +dreaded, "you didn't ask it as a favor from him?"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I didn't indeed, Sue! It came naturally. He offered to do it."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and she fell back in +the chair where she had been sitting.</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Adeline, with an anxious look at the girl's worn +face, "but what we'd both better have the doctor."</p> + +<p>"Ah, the doctor!" cried Suzette. "What can the doctor do for troubles +like ours?" She put up her hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, +and sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the worst had come +upon them.</p> + +<p>The company's counsel submitted Putney's overtures, as he expected, to +the State's attorney, in the hypothetical form, and the State's +attorney, as Putney expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that +when Northwick's friends communicated with him and ascertained his +readiness to surrender the money he had with him, and to make +restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a <i>nolle +prosequi</i>. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt +of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the +chance of a merciful sentence.</p> + +<p>There could be no other answer, he said, and he could give none for +Putney to carry back to the defaulter's daughters.</p> + +<p>Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved herself up to bear +it so. Adeline had faltered between her hopes and fears, but she had +apparently decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst came.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she said, "we must give up the place. You can get the +papers ready, Mr. Putney."</p> + +<p>"I will do whatever you say, Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my +doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it +all the same."</p> + +<p>Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with +the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see +Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family +that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his +clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed +circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end.</p> + +<p>Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his +mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes +burn on Matt's kindly face.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," he said, "what do <i>you</i> think can be done for two women, +brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?"</p> + +<p>"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make +their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company—"</p> + +<p>"But I thought—I thought they might have something +besides—something—"</p> + +<p>"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to +their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay +that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with +it—or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it."</p> + +<p>"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the +predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just +nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he +proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to +death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking +down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either."</p> + +<p>Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before +him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, +and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her +father's shame.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said, "they mustn't be allowed to suffer. We shall count +upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive +somehow not to let them know that they are destitute."</p> + +<p>"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its +seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer +in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, +who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I +mean by every step I take? You're acquainted with Miss Suzette, I +suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt, consciously.</p> + +<p>"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her +mind to starve, wouldn't know what you were up to if you pretended to +have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?"</p> + +<p>"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no +claim on the property, none whatever!"</p> + +<p>"Now you're shouting." Putney put a comfortable mass of tobacco in his +mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it.</p> + +<p>"They mustn't take it—they won't take it!" cried Matt.</p> + +<p>Putney laughed scornfully.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIIIB" id="XIIIB"></a>XIII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous +railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape +the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not +go to see them, and find out some way to help them.</p> + +<p>Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the noble +action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is noble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn't do +it."</p> + +<p>"Why, mamma?"</p> + +<p>"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well +as they were; and the company doesn't need it; but now where will they +go? What will become of them?"</p> + +<p>Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they +are, for the present, and that they won't be actually houseless. But +they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their +support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself +that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live +on."</p> + +<p>"I <i>knew</i> Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came +out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But +that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no +peace till she had given up everything—everything!"</p> + +<p>"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they—has Suzette—any +plans?"</p> + +<p>"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the +bank," said Matt, forlornly.</p> + +<p>"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, +"they've all managed as badly as they could."</p> + +<p>"Well, mother, they hadn't a very hopeful case, to begin with," said +Matt, and Louise smiled.</p> + +<p>"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs. +Hilary pursued.</p> + +<p>"He was annoyed, but I couldn't see that he had lost his appetite. I +don't think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, +though."</p> + +<p>"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don't know +just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and +see them. They don't seem to have any one else. It is very strange that +they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated +upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try +what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment's pause.</p> + +<p>They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the +end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I +shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the +shore."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>"Yes; I don't like his being in town so late."</p> + +<p>"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don't you get +him to come up here?"</p> + +<p>"He's been asked," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise assented. She rose and went +to the glass door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was +filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think +what we can do for Suzette."</p> + +<p>Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and +listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two +voices retreated together, and Louise's laugh made itself heard farther +off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light +nature himself at that moment. "But I don't know that there is anything +wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she +is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I'm +afraid she doesn't feel things deeply. Matt, I don't believe I like this +protégé of yours."</p> + +<p>"Maxwell?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He's too intense."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don't like +Louise's lightness, and you don't like Maxwell's intensity. I think +he'll get over that. He's sick, poor fellow; he won't be so intense when +he gets better."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, +abruptly, "I hope Louise's sympathies will be concentrated on Sue +Northwick for awhile, now."'</p> + +<p>"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I'm sure Louise has +shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I +hadn't supposed she was so attached to her—so constant—"</p> + +<p>"She's romantic; but she's worldly; she likes the world and its ways. +There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of +the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out +of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe. +Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, +because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize. +But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away +she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!" +Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be <i>entirely</i> worldly, it +wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes +in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask +her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly +not a simple character—like Sue Northwick, for instance."</p> + +<p>Matt now roused himself. "Is <i>she</i> a simple character?" he asked, with a +show of indifference.</p> + +<p>"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains +everything she does."</p> + +<p>"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in +openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived +himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with +something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine +her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a +wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her +with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now."</p> + +<p>"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than +could have been expected of her father's daughter."</p> + +<p>Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to +answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of +the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick +with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me +that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall +find it difficult to discharge with delicacy."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?"</p> + +<p>"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property +which she is going to give up."</p> + +<p>"We are not the company."</p> + +<p>"Father is the president."</p> + +<p>"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused +it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why +should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do +what is right and proper—even what is delicate—with Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that."</p> + +<p>"You said something like it, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her +alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that <i>we</i> +realize all that she is doing."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite +frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and +I wished she wouldn't do it."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIVB" id="XIVB"></a>XIV.</h2> + + +<p>The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June +day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in +his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, +and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, +with a cushion clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was +pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his +thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted +herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent +gaze.</p> + +<p>"Have you got through?"</p> + +<p>"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to +the camp."</p> + +<p>"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the +importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick +man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her.</p> + +<p>"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But +I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?"</p> + +<p>"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor +and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his +shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly +across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about +the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun +struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their +needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and +through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of +a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place +was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just +beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it.</p> + +<p>Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and +high boots, and his cork helmet topping all.</p> + +<p>"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, +Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?"</p> + +<p>Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up +from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell—"</p> + +<p>"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the +camp."</p> + +<p>"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you +think he is, this morning?"</p> + +<p>"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast."</p> + +<p>"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere +out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a +girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at +such a time as this?"</p> + +<p>"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. +"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't +know what she <i>will</i> do. If Jack Wilmington—but he never really cared +for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be."</p> + +<p>"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now."</p> + +<p>Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she +still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know +that he cared for her."</p> + +<p>"But her pride—wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal +terms—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a +person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a +thing as that there <i>is</i> no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are +just alike—like cats in the dark."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting +to them before, came into his eyes.</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i> so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington +still—"</p> + +<p>"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston +to-morrow, and see father—Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow +evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it."</p> + +<p>Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine +before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters.</p> + +<p>"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm +at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that +I thought perhaps you might want to see at once."</p> + +<p>He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. +"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse +me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when +he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; +but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to +feel like work, for the first time since I came up here."</p> + +<p>"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the +board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the +hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. +You must stay the whole summer."</p> + +<p>"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his +side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like."</p> + +<p>"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they +will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly +well?"</p> + +<p>"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one +thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the +light and shade flecks on her face and figure.</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i> you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted.</p> + +<p>"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor +people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a +caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility."</p> + +<p>"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse +than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will +let you help them."</p> + +<p>"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if +you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're +surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if +you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor +folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to +do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of +riches."</p> + +<p>"You would make me hateful."</p> + +<p>"I would make you charming."</p> + +<p>"Well, do me, then!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, you wouldn't like it."</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because—I found it out in my newspaper work, when I had to interview +people and write them up—people don't like to have the good points they +have, recognized; they want you to celebrate the good points they +haven't got. If a man is amiable and kind and has something about him +that wins everybody's heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very +dignified and commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and +indomitable will."</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Louise, "why you think I'm weak, and low-minded, and +undignified."</p> + +<p>Maxwell laughed. "Did I say something of that kind?"</p> + +<p>"You meant it."</p> + +<p>"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of +apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound +knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the +most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you +like that?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be +interviewed."</p> + +<p>"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if +I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I +shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the +<i>Abstract</i>. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be +read for me."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up +newspaper work altogether."</p> + +<p>"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal +sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much +would you get for your play?"</p> + +<p>"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six +thousand dollars a year."</p> + +<p>"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness.</p> + +<p>He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and +asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this +time?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I +should <i>like</i> to."</p> + +<p>Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't +humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your +imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough."</p> + +<p>"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. +"But <i>I</i> know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give +up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he +had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at +all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her +sister will have nothing to live on. And they <i>won't</i> let themselves be +helped—any more than—than—<i>you</i> will!"</p> + +<p>"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them. +Don't they know where their father is?"</p> + +<p>"No. But of course they must, now, before long."</p> + +<p>Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like +to have a peep into that man's soul."</p> + +<p>"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise.</p> + +<p>"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children—"</p> + +<p>"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he +always made me feel creepy."</p> + +<p>"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and +to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you +could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on +them, and forced them to beggar themselves—it would be a tremendous +situation."</p> + +<p>"But I shouldn't <i>like</i> to see him at such a time. It seems to me, +that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell."</p> + +<p>There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt. +It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the +artistic point of view."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be +about any such thing as that—"</p> + +<p>"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic +motive."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not +know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, +but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the +letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you +want this?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, +"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want +the <i>true</i> artistic point of view."</p> + +<p>"Is he a literary man?"</p> + +<p>"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the +<i>Events</i>—when it first came out? All illustrations?"</p> + +<p>"<i>That?</i> I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps +he's your friend—"</p> + +<p>"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. +"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood +frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss +Hilary, though he <i>is</i> a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good +material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has +only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his +generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five +minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't +keep still."</p> + +<p>"I should think she would detest him."</p> + +<p>"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's +affecting to witness their devotion—or it would be if it were not such +a bore."</p> + +<p>"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVB" id="XVB"></a>XV.</h2> + + +<p>Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found +himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the +back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had +the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he +pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, +though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were +never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they +liked Matt.</p> + +<p>Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. +"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Where is Maxwell?"</p> + +<p>"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the +ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees.</p> + +<p>Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the +hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall.</p> + +<p>"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of +the good comradeship he felt for all living things.</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of +the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard."</p> + +<p>"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is."</p> + +<p>"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it."</p> + +<p>"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that +probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he +wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but +somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against +odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the +chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But +I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself."</p> + +<p>"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he +doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even +as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that."</p> + +<p>"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, +smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; +he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now."</p> + +<p>"He's older than I am!" said Louise.</p> + +<p>"He hasn't seen so much of the world."</p> + +<p>"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice +as we supposed. I should call him dangerous."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shouldn't say <i>that</i>, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly +hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long +tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her +lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you +suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn.</p> + +<p>Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem +which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl +lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not +know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe +Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging +over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still +opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion +of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've +the time."</p> + +<p>"Well, after dinner," said Matt.</p> + +<p>Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long +slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully +folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the +language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he +usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper.</p> + +<p>"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The +<i>Events</i> is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which +meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and +have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the +change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social +science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing +that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of +belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up +in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got +a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That +letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and +I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. +Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe—of course he +didn't!—but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't +believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business +with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his +investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with +him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am +not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a +detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over +the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends +of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but +I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, +and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, +while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I +shall need active help.</p> + +<p>"Now, I liked some things in that <i>Abstract</i> article of yours; it was +snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. +It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that +could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So +I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into +the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My +idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we +have not only got to get <i>at</i> him, but we have got to <i>get</i> him; and get +him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral +suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect +will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you +believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and +spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously +work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a +great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have +our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, +whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the +fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in +all eternity.</p> + +<p>"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my +wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. <i>I want you, +old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you.</i> If this thing goes through, I +shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the <i>Events</i>. I +expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall +secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. +Maxwell, and don't you forget it.</p> + +<p>"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got +to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let +the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a +lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work +him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a +bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and +show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward +virtue."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIB" id="XVIB"></a>XVI.</h2> + + +<p>Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney +was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for <i>The Events</i>. +He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you +would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my +silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Matt. "Then I suppose his proposal doesn't tempt you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I should like such an +adventure well enough, because it would give me a glimpse of life and +character that I should like to know something about. But the reporter +business and the detective business wouldn't attract me."</p> + +<p>"No, I should suppose not," said Matt. "What sort of fellow, personally, +is this—Pinney?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he isn't bad. He is a regular type," said Maxwell, with tacit +enjoyment of the typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in +the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They +don't know much in the <i>Events</i> office; but they do know Pinney. He's a +great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities +of private life than—Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn +his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very +domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby +now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always +advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most +harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite +soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make +copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a +newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't +the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that +I wanted to guard; and I thought Pinney was on the scent of it, I +shouldn't have any more scruple in setting my foot on him than I would +on that snake."</p> + +<p>A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had crept out of the +stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes +at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous +scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and +ground it into the earth.</p> + +<p>Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and writhing thing. "Ah, I +don't think I should have killed it!"</p> + +<p>"I should," said Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"Then you think one couldn't trust him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it +there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have +room to wriggle."</p> + +<p>They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the image of the tormented +snake in his mind; it somehow mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and +unconsciously softened him toward the reporter.</p> + +<p>"Would there be any harm," he asked, after a while, "in my acting on a +knowledge of this letter in behalf of Mr. Northwick's family?"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit," said Maxwell. "I make you perfectly free of it, as far as +I'm concerned; and it can't hurt Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. +<i>He</i> wouldn't spare <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Matt, "that I could justify myself in hurting him +on that ground. I shall be careful about him. I don't at all know that I +shall want to use it; but it has just struck me that perhaps—But I +don't know! I should have to talk with their attorney—I will see about +it! And I thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell."</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mr. Hilary!" said Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and +all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any +harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any +harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and +yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very elect. +Good heavens!" cried Maxwell, "if I could get such a character as +Pinney's into a story or a play, I wouldn't take odds from any man +living!"</p> + +<p>His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so that he waited more and +more impatiently for his mother's return, in order to act upon it. When +she did get back to the farm she could only report from the Northwicks +that she had said pretty much what she thought she would like to say to +Suzette concerning her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up +her property; but Matt inferred that she had at the same time been able +to infuse so much motherly comfort into her scolding that it had left +the girl consoled and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline that +their great distress was not knowing yet where their father was. +Apparently he thought that his published letter was sufficient +reassurance for the time being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at +him in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any appeal from +them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly believed, his mind had been warped by +his suffering—he must have suffered greatly—and he was not able to +reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hilary spoke of the +dignity and strength which both the sisters showed in their trial and +present stress. She praised Suzette, especially; she said her trouble +seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was really a noble girl, +and she had sent her love to Louise; they had both wished to be +remembered to every one. "Adeline, especially, wished to be remembered +to you, Matt; she said they should never forget your kindness."</p> + +<p>Matt got over to Hatboro' the next day, and went to see Putney, who +received him with some ironical politeness, when Matt said he had come +hoping to be useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks.</p> + +<p>"Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. Hilary. You were here on +a mission of that kind before. But may I ask why you think I should +believe you wish to be useful to them?"</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Your father is the president of the company Mr. Northwick had his +little embarrassment with, and the natural presumption would be that you +could not really be friendly toward his family."</p> + +<p>"But we <i>are</i> friendly! All of us! My father would do them any service +in his power, consistent with his duty to—to—his business associates."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's just the point. And you would all do anything you could for +them, consistent with your duty to him. That's perfectly +right—perfectly natural. But you must see that it doesn't form a ground +of common interest for us. I talked with you about the Miss Northwicks' +affairs the other day—too much, I think. But I can't to-day. I shall be +glad to converse with you on any other topic—discuss the ways of God to +man, or any little interest of that kind. But unless I can see my way +clearer to confidence between us in regard to my clients' affairs than I +do at present, I must avoid them."</p> + +<p>It was absurd; but in his high good-will toward Adeline, and in his +latent tenderness for Suzette, Matt was hurt by the lawyer's distrust, +somewhat as you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns over +your check and says you must bring some one to recognize you. It cost +Matt a pang; it took him a moment to own that Putney was right. Then he +said, "Of course, I must offer you proof somehow that I've come to you +in good faith. I don't know exactly how I shall be able to do it. Would +the assurance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. Michael's—"</p> + +<p>The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly; he smiled, and then he +said, "Brother Wade is a good man, and his words usually carry +conviction, but this is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary." He laughed, and +concluded earnestly, "You <i>must</i> know that I can't talk with you on any +such authority. I couldn't talk with Mr. Wade himself."</p> + +<p>"No, no; of course not," Matt assented; and he took himself off +crestfallen, ashamed of his own short-sightedness.</p> + +<p>There was only one way out of the trouble, and now he blamed himself for +not having tried to take that way at the outset. He had justified +himself in shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he could +justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feeling compelled, as it were, +to take it. At least, now, he should not be acting from any selfish +impulse, and if there were anything unseemly in what he was going to do, +he should have no regrets on that score, even in the shame of failure.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIIB" id="XVIIB"></a>XVII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the Northwick place, or at +least as much time as would pass between walking and driving, but that +was because he was impatient, and his own going seemed faster to his +nerves than that of the swiftest horse could have seemed. At the crest +of the upland which divides Hatboro' from South Hatboro', and just +beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell's house, he met Sue Northwick; +she was walking quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put aside +her long, crape veil, and she came towards him with her proud face +framed in the black, and looking the paler for it; a little of her +yellow hair showed under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt was +afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of her. She seemed not to +know him at first, or rather not to realize that it was he; when she +did, a joyful light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed +over her visage; and "Mr. Hilary!" she said as simply and hospitably as +if their last parting had not been on terms of enmity that nothing could +clear up or explain away.</p> + +<p>He ran forward and caught her hand. "Oh, I am so glad," he said. "I was +going out to see you about something—very important; and I might have +missed you."</p> + +<p>"No. I was just coming to the doctor's, and then I was going back. My +sister isn't at all well, and I thought she'd better see the doctor."</p> + +<p>"It's nothing serious, I hope?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no. I think she's a little worn out."'</p> + +<p>"I know!" said Matt, with intelligence, and nothing more was said +between them as to the cause or nature of Adeline's sickness. Matt asked +if he might go up the doctor's avenue with her, and they walked along +together under the mingling elm and maple tops, but he deferred the +matter he wished to speak of. They found a little girl playing in the +road near the house, and Sue asked, "Is your father at home, Idella?"</p> + +<p>"Mamma is at home," said the child. She ran forward, calling toward the +open doors and windows, "Mamma! Mamma! Here's a lady!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't their child," Sue explained. "It's the daughter of the +minister who was killed on the railroad, here, a year or two ago—a very +strange man, Mr. Peck."</p> + +<p>"I have heard Wade speak of him," said Matt.</p> + +<p>A handsome and very happy looking woman came to the door, and stilled +the little one's boisterous proclamation to the hoarse whisper of, "A +lady! A lady!" as she took her hand; but she did not rebuke or correct +her.</p> + +<p>"How do you do, Mrs. Morrell," said Suzette, with rather a haughty +distance; but Matt felt that she kept aloof with the pride of a person +who comes from an infected house, and will not put herself at the risk +of avoidance. "I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my sister. She isn't +well. Will you kindly ask him to call?"</p> + +<p>"I will send him as soon as he comes," said Mrs. Morrell, giving Matt +that glance of liking which no good woman could withhold. "Unless," she +added, "you would like to come in and wait for him."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, no," said Suzette. "I must go back to her. Good-by."</p> + +<p>"Good-by!" said Mrs. Morrell.</p> + +<p>Matt raised his hat and silently bowed; but as they turned away, he said +to Suzette, "What a happy face! What a lovely face! What a <i>good</i> face!"</p> + +<p>"She is a very good woman," said the girl. "She has been very kind to +us. But so has everybody. I couldn't have believed it." In fact, it was +only the kindness of their neighbors that had come near the defaulter's +daughters; the harshness and the hate had kept away.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't they be kind?" Matt demanded, with his heart instantly in +his throat. "I can't imagine—at such a time—Don't you know that I love +you?" he entreated, as if that exactly followed; there was, perhaps, a +subtle spiritual sequence, transcending all order of logic in the +expression of his passion.</p> + +<p>She looked at him over her shoulder as he walked by her side, and said, +with neither surprise nor joy, "How can you say such a thing to me?"</p> + +<p>"Because it is true! Because I can't help it! Because I wish to be +everything to you, and I have to begin by saying that. But don't answer +me now; you need never answer me. I only wish you to use me as you would +use some one who loved you beyond anything on earth,—as freely as that, +and yet not be bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do that? I +mean, can you feel, 'This is my best friend, the truest friend that any +one can have, and I will let him do anything and everything he wishes +for me.' Can you do that,—say that?"</p> + +<p>"But how could I do that? I don't understand you!" she said, faintly.</p> + +<p>"Don't you? I am so glad you don't drive me from you—"</p> + +<p>"I? <i>You!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I was afraid—But now we can speak reasonably about it; I don't see why +people shouldn't. I know it's shocking to speak to you of such a thing +at such a time. It's dreadful; and yet I can't feel wrong to have done +it! No! If it's as sacred as it seems to me when I think of it, then it +couldn't be wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you; and I +want you some day for my wife. Yes! But don't answer that now! If you +never answer me, or if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me +be your true lover, while I can, and to do everything that your accepted +lover could, whether you ever look at me again or not. Couldn't you do +that?"</p> + +<p>"You know I couldn't," she answered, simply.</p> + +<p>"Couldn't you?" he asked, and he fell into a forlorn silence, as if he +could not say anything more. He forced her to take the word by asking, +"Then you are offended with me?"</p> + +<p>"How could I be?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—"</p> + +<p>"It's what any girl might be glad of—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my—"</p> + +<p>"And I am not so silly as to think there can be a wrong time for it. If +there were, you would make it right, if you chose it. You couldn't do +anything I should think wrong. And I—I—love you, too—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Suzette!" he called wildly, as if she were a great way off. It +seemed to him his heart would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and +tried to seize her hand.</p> + +<p>She slipped by him, with a pathetic "Don't! But you know I never could +be your wife. You <i>know</i> that."</p> + +<p>"I don't know it. Why shouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Because I couldn't bring my father's shame on my husband."</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't touch me, any more than it touches you!"</p> + +<p>"It would touch your father and mother—and Louise."</p> + +<p>"They all admire you and honor you. They think you're everything that's +true and grand."</p> + +<p>"Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to myself. I know how; +and I shall not give way. Don't think it!"</p> + +<p>"You will do what is right. I shall think that."</p> + +<p>"Don't praise me! I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>"But I love you, and how can I help praising you? And if you love me—"</p> + +<p>"I do. I do, with all my heart." She turned and gave him an impassioned +look from the height of her inapproachability.</p> + +<p>"Then I won't ask you to be my wife, Suzette! I know how you feel; I +won't be such a liar as to pretend I don't. And I will respect your +feeling, as the holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, we will be +engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall promise nothing but to +let me help you all I can, for our love's sake, and I will promise never +to speak to you of our love again. That shall be our secret—our +engagement. Will you promise?"</p> + +<p>"It will be hard for you," she said, with a pitying look, which perhaps +tried him as sorely as anything could.</p> + +<p>"Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you."</p> + +<p>They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, that he knew had +tears in them, "I promise."</p> + +<p>"And I promise, too," he said.</p> + +<p>She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, and he held its slim +fingers in his right a moment, and then let it drop. They both honestly +thought they had got the better of that which laughs from its +innumerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices to escape it.</p> + +<p>"And now," he said, "I want to talk to you about what brought me over +here to-day. I thought at first that I was only going to see your +lawyer."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XVIIIB" id="XVIIIB"></a>XVIII.</h2> + + +<p>Matt felt that he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking +to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. +Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust +established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was +any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater +forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing +as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both +insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the +fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for +otherwise unaccountable things.</p> + +<p>"It is what my sister has always said," Sue eagerly assented to his +suggestion of this theory. "I suppose it's what I've always believed, +too, somehow, or I couldn't have lived."</p> + +<p>"Yes; yes, it <i>must</i> be so," Matt insisted. "But now the question is how +to reach him, and make some beginning of the end with him. I suppose +it's the suspense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister +down?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—that and what we ought to do about giving up the property. +We—quarrelled about that at first; we couldn't see it alike; but now +I've yielded; we've both yielded; and we don't know what to do."</p> + +<p>"We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in connection with +something I've just heard of." He told her of Pinney's scheme, and he +said, "We must see if we can't turn it to account."</p> + +<p>They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, but she began it +herself. She looked very old and frail, as she sat nervously rocking +herself in a corner of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, +anxious note. "What I think is, that now we know father is alive, we +oughtn't to do anything about the property without hearing from him. It +stands to reason, don't you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he would +know better than anybody else, what we ought to do. Any rate, I think we +ought to wait and consult with him about it, and see what he says. The +property belonged to mother in the first place, and he mightn't like to +have us part with it."</p> + +<p>"I don't think you need trouble about that, now, Miss Northwick," said +Matt. "Nothing need be done about the property at present."</p> + +<p>"But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what Sue thinks is right, +and to see it just in the light she does; and I've told her I would do +exactly as she said about it; but now she won't say; and so I think +we've got to wait and hear from father. Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, till you hear from +him," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I knew you would," said the old maid, "and if Sue will be ruled by me, +she'll see that it will all turn out right. I know father, and I know +he'll want to do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. He is +a person who could never bear to wrong any one out of a cent."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Sue, "we will do what Mr. Hilary says; and now, try not to +worry about it any more," she coaxed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes! It's well enough to say not to worry <i>now</i>, when my mind's got +going on it," said the old maid, querulously; she flung her weak frame +against the chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. "But +if you'd agreed with me in the first place, it wouldn't have come to +this. Now I'm all broken down, and I don't know <i>when</i> I shall be well +again."</p> + +<p>It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted the cushion to her +sister's shoulders, while Adeline's tongue ran helplessly on. "You were +so headstrong and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were just +like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces against you, and you +wouldn't move."</p> + +<p>"I was wrong," said the proud girl, meekly.</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," Adeline whimpered, "I hate to make an exhibition before Mr. +Hilary, as much as any one, but I can't help it; no, I can't. My nerves +are <i>all</i> gone."</p> + +<p>The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of doors, to leave her, for +the first few confidential moments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, +alone with the physician. There was a little sequestered space among the +avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward which he led the way, +but the girl would not sit down. She stood with her arms fallen at her +side, and looked him steadily in the face.</p> + +<p>"It's all true that she said of me. I set myself like a rock against +her. I have made her sick, and if she died, I should be her murderer!"</p> + +<p>He put his arms round her, and folded her to his heart. "Oh, my love, my +love, my love!" he lamented and exulted over her.</p> + +<p>She did not try to resist; she let her arms hang at her side; she said, +"Is <i>this</i> the way we keep our word?—Already!"</p> + +<p>"Our word was made to be broken; we must have meant it so. I'm glad we +could break it so soon. Now I can truly help you; now that you are to be +my wife."</p> + +<p>She did not gainsay him, but she asked, "What will you think when you +know—you must have known that I used to care for some else; but he +never cared for me? It ought to make you despise me; it made me despise +myself! But it is true. I did care all the world for him, once. <i>Now</i> +will you say—"</p> + +<p>"Now, more than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his +own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from +under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them in +mid-heaven.</p> + +<p>"Suzette!" Adeline's voice called from within. "Suzette! Where are you?"</p> + +<p>Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She came out again in a +little while, and said that the doctor thought Adeline had better go to +bed for a day or two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all +excitement. "We mustn't talk before her any more, and you mustn't stay +any longer."</p> + +<p>He accepted the authority she instinctively assumed over him, and found +his dismissal already of the order of things. He said, "Yes, I'll go at +once. But about—"</p> + +<p>She put a card into his hand. "You can see Mr. Putney, and whatever you +and he think best, will <i>be</i> best. Haven't you been our good angel ever +since—Oh, I'm not half good enough for you, and I shouldn't be, even if +there were no stain—"</p> + +<p>"Stop!" he said; he caught her hand, and pulled her toward him.</p> + +<p>The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, "There's nothing to be +anxious about, but she really must have quiet. I'll send Mrs. Morrell +down to see you, after tea. She's quiet itself."</p> + +<p>Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again in parting.</p> + +<p>"Will you give me a lift, doctor, if you're going toward town?"</p> + +<p>"Get in," said the doctor.</p> + +<p>Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off together.</p> + +<p>Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read: "Mr. Putney: Please talk +to Mr. Hilary as you would to my sister or me." Suzette's printed name +served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket-book, and then he +said, "What sort of man is Mr. Putney, doctor?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Putney," said the doctor, with a twinkle of his blue eyes, "is one +of those uncommon people who have enemies. He has a good many because +he's a man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But he's his own +worst enemy, because from time to time he gets drunk."</p> + +<p>"A character," said Matt. "Do you think he's a safe one? Doesn't his +getting drunk from time to time interfere with his usefulness?"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said the doctor. "It's bad for him; but I think it's +slowly getting better. Yes, decidedly. It's very extraordinary, but ever +since he's been in charge of the Miss Northwicks' interests—"</p> + +<p>"Yes; <i>that's</i> what I was thinking of."</p> + +<p>"He's kept perfectly straight. It's as if the responsibilities had +steadied him."</p> + +<p>"But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge of one that's +gathering violence from its postponement," Matt suggested.</p> + +<p>"I think not," said the doctor after a moment. "But of course I can't +tell."</p> + +<p>"They trust him so implicitly," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"I know," said the doctor. "And I know that he's entirely devoted to +them. The fact is, Putney's a very dear friend of mine."</p> + +<p>"Oh, excuse me—"</p> + +<p>"No, no!" The doctor stayed Matt's apologies. "I understand just what +you mean. He disliked their father very much. He was principled against +him as a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the imaginations +of all the poor people about him who wanted to be like him—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's rather good," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"Do you think so?" asked the doctor, looking round at him. "Well! I +supposed you would be all the other way. Well! What I was saying was +that Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father's chief victims. +I think he was touched by their coming to him, and has pitied them. The +impression is that he's managed their affairs very well; I don't know +about such things; but I know he's managed them honorably; I would stake +my life on it; and I believe he'll hold out straight to the last. I +suppose," the doctor conjectured, at the end, "that they will try to get +at Northwick now, and arrange with his creditors for his return."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind telling you," said Matt, "that it's been tried and failed. +The State's attorney insists that he shall come back and stand his +trial, first of all."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said the doctor.</p> + +<p>"Of course, that's right from the legal point of view. But in the +meantime, nobody knows where Mr. Northwick is."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said the doctor, "it would have been better for him not to +have written that letter."</p> + +<p>"It's hard to say," Matt answered. "I thought so, too, at first. I +thought it was cowardly and selfish of him to take away his children's +superstition about his honesty. You knew that they held to that through +all?"</p> + +<p>"Most touching thing in the world," said the doctor, leaning forward to +push a fly off his horse with the limp point of his whip. "That poor old +maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it myself."</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I should hold him severely accountable. And I'm not +sure now that I should condemn him for writing that letter. It must have +been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say he <i>had</i> to do it. +It's conceivable that if he had kept it on his mind any longer, his mind +would have given way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another +superstition—if it is a superstition. What do you think, doctor? Do you +believe that there was a mental twist in him?"</p> + +<p>"There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. What they do is so +senseless—so insane. I suppose that's the true theory of all crime. But +it won't do to act upon it, yet awhile."</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of enjoyment at the +notion. "Above all, it won't do to let the defaulters act upon that +theory, and apply for admission to the insane asylums instead of taking +the express for Canada, when they're found out."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Matt. He wondered at himself for being able to analyze +the offence of Suzette's father so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could +not relate the thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all; +he could only realize their kindred in her share of his suffering.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIXB" id="XIXB"></a>XIX.</h2> + + +<p>Putney accepted Suzette's authorization of Matt with apparent +unconsciousness of anything but its immediate meaning, and they talked +Pinney's scheme intimately over together. In the end, it still remained +a question whether the energies of such an investigator could be +confined to the discovery of Northwick's whereabouts; whether his +newspaper instincts would not be too strong for any sense of personal +advantage that could be appealed to in him. They both believed that it +would not be long before Northwick followed up the publication of his +letter by some communication with his family.</p> + +<p>But time began to go by again, and Northwick made no further sign; the +flurry of activity which his letter had called out in the detectives +came to nothing. Their search was not very strenuous; Northwick's +creditors were of various minds as to the amount of money he had carried +away with him. Every one knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he +could not be molested there; and it seemed very improbable that he could +be persuaded to put himself within reach of the law. The law had no +terms to offer him, and there was really nothing to be done.</p> + +<p>Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when he held that they +must wait Northwick's motion. He professed himself willing to wait as +long as Northwick chose, though he thought they would not have to wait +long, and he contended for a theory of the man's whole performance which +he said he should like to have tested before a jury.</p> + +<p>Matt could not make out how much he really meant by saying that +Northwick could be defended very fairly on the ground of insanity; and +that he would enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common thing to +show that a murderer was insane; why not a defaulter? Tilted back in his +chair, with one leg over the corner of his table, and changing the +tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, the +lawyer outlined the argument which he said could be made very effective. +There was the fact to begin with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, +and had no need of more money when he began to speculate; Putney held +that this want of motive could be made a strong point; and that the +reckless, almost open, way in which Northwick used the company's money, +when he began to borrow, was proof in itself of unsound mind: apparently +he had no sense whatever of <i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>, especially <i>tuum</i>. Then, +the total collapse of the man when he was found out; his flight without +an effort to retrieve himself, although his shortage was by no means +hopelessly vast, and could have been almost made up by skilful use of +the credit that Northwick could command, was another evidence of shaken +reason. But besides all this, there was his behavior since he left home. +He had been absent nearly five months, and in that time he had made no +attempt whatever to communicate with his family, although he must have +known that it was perfectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who +was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singularly attached to his +home; yet he had remained all that time in voluntary exile, and he had +left them in entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they +could accept the probability of his death by a horrible casualty. This +inversion of the natural character of a man was one of the most striking +phenomena of insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, +maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously with a jury.</p> + +<p>Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with +Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. +Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every +wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of the +fact.</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though I think I could make +out a strong case for Brother Northwick," said Putney. He seemed to +enter into it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of +Matt's uneasiness, and chose to torment him; but then apparently he +changed his mind, and dealt with other aspects of their common interest +so seriously and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with a +regret that he could not remove the last barrier between them, and tell +the lawyer that he concerned himself so anxiously in the affairs of that +wretched defaulter because his dearest hope was that the daughter of the +criminal would some day be his wife.</p> + +<p>But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to those who were +nearest him; and how to shape it in terms that would convey the fact and +yet hide the repulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased +him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome riddle. He +understood why his love for Suzette Northwick must be grievous to his +father and mother; how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in +some sort disastrous; and yet he felt that if there was anything more +sacred than another in the world for him, it was that love, he must be +true to it at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must begin by +being perfectly frank with those whom it would afflict, and confessing +to himself all its difficulties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of +dealing with his father; they were both men, and they could look at it +from the man's point of view. Besides, his father really cared little +what people would say; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not +change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see so much good in it +that he would be promptly and finally reconciled.</p> + +<p>But Matt knew that his mother was of another make, and that the blow +would be much harder for her to bear; his problem was how to lighten it. +Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten it, but let it +fall at once, and trust to her affection and good sense for the rest. +But when he found himself alone with her that night, he began by making +play and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in this perverse +effort that he was not aware of some such effort on her part, till she +suddenly dropped it, and said, "Matt, there is something I wish to speak +to you about—very seriously."</p> + +<p>His heart jumped into his throat, but he said "Well?" and she went on.</p> + +<p>"Louise tells me that you think of bringing this young man down to the +shore with you when you come to see us next week."</p> + +<p>"Maxwell? I thought the change might do him good; yes," said Matt, with +a cowardly joy in his escape from the worst he feared. He thought she +was going to speak to him of Suzette.</p> + +<p>She said, "I don't wish you to bring him. I don't wish Louise to see him +again after she leaves this place—ever again. She is fascinated with +him."</p> + +<p>"Fascinated?"</p> + +<p>"I can't call it anything else. I don't say that she's in love; but +there's no question but she's allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her +fancy to be taken; the two strongest things in her—in most girls. I +want to break it all up."</p> + +<p>"But do you think—"</p> + +<p>"I <i>know</i>. It isn't that she's with him at every moment, but that her +thoughts are with him when they're apart. He puzzles her; he piques her; +she's always talking and asking about him. It's their difference in +everything that does it. I don't mean to say that her heart is touched, +and I don't intend it shall be. So, you mustn't ask him to the shore +with you, and if you've asked him already, you must get out of it. If +you think he needs sea air, you can get him board at some of the +resorts. But not near us." She asked, in default of any response from +her son, "You <i>don't</i> think, Matt, it would be well for the acquaintance +to go on?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't mother; you're quite right as to that," said Matt, "if +you're not mistaken in supposing—"</p> + +<p>"I'm not; you may depend upon it. And I'm glad you can see the matter +from my point of view. It is all very well for you to have your queer +opinions, and even to live them. I think it's all ridiculous; but your +father and I both respect you for your sincerity, though your course has +been a great disappointment to us."</p> + +<p>"I know that, mother," said Matt, groaning in spirit to think how much +worse the disappointment he was meditating must be, and feeling himself +dishonest and cowardly, through and through.</p> + +<p>"But I feel sure," Mrs. Hilary went on, "that when it's a question of +your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, +and in the surroundings she had always been used to."</p> + +<p>"I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise's ideas," +said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface.</p> + +<p>"Ideas!" cried his mother. "She <i>has</i> no ideas. She merely has impulses, +and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and +breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she +would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each +other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, +and all that; and I shouldn't at all mind his being poor. I never minded +Cyril Wade's being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because +he was one of ourselves; and this young man—Matt, you <i>can't</i> pretend, +that with all his intellectual qualities, he's what one calls a +gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all +his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn't be; and +Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have +all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don't deny that he +has—"</p> + +<p>"He has some very serious faults," Matt interrupted.</p> + +<p>"We all have," said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. "But he might be a perfect +saint—a hero—a martyr, and if he wasn't what one calls a gentleman, +don't you see? We can't be frank about such things, here, because we +live in a republic; but—"</p> + +<p>"We get there, just the same," said Matt, with unwonted slang.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said his mother. "That is what I mean."</p> + +<p>"And you're quite right, as to the facts, mother." He got up, and began +to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were +sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting +to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber +where Maxwell was probably writing. "The self-made man can never be the +society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more +money, more virtue, but he's a kind of inferior, and he betrays his +inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he's successful, he's so +because he's been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of +life. That's one reason why I say that there oughtn't to <i>be</i> any battle +of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages—I see that. He's +often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his +bread. He isn't Louise's social equal; I quite agree with you there, +mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in +danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. +I'm sorry for Maxwell, but I don't pity him, especially. He bears the +penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him +stand it! But there are others—weaker, unhappier—Mother! You haven't +asked me yet about—the Northwicks." Matt stopped in front of her chair, +and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his +acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her +perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She +was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more +and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure +to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an +expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts +and theories.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "I expected to do that. You know I've seen them so very +lately, and with this about Louise on my mind—How are they? That poor +Adeline—I'm afraid it's killing her. Were you able to do anything for +them?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, I don't know," the young man sighed. "They have to suffer for their +misfortunes, too."</p> + +<p>"It seems to be the order of Providence," said Mrs. Hilary, with the +resignation of the philosophical spectator.</p> + +<p>"No!" Matt protested. "It's the disorder of improvidence. There's +nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. +Those women are perfectly innocent; they've only wished to do right, and +tried to do it; but they're under a ban the same as if they had shared +their father's guilt. They have no friends—"</p> + +<p>"Well, Matt," said his mother, with dignity, "I think you can hardly say +that. I'm sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to +reproach ourselves with. I think we've gone to the extreme to show our +good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don't like +your saying this!"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon. I certainly don't blame you, or Louise, or father. I +blame myself—for cowardice—for—for unworthiness in being afraid to +say—to tell you—Mother," he burst out suddenly, after a halt, "I've +asked Suzette Northwick to marry me."</p> + +<p>Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the +effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing +presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and +now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and +Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, +so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed +wholly incredible.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXB" id="XXB"></a>XX.</h2> + + +<p>The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary +heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in +making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the +affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, +and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a +personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she +liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and +similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest +kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them +to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had +them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was +more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her +husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she +had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun +to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial +slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer +him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal +tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts +as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of +doctrine.</p> + +<p>"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his +mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know +that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected +her to refuse me."</p> + +<p>"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I +can't imagine it."</p> + +<p>"Can't imagine it? <i>I</i> can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother +did not seem to notice his resentment.</p> + +<p>"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?"</p> + +<p>"I wish you to say everything, mother—all that you feel and +think—about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think—I +can't <i>let</i> you think—that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed +me to suppose that my offer would be welcome."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for +that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he +allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no +doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride."</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself. +But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I +know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it +can't be helped."</p> + +<p>"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always +imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur +of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people +who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted.</p> + +<p>"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family +connections that every one else has—"</p> + +<p>"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a +smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was +making.</p> + +<p>"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to +see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the +princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent +creature."</p> + +<p>Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly +reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to +overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled:</p> + +<p>"She is—she <i>is</i>—angelically!"</p> + +<p>"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a +good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more +to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about +their property, than for wishing to give it up."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully.</p> + +<p>"But there, <i>there</i> is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the +highest position. But her father! What will people say?"</p> + +<p>"Need we mind that, mother?"</p> + +<p>"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were—if he had +never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do +next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!"</p> + +<p>"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately.</p> + +<p>"Matt!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength +for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I +should be glad to stand by him!"</p> + +<p>"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel +about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer +anything more on that wretch's account?"</p> + +<p>"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my +engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass +him—compromise him, even—"</p> + +<p>"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know +best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or +mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I +feel—"</p> + +<p>"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe +he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to +make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into +State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your +marriage."</p> + +<p>Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not +perceive so keenly.</p> + +<p>"I don't intend that, exactly."</p> + +<p>"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing +is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone."</p> + +<p>"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it +up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the +matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to +face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette +see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is +guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But +he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to +be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, +his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether +he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty—"</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious +than a self-confessed defaulter's."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't say—"</p> + +<p>"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty +with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, +though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very +differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, +nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father +was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him."</p> + +<p>Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world +enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She +will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of +what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way."</p> + +<p>"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose +it <i>is</i> here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you +hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point +Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail +for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you +here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you +marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father +into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home."</p> + +<p>"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her +to run from it."</p> + +<p>"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, +if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he +dies. Good-night."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had +sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved +one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not +rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in +dazzling illusions.</p> + +<p>The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; +he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew +how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his +father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt +instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more +unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.</p> + +<p>But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all +his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of +meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had +done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said +it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he +said, "I shall have to take some action about it."</p> + +<p>"How, action?"</p> + +<p>"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes +known—and you wish it to be known, of course—"</p> + +<p>"Of course!"</p> + +<p>"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"Northwick?"</p> + +<p>"As president of the Board, I'm <i>ex officio</i> his enemy and persecutor. +It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that +after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It +wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board +altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a +cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty."</p> + +<p>"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt.</p> + +<p>"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position +so much."</p> + +<p>Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we +discovered Northwick's obliquities—excuse me!"</p> + +<p>Matt blushed. "Oh, I know he's oblique, as such things go."</p> + +<p>"In fact," his father resumed, "I shall be glad to be out of it, and I +don't think there'll be much opposition to my going out; I know that +there's a growing feeling against me in the Board. I <i>have</i> tried to +carry water on both shoulders. I've made the effort honestly; but the +effect hasn't been good. I couldn't keep my heart out of it; from the +very first I pitied that poor devil's children so that I got him and +gave him all the chance I could."</p> + +<p>"That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like—"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he +might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I'm +afraid this is what I've hoped, in spite of myself," said Hilary.</p> + +<p>This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. +He could only say, "I don't believe you've ever allowed that hope to +interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment."</p> + +<p>"No; but I've had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I've +had it. I've felt that; and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm not +ashamed of your choice, Matt; I'm proud of it. The thing gave me a shock +at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she's all +kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why +she hasn't done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don't believe +people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. +But if they do, they may do it, and be damned."</p> + +<p>Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, +upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure +that he exchanged with his son.</p> + +<p>"We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by +that—We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion +where he is than we have."</p> + +<p>"No; not the least," said Matt. "I think it's the uncertainty that's +preying upon Miss Northwick."</p> + +<p>"The man's behaving like a confounded lunatic," said Hilary.</p> + +<p>The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, "That's their lawyer's +theory of him—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you've <i>seen</i> him, have you? Odd chap."</p> + +<p>"Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after—after—at the request of +Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell's heard +of from a brother reporter," and Matt now unfolded Pinney's plan to his +father, and showed his letter.</p> + +<p>Hilary looked from it at his son. "You don't mean that this is the +blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the <i>Events</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; the same fellow. But as to blackguard—"</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it +would be a kind of insult to those poor girls."</p> + +<p>"I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, I don't think he +knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself. Maxwell says he +wouldn't know. And besides, we can't help ourselves. If he doesn't go +for us, he will go for himself. We <i>must</i> employ him. He's a species of +<i>condottiere</i>; we can buy his allegiance with his service: and we must +forego the sentimental objection. I've gone all over it, and that's the +only conclusion."</p> + +<p>Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help +themselves, that they could not do better. He asked, "And what did their +lawyer think of it?"</p> + +<p>"He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better +wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his +family."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure of that," said Hilary. "If this fellow is such a fellow +as you say, I don't see why we shouldn't make use of him at once."</p> + +<p>"Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?" said Matt. "I think it +would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily—"</p> + +<p>"Come back?" said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than +this. "Nonsense! And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I +mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out +just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in +order to make up his shortage."</p> + +<p>Matt now perceived the extent of his father's purpose, and on its plane +he honored it.</p> + +<p>"Father, you're splendid!"</p> + +<p>"Stuff! I'm in a corner. What else is there to do? What less could we +do? What's the money for, if it isn't to—" Hilary choked with the +emotion that filled him at the sight of his son's face.</p> + +<p>Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is +the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a +daughter's faith in him; for a son <i>knows</i> whether his father is good or +not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son's opinion +than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary +valued his judgment as something ideal.</p> + +<p>After a moment he asked, "Can this fellow be got at?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I imagine very readily."</p> + +<p>"What did Maxwell say about him, generally?"</p> + +<p>"Generally, that he's not at all a bad kind of fellow. He's a reporter +by nature, and he's a detective upon instinct. He's done some amateur +detective work, as many reporters do—according to Maxwell's account. +The two things run together—and he's very shrewd and capable in his +way. He's going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to +be worth his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion +is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of +control. He's a mixture, like everybody else. He's devotedly fond of his +wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air—"</p> + +<p>"My idea," Hilary interrupted, "would be not to wait for the Social +Science Convention, but to send this—"</p> + +<p>"Pinney."</p> + +<p>"Pinney at once. Will you see him?"</p> + +<p>"If you have made up your mind."</p> + +<p>"I've made up my mind. But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven's +sake bind him by all that's sacred—if there's anything sacred to +him—not to give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and offer him a +pension for his widow afterwards."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XXIB" id="XXIB"></a>XXI.</h2> + + +<p>Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, the prophecy in +amplitude of what her son might come to be if he did not carry the +activities of youth into his later life. She, for her part, was long +past such activities; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass grow +upon any path she had taken. She appointed the afternoon of the day +following her talk with Matt for leaving the farm and going to the +shore; Louise was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it best +to tell her why, when the girl came to say good-night, and to announce +that her packing was finished.</p> + +<p>"But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, mamma, all of a +sudden?"</p> + +<p>"We are in a hurry because—don't you really know, Louise?—because in +the crazy atmosphere of this house, one loses the sense of—of +proportion—of differences."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you rather—Emersonian, mamma?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think so, my dear? Matt's queer notions infect everybody; I +don't blame <i>you</i>, particularly; and the simple life he makes people +lead—by leading it himself, more than anything else—makes you think +that you could keep on living just as simply if you wished, everywhere."</p> + +<p>"It's very sweet—it's so restful," sighed the girl. "It makes you sick +of dinners and ashamed of dances."</p> + +<p>"But you must go back to them; you must go back to the world you belong +to; and you'd better not carry any queer habits back with you."</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> rather sphinx-like, mamma! Such habits, for instance, as?"</p> + +<p>"As Mr. Maxwell." The girl's face changed; her mother had touched the +quick. She went on, looking steadily at her daughter, "You know he +wouldn't do, there."</p> + +<p>"No; he wouldn't," said Louise, promptly; so mournfully, though, that +her mother's heart relented.</p> + +<p>"I've seen that you've become interested in him, Louise; that your fancy +is excited; he stimulates your curiosity. I don't wonder at it! He <i>is</i> +very interesting. He makes you feel his power more than any other young +man I've met. He charms your imagination even when he shocks your +taste."</p> + +<p>"Yes; all that," said Louise, desolately.</p> + +<p>"But he does shock your taste?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes—not always."</p> + +<p>"Often enough, though, to make the difference that I'm afraid you'll +lose the sense of. Louise, I should be very sorry if I thought you were +at all—in love with that young man!"</p> + +<p>It seemed a question; Louise let her head droop, and answered with +another. "How should I know? He hasn't asked me."</p> + +<p>This vexed her mother. "Don't be trivial, don't be childish, my dear. +You don't need to be asked, though I'm exceedingly glad he <i>hasn't</i> +asked you, for now you can get away with a good conscience."</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure yet that I want to get away," said the girl, dreamily.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are, my dear!" her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do +at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money +enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little +nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be +different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in +as different a world from yours as if it were another planet—I want you +to think over all the girls you know—all the <i>people</i> you know—and see +how many of them have married out of their own set, their own circle—we +might almost say, their own family. There isn't one!"</p> + +<p>"I've not said I wished to marry him, mamma."</p> + +<p>"No. But I wish you to realize just what it would be."</p> + +<p>"It would be something rather distinguished, if his dreams came true," +Louise suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," Mrs. Hilary admitted. She wished to be very, very +reasonable; very, very just; it was the only thing with a girl like +Louise; perhaps with any girl. "It would be distinguished, in a way. But +it wouldn't be distinguished in the society way; the only way you've +professed to care for. I know that we've always been an intellectual +community, and New-Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess +to think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We do invite them +somewhat, but I pass whole seasons without meeting them; and I don't +know that you could say that they are <i>of</i> society, even when they are +<i>in</i> it. If such a man has society connections, he's in society; but +he's there on account of his connections, not on account of his +achievements. This young man may become very distinguished, but he'll +always be rather queer; and he would put a society girl at odds with +society. His distinction would be public; it wouldn't be social."</p> + +<p>"Matt doesn't think society is worth minding," Louise said, casually.</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> do," returned her mother. "And Matt says that a man of this +young man's traditions might mortify you before society people."</p> + +<p>"Did Matt say that?" Louise demanded, angrily. "I will <i>speak</i> to Matt +about that! I should like to know what he means by it. I should like to +hear what he would say."</p> + +<p>"Very likely he would say that the society people were not worth +minding. You know his nonsense. If you agree with Matt, I've nothing +more to say, Louise; not a word. You can marry a mechanic or a +day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self-respect. I've only been +talking to you on the plane where I've always understood you wished to +be taken. But if you don't, then I can't help it. You must understand, +though, and understand distinctly, that you can't live on two levels; +the world won't let you. Either you must be in the world and of it +entirely; or you must discard its criterions, and form your own, and +hover about in a sort of Bohemian limbo on its outskirts; or you must +give it up altogether." Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where she had +been sitting, and said, "Now I'm going to bed. And I want you to think +this all carefully over, Louise. I don't blame you for it: and I wish +nothing but your good and happiness—yours and Matt's, both. But I must +say you've been pretty difficult children to provide for. Do you know +what Matt has been doing?" Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, but +she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last.</p> + +<p>"Something new about the Northwicks?"</p> + +<p>"Very decidedly—or about one of them. He's offered himself to Suzette."</p> + +<p>"How grand! How perfectly magnificent! Then she can give up her property +at once, and Matt can take care of her and Adeline both."</p> + +<p>"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a +capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to +live here on the farm with him."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could +she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people +thought?"</p> + +<p>"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it +comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much +what her father had been—that is, society people wouldn't, <i>as</i> society +people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and +she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be +talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived +down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage +of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us +off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some +farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say +'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is +indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must +confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged."</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>were</i> you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along +that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy +would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And +then, Suzette <i>is</i> a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's +just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of <i>course</i> he would be taken with +her. I'm not a <i>bit</i> surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the +world."</p> + +<p>"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has +seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. +Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year."</p> + +<p>Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing.</p> + +<p>"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in +chains, long enough to give away the bride?"</p> + +<p>"Louise!" said her mother.</p> + +<p>Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, +"for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's +money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no +matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society +man—"</p> + +<p>"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. +Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell—"</p> + +<p>"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite +rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, +which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. +She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the +light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated +it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the +moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor.</p> + +<p>After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell +waiting for her on the piazza.</p> + +<p>"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered.</p> + +<p>"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon +train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed +with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go +over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, +for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any +reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with +her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to +speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and +tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, +"Will you?"</p> + +<p>"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing."</p> + +<p>"Well, you ought to like this."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating."</p> + +<p>They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture +and the pines.</p> + +<p>"Before I say it, you must <i>promise</i> to take it in the right way," she +said.</p> + +<p>He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?"</p> + +<p>"Because—because I wish you to so much!"</p> + +<p>"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to +behave myself, under ordinary provocation?"</p> + +<p>"You may think the provocation is extraordinary."</p> + +<p>"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to +scramble after him.</p> + +<p>She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he +would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, +rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care +for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman +could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not +go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as +Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. +She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit +beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock +swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs +over them.</p> + +<p>"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence.</p> + +<p>"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for +you."</p> + +<p>"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when +we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?"</p> + +<p>"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that."</p> + +<p>"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were."</p> + +<p>"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Because—because you seemed very worldly."</p> + +<p>"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with +his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I +take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm +going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss +Hilary."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of +life Matt's trying to live is better?"</p> + +<p>"Your brother is the best man I ever knew—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!"</p> + +<p>"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means +business."</p> + +<p>"And can't you think—can't you wish—for anything better than the life +that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you +ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away +from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't +you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?"</p> + +<p>"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy +godmother?" asked Maxwell.</p> + +<p>"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. +"You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile.</p> + +<p>"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile +that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if +I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen +what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in +the summer."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go +and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell"—she mechanically +gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to +the world again."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going +to make of my patience, my docility—"</p> + +<p>She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. +Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house +with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the +hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength +for the battle of life as fast as you can."</p> + +<p>She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, +felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that +she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, +and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her +capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping +meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell +her his love.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; +but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD.</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IC" id="IC"></a>I.</h2> + + +<p>Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and +possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really +expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper +sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the +interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he +said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and +he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving +that his account of the defalcation in the <i>Events</i> could have been +displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He +referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly +agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object.</p> + +<p>It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to +Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney +was disappointed in the <i>Events'</i> people; they had not seen his proposed +excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an +enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to +invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. +This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another +calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some +minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with +gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who +attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a +partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, +though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for +it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and +which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most +valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she +did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she +believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she +would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were +lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long +run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that +she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to +look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That +would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better +than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much +good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay +quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that +was necessary.</p> + +<p>"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get +him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both +sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as +a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies—"</p> + +<p>"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked +thing! So dishonorable!"</p> + +<p>"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney.</p> + +<p>"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I <i>won't</i>. But +if you go as a detective, <i>go</i> as a detective; and if you go as their +friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try +to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with +you; so there!"</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you +needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for +practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter +line. You won't object to that?"</p> + +<p>"No; I won't object to that."</p> + +<p>They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they +were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had +seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At +Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick +had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him +in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search +in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not +only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he +could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went +about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not +wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the +<i>Events</i>. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie +with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on +his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local +press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of +newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the +leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material +relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a +sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came +to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but +it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very +well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not +in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned +that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because +they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at +home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence +in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by +their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had +fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a +different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who +had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no +domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. +These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too +proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study +in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They +did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed +to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in +tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the +confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent +temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes +in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said +they had no statement to make.</p> + +<p>It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man +he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, +and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, +Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice +of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather +comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the +local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it +was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like +himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest +defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should +be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if +at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he +did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but +he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his +way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the <i>Events</i> was posted. +This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone +unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he +came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such +friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, +that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to +feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them +behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing +what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an +English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down +the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in +compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by +any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the +baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting +into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the +calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through +the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as +soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, +and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, +and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole +enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had +said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means +of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it +the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he +could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish +view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and +nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only +right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the +Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; +good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which +he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and +thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only +to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found +it in lasting prosperity.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIC" id="IIC"></a>II.</h2> + + +<p>These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left +his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number +of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had +already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not +playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale +straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal +speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were +Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was +national as well as what was individual in his talk.</p> + +<p>"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that +fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his +soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip +out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got +tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the +spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to +go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; +but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall +into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. +Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'"</p> + +<p>One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to +invest."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of +thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old +Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and <i>he</i> would +be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, +and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him."</p> + +<p>"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even +go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of +the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might +have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, +and the thousand-dollar bills—there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau +says—were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had +no faith in Oiseau—knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just +putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left +him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. +Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind +of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them +must bring money away with them, and there are business openings +everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here."</p> + +<p>"That <i>is</i> odd," said the Canadian.</p> + +<p>"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't +know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, +except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the +only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was +a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes +to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply +rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a +safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's +business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been +able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and +he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just +<i>couldn't</i>. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend +to respect it. I can imagine just how the man <i>trembled</i> to go into some +speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. +But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he +gets away with it, and he can't risk it."</p> + +<p>"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you +could have got at him," said the Canadian.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock +in England."</p> + +<p>Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for +a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the +request as an overture to his acquaintance.</p> + +<p>"Brother Yank?" he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Boston."</p> + +<p>"Going over?"</p> + +<p>"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, +do you?"</p> + +<p>"No; I don't," said Markham.</p> + +<p>"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney.</p> + +<p>Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?"</p> + +<p>"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But +I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little +article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's +Pinney."</p> + +<p>"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, +going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But +don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine."</p> + +<p>"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a +much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the +American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing +soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely +conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, +and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and +address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was +about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half +of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then +he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission +concerning Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash +off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted +acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt +the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire +in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who +knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish +now—yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me—at Rimouski. You'd better +look him up."</p> + +<p>"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'll <i>live</i> with him before +I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds."</p> + +<p>He had no trouble in finding Père Étienne, but after the first hopeful +encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found +him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at +Haha Bay. It became evident that Père Étienne took Pinney for a +detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for +Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he +was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison.</p> + +<p>Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's +caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his +authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's +acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their +parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after +several weeks, and Père Étienne knew where he was then living. But he +was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him +as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the +learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the +largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at +Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, +that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished +him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile.</p> + +<p>Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. André, +and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in +finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's +spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized +toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Père +Étienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to +him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at +the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at +the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. +Northwick, I believe."</p> + +<p>It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since +Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when +he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was +suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much +so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face.</p> + +<p>"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of +taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and +of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. +Northwick, you won't open the letter."</p> + +<p>He handed him, not the letter which Père Étienne had given him, but the +letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he +recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter +tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched +it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of +the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," +he said, kindly, and turned away.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IIIC" id="IIIC"></a>III.</h2> + + +<p>When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still +holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a +kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint.</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If +it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me +at once?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than +Pinney had expected to find him. "But—are they well? Is it—bad news?"</p> + +<p>"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read +the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it +was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring +him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by +the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and +built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain +nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, +seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, +apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a +little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his +wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she +said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he +unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look +sick."</p> + +<p>"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the +bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he +would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it +but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety +of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that +he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy +only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done +so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would +write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that +for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better +and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him.</p> + +<p>When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter +open in his hand.</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that +had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the +hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully +established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant +to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people +ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city.</p> + +<p>Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of +the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to +take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir."</p> + +<p>Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting +mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to +speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how +Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, +and now he gave him the letter of Père Étienne, with a eulogy of the +priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how +Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly +recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the +postmark on his letter to the <i>Events</i> that gave him the notion of going +to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect +of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him +ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and +he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." +The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, +"I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different +way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I +believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never +believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable +he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he +went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that +you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a +little."</p> + +<p>As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his +wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not +help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with +Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral +suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the +conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the +making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of +those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a +reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one +of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his +best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his +promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with +accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this +matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own.</p> + +<p>"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and +he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter +as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's +nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but +he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew +just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect +for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing +to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make +out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a +growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and +conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by +the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression +concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's +opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work +exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault +in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the +situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight +were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was +concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary +machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came +within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had +been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no +light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love +from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had +not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and +anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about +them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, +and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive +circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. +The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not +broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary +criticised for it, and he told Northwick so.</p> + +<p>"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he +consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he +expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and +talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added.</p> + +<p>Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the +fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't +know anything about the way they're living?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they +were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what +they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. +My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as +they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in +the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of +yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in +that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home."</p> + +<p>Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a +name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not +in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch +engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick—"</p> + +<p>"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real +name!"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, +when he first takes another. It's natural."</p> + +<p>"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; +and then I was sick—They must have believed I was dead!"</p> + +<p>"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and +myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it +was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a +friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand +how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that +they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of +the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about +it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor +there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all +theories to the contrary—though <i>they</i> must have been pretty well +exploded by your letter to the <i>Events</i>—and the question is what answer +are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some +word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I +won't. But if I was in your place, I know what <i>I</i> should do."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep +silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face +became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is +doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute +misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer +soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a +quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must +have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly +because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which +he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his +guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, +Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between +them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for +nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself +and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to +perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in +this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain +amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not +misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them."</p> + +<p>"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter +despair, and an openness that he had not shown before.</p> + +<p>Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, +Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, +joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you +believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in +good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your +daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got +to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you +just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. But <i>I</i> think +you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for +nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all +you've brought with you,"—Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for +the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added—"and +more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when +it's needed. I can't say <i>how</i> I know it, for I don't exactly <i>know</i> how +I know it. But I do know it; and you know that <i>it's</i> for you to take +the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and +where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, +with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred +to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again."</p> + +<p>Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought +upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as +it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, +bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, +with a kind of severity.</p> + +<p>"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate +it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped—"</p> + +<p>"Then I <i>was</i> the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly +reflected—</p> + +<p>"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a +place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you +can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, +I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four +hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, +I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for +you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your +distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a +candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's +this?"</p> + +<p>A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly +approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur."</p> + +<p>"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to +join me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They +had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was +an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, +what's this?"</p> + +<p>"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't +been here for several years."</p> + +<p>"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in +the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly +established in him.</p> + +<p>"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with +unresentful dignity.</p> + +<p>"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a +little English, after all the French you have around."</p> + +<p>"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father +Étienne."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and +weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did +not resent the help offered him.</p> + +<p>"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he +explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal."</p> + +<p>"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney.</p> + +<p>"No," said Northwick, briefly.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IVC" id="IVC"></a>IV.</h2> + + +<p>Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the +local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more +freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up +toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque +details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under +attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney +with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he +took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him +that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be +both fortune and fame to him.</p> + +<p>They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. +"What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?"</p> + +<p>Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the +time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour +each day came and went.</p> + +<p>"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still +looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I +to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off +suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as +safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts +are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they +can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you +say?"</p> + +<p>Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you."</p> + +<p>"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your +traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much +interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a +great deal better,—get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little +nurse in <i>this</i> world; and, as you <i>say</i>, you don't seem over and above +strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's +the <i>best</i> baby! I've heard that child cry just <i>once</i> since it was +born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of +tears; I believe we all do that; but <i>our</i> baby finished up the whole +crying-business on that occasion."</p> + +<p>With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed +Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with +himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services +to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his +helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it +a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney +could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his +things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making +interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to +describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in +Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk +gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied +it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, +and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. +Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; +Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when +he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick +man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him +comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were +closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and +there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer +yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went +and came so softly Pinney could not hear it.</p> + +<p>Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a +prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of +him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. +They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and +Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed +up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when +it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. +He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home +for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked +Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing.</p> + +<p>Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so +deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost +the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a +fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, +with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine +emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be +fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life +he needed it.</p> + +<p>"And I don't believe but what it <i>could</i> be fixed," he said. "I don't +know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the +friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume +there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those +things can always be appealed and continued and <i>nolle prossed</i>, and all +that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would +have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. +But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the +whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski +hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. +No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends +stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a +mere nominal sentence, if you got that."</p> + +<p>Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having +weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept +the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says +there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, +public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people +get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going +to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper +experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public +opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact +is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. +Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to +fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that +was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're +pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's +pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the +paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The +worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion +are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations +are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about +it, if you ain't too sleepy?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> rather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. +My! It don't seem as I <i>was</i> going back to my wife and baby. It seems +too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't +get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and +I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet."</p> + +<p>Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over +Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. +Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made +him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, +after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, +good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a +light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower +berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; +but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some +medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was +easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one +of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his +breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his +berth, and fell heavily asleep.</p> + +<p>He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be +lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying +down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled +the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick +lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned +courage to look, he found the berth empty.</p> + +<p>He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his +clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's +travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He +rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every +part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be +seen.</p> + +<p>He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said +since six o'clock. It was then eight.</p> + +<p>Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed +disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last +resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him +a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager.</p> + +<p>It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as +Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery.</p> + +<p>"Did you say anything about his going back?"</p> + +<p>"Why—in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully.</p> + +<p>"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, +and it's served you right."</p> + +<p>His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said +it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he +had better go out and get a doctor.</p> + +<p>It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could +be.</p> + +<p>"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was +putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior.</p> + +<p>"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, +coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, <i>do</i> go for the doctor!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VC" id="VC"></a>V.</h2> + + +<p>The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent +avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily +began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and +waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a +wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he +was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety +of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through +and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the +night.</p> + +<p>A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to +him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and +stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at +the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were +open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck +a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this +faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he +had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He +tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring +at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had +stolen out of it.</p> + +<p>One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he +stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the +change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and +he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every +detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, +and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the +desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the +doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and +hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the +stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself +that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic +expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was +nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search +of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might +well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of +risk to himself.</p> + +<p>He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of +the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured +face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last +night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it +gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze +his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper +die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, +and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns +showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the +coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment +through the window, and then vanished.</p> + +<p>Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some +homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his +confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps +sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind +reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come +and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the +action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer +before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; +it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless +charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against +him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family +one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of +them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door +without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and +looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the +bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair +which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him.</p> + +<p>It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a +lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his +children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and +he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone +again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to +light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window +he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on +the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man.</p> + +<p>"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, +anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, +'Lectra."</p> + +<p>Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known +Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman +beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. +Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the +least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, +especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and +deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a +knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for +mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did +not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for +a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick +felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. +Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be +dumned," said Elbridge.</p> + +<p>His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you +going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not +present; he stood so dumb and impassive.</p> + +<p>"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar +complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the +probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't +you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, +"lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, +and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, +anyhow?"</p> + +<p>Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him +carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his +stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, +anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this +because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to +another.</p> + +<p>His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the +piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to +speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he +stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to +make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, +"You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've +got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, +silently obeyed.</p> + +<p>"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence +which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I +blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be +afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you +against your will, you know."</p> + +<p>"Well, I <i>guess</i> not," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. +"If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face +first. Bring him along, Elbridge."</p> + +<p>As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and +helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, +tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and +pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate.</p> + +<p>Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret +purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; +but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached +the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, +while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and +Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss +Northwick. If you're sure you're awake—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!"</p> + +<p>"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. +Don't call out—don't speak loud. There's somebody here—Come down, and +let him in."</p> + +<p>Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs +inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with +choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! +Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?"</p> + +<p>She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was +shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they +understood.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIC" id="VIC"></a>VI.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned +up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he +gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?"</p> + +<p>"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did +for them when their little boy died, if <i>he</i> has, and I <i>guess</i> he +hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?"</p> + +<p>"In the house. I was there."</p> + +<p>"But how did he know it?"</p> + +<p>"I had to have a light to see by."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what I +<i>should</i> have done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!"</p> + +<p>"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any +longer, when that fellow came with your letter."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he <i>found</i> you," she cried, joyfully. "I <i>knew</i> he would find you, +and I said so—Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a +cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it +always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise +Hilary bought it at the sale—I know she bought it—and gave it to me. +It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give +it up to the company."</p> + +<p>He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her +piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about +that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I—"</p> + +<p>"No! Of <i>course</i> you didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you +suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, +through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I +knew you were just overwrought."</p> + +<p>Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came +closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll +of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always +kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of +it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay."</p> + +<p>"Oh, they <i>won't</i> let you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the +court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will +put you in prison."</p> + +<p>Northwick mechanically put the money back.</p> + +<p>"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I +have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that +there's never been any disgrace on!"</p> + +<p>"What—what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps +overhead.</p> + +<p>"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, +breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and +called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, +come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be +hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; +the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you +be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton +comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we +don't mind it a bit, being alone here. I <i>did</i> want to go into the +farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right +in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than +being afraid; but we haven't <i>been</i> afraid; and the Newtons come all the +time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back—" She +stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, +as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, +lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to +let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what +Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and +glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary—oh, he's the +<i>best</i> young man!—and I guess they're going to be married just as soon +as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came +down."</p> + +<p>Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not +appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll +speak to me?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Speak</i> to you!"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the +money, all but the little I've had to use—"</p> + +<p>There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in +the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she +flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and +kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with +a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not +simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them.</p> + +<p>Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over +her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their +lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity.</p> + +<p>Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed +to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She +praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for +advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that +last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She +praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for +doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the +Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and +she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there +never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she +wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. +He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and +Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!"</p> + +<p>"Go?" Adeline echoed.</p> + +<p>"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him.</p> + +<p>They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the +face.</p> + +<p>Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her +words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's <i>got</i> to go! Oh, Suzette, +let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!"</p> + +<p>"It's prison <i>there</i>" said Northwick. "Let me stay!"</p> + +<p>"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What +makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as +anything, I do it."</p> + +<p>"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, +or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I +won't <i>let</i> you think of me!"</p> + +<p>"But what would they say—Mr. Hilary say—if they sent father to +prison?"</p> + +<p>Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trust +<i>him</i>, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes +to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make +him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, +that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what +they please."</p> + +<p>Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, +as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when +Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking +about! Father, tell her you don't <i>wish</i> to stay!"</p> + +<p>"I must go, Suzette; I had better go—"</p> + +<p>"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." +Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through +all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say +good-by! You've got to go, now—yes, you've <i>got</i> to!—but it won't be +for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and +now we can write—be sure you write, father, when you get back there; +or, you'd better telegraph—and we can arrange—I know we can—for you +to come home, and stay home."</p> + +<p>"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured.</p> + +<p>"It seems as if he wanted to <i>kill</i> me!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. +She took them away. "Well, <i>stay</i>, then!" she said.</p> + +<p>"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's +all right—all for the best. I'll go—"</p> + +<p>"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" +said Adeline.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I will."</p> + +<p>"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together +in Canada, as well as here."</p> + +<p>Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; +their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any +of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And—and I want +to get back into our place."</p> + +<p>He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final +conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline +would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way +of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to +be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my +goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start +from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What +shall we do?"</p> + +<p>"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going +back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, +and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in +words.</p> + +<p>"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in +the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come +for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away."</p> + +<p>"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!"</p> + +<p>Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the +dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black +Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light.</p> + +<p>"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's +head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the +carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, +anyway."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we <i>did</i>!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, +now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! +Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, +Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the +shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you—"</p> + +<p>"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped +up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going +to get the black colt's time out of the old mare."</p> + +<p>"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIC" id="VIIC"></a>VII.</h2> + + +<p>On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some +anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was +safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for +himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He +had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in +helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put +himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the +stable after the horse was stolen.</p> + +<p>He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as +Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument +before breakfast.</p> + +<p>Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential +voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, +to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be +li'ble?"</p> + +<p>"Why?" asked Putney.</p> + +<p>"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately.</p> + +<p>"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought +his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and +you didn't let me know?"</p> + +<p>"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged.</p> + +<p>"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars +to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about +it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: +"Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place +myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!"</p> + +<p>Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was +besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours +he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had +learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, +though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held +out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat +hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that +those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him +soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she +was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if +he gave way now.</p> + +<p>When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew +that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and +made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he +boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the +Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, +and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards +the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the +mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, +as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were +both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit +reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for +some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to +serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and +since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking +for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not +because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly +to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests +of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked +over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some +virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a +sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of +exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so +strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own +usefulness.</p> + +<p>He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now +dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he +turned to go into the house.</p> + +<p>"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after +him.</p> + +<p>"Say?"</p> + +<p>"You know: about what I done."</p> + +<p>"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you +sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do."</p> + +<p>Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, +already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the +strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast +down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at +breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, +Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIIIC" id="VIIIC"></a>VIII.</h2> + + +<p>Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. +She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she +said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old +mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the +sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so +as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they +brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time +she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back +alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected +they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette +tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild +upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her +father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please +the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was +perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had +come over her.</p> + +<p>Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came +back. Then he walked to the lodge to report.</p> + +<p>"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him +before he could get a word out.</p> + +<p>"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on +his way back to Canady, again."</p> + +<p>"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his +home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! <i>Send</i> for him! +Bring him <i>back</i>, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him +I said to come back! What are you standing there for?"</p> + +<p>She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her +bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for +the doctor.</p> + +<p>Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he +walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He +found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," +said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. +I shall come again later in the day."</p> + +<p>Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and +knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched +it.</p> + +<p>"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her +almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble +of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to +quiet her, broke in upon their talk.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should +come back, no matter what happens?"</p> + +<p>"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said."</p> + +<p>"And you would not care if they put him in prison?"</p> + +<p>"I should care very much."</p> + +<p>"You would be ashamed of me!"</p> + +<p>"No! Never! What has it to do with you?"</p> + +<p>"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed +all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an +intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have +done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how +inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come +back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if +something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay +because—because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be +ashamed—"</p> + +<p>"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you +let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while +they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. +Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go +down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor +said; and if you try to stop me—" She came clattering down the stairs +in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed +her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. +Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask +him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes +back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can +take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as +long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll +say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. +Will you go?"</p> + +<p>"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" +Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child.</p> + +<p>"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm +perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my +mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what +Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father +back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs +some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon +as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want +Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon +as father is. Will you go?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to +Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to +save your father any further suffering, or yourself—"</p> + +<p>"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young +and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about."</p> + +<p>She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he +walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with +Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the +case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There +seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick +to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences +together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to +take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places +and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One +might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the +fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a +deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in +the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, +and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever +might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and +enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and +then, who should gainsay him?</p> + +<p>Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question +before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no +one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could +forbid him."</p> + +<p>"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have +a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest +thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that <i>true</i> +love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our +impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone +knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the +higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it +won't satisfy?"</p> + +<p>For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of +arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house +that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them +to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt +explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic +demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be +done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding +any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; +if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, +but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You +know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily +submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the +greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined +life."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and +perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the +divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God +for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could +not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure +the shame of his penalty with him—"</p> + +<p>"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned +to endure?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, +yourself, Matt; your family—"</p> + +<p>Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no +question of <i>me</i>. And if <i>they</i> could not endure their portion,—the +mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar +people,—I should be ashamed of them."</p> + +<p>"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide +you!" added the priest.</p> + +<p>The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at +his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his +gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's +happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered +every point? Isn't there some chance—"</p> + +<p>Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he +began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, +and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his +escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He +supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been +willing to accept something short of it.</p> + +<p>"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have +kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved +off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we +could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." +Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that +he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered +with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel +sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show +it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to +convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be +a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a +retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges +against him."</p> + +<p>Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious +discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added +seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is +the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly +and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation +came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I +know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in +court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit +here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time +he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while +before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at +last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it +will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced +him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. +But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a +full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to +find him in Canada?"</p> + +<p>"He promised to let them know."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. +The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts—the perfectly needless and +motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned—would be a +strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the +thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our +life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no +reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The +conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply +incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the +fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for +money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the +accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?"</p> + +<p>Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, +whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went +back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting +her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the +assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted +if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this +notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he +permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at +last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, +before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She +did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get +home without her; and Suzette must come, too.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IXC" id="IXC"></a>IX.</h2> + + +<p>The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at +Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, +he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the +troubled dream he had waked from.</p> + +<p>"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have <i>you</i> been?" he +demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood.</p> + +<p>A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. +"I've been at home—at Hatboro'."</p> + +<p>"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference +he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at +him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could +only have it for a scoop—"</p> + +<p>Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and +fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney +listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest +thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it +leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent +of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and +given the whole thing away, <i>I</i> can't ask anything for my services."</p> + +<p>Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had +worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested.</p> + +<p>"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked +Pinney.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Only—don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence.</p> + +<p>"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He +took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to +Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He +counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he +called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay +it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it."</p> + +<p>Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own +wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby +got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established +with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's +filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; +and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of +his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; +but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters +when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. +Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but +was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy +confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with +the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her +to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She +asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his +answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his +farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; +and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not +thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she +began to sink rapidly.</p> + +<p>In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had +dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come +back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. +The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, +if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about +it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know +there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he +ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside +her mother.</p> + +<p>The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last +words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, +whimpered too.</p> + +<p>"I believe he <i>could</i> be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, +in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his +own room.</p> + +<p>The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in +Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, +but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a +course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his +ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he +suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he +could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. +Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business +view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great +tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both +took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms +round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good +care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his +hand at the last moment.</p> + +<p>Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after +these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his +own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had +with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's +forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she +proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her +undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for +a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved +of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to +Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, +recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and +expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. +If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told +heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, +it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert +might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of +Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct +in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances +which he really was.</p> + +<p>Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of +their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the +parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old +Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile +frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the +admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your +enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have +been more of a Roman father."</p> + +<p>"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper +to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over +to Rome for the winter."</p> + +<p>"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would +take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will +end by killing me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XC" id="XC"></a>X.</h2> + + +<p>Northwick, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved +only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the +offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who +pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home +again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business +life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had +operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He +felt himself too old to begin life over; his energies were spent. Such +as he had been, he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in +familiar conditions; he had never been a man of business dash, and he +could not pick himself up and launch himself in a new career, as a man +of different make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps there had +been some lesion of the will in that fever of his at Haha Bay, which +disabled him from forming any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry +out any such purpose as he did form. Perhaps he was, in his +helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile moulds men to: a +thing of memories and hopes, without definite aims or plans.</p> + +<p>As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams +and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had +seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the +sentence of the law, and then go to live again in the place which, in +spite of his senses, he could only imagine clothed in the comfort and +state that had been stripped from it. Elbridge's talk, on the way to +West Hatboro', about the sale, and what had become of the horses and +cattle, and the plants, went for no more than the evidence of his own +eyes that they were all gone. He did not realize, except in the shocks +that the fact imparted at times, that death as well as disaster had +invaded his home. Adeline was, for the most part, still alive: in his +fond reveries she was present, and part of that home as she had always +been.</p> + +<p>He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that +compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; +he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence +that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some +punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were +all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest +could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it +was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should +seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt +guilty of wrong.</p> + +<p>It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were +so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came +and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems +certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home +a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be +suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought +that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in +accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might +be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first +met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation +of his action.</p> + +<p>In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the +chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness +to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted +him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney's +fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long +journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney's society. He liked +Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. +He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself +to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul +that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come +for him, and he was impatient till he came.</p> + +<p>Pinney started the instant he received Northwick's telegram, and met him +with an enthusiasm of congratulation. "Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a +great thing. It's the right thing, and it's the wise thing. It's going +to have a tremendous effect. I suppose," he added, a little tremulously, +"that you've thought it all thoroughly over?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; I'm prepared for the worst," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there won't be any <i>worst</i>," Pinney returned gayly. "There'll be +legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he +can't, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought +into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through +with the forms, and it'll be all over before anybody knows anything +about it. I'll see that there's no <i>interviewing</i>, and that there are no +reporters present. There'll probably be a brief announcement among the +cases in court; but there won't be anything painful. You needn't be +afraid. But what I'm anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to +bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn't urge you, and I won't; I know +I'm a little optimistic, and if you don't see this thing exactly +<i>couleur de rose</i>, don't you do it from anything <i>I</i> say." Pinney +apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out.</p> + +<p>"I've looked it in the face," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"And your friends know you're coming back?"</p> + +<p>"They expect me at any time. You can notify them."</p> + +<p>Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. "Well," he said, with a sort of +desperation, "then I don't see why we don't start at once."</p> + +<p>"Have you got your papers all right?" Northwick asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Pinney, with a blush. "But you know," he added, +respectfully, "I can't touch you till we get over the line, Mr. +Northwick."</p> + +<p>"I understand that. Let me see your warrant."</p> + +<p>Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully +over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope +from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. "Here +is the money I brought with me."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every +confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, +and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean +business—"</p> + +<p>"I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it."</p> + +<p>Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six +hundred and forty."</p> + +<p>"That is right," said Northwick. "Now, another matter. Have you got +handcuffs?"</p> + +<p>"Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?" demanded Pinney. "I'd as +soon put them on my own father."</p> + +<p>"I want you to put them on <i>me</i>," said Northwick. "I intend to go back +as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate"—and he seemed to +indulge a question of the fact for the last time—"I want the atonement +to begin as soon as possible. If you haven't brought those things with +you, you'd better go out to the police station and get them, while I +attend to the tickets."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I needn't go," said Pinney, and his face burned.</p> + +<p>He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the +journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the +first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed +to have fallen.</p> + +<p>"By George!" said Pinney, when they started, "anybody to see us would +think <i>you</i> were taking <i>me</i> back." He was tenderly watchful of +Northwick's comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; +from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but +Northwick said he did not care to eat.</p> + +<p>They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper +on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked +Pinney what the next station was.</p> + +<p>Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession +of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept.</p> + +<p>"I haven't slept," said Northwick. "I suppose I'm rather excited. My +nerves seem disordered."</p> + +<p>"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly.</p> + +<p>They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, "What did you say +the next station was?"</p> + +<p>"I'll ask the brakeman." They could see the brakeman on the platform. +Pinney went out to him, and returned. "It's Wellwater, he says. We get +breakfast there."</p> + +<p>"Then we're over the line, now," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, +"You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I'm ready to meet it +half way." He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. "If I should happen +to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your +mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents +happen, and—" Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. "Or if +you don't feel quite able to travel—"</p> + +<p>"Let me see your warrant again," said Northwick.</p> + +<p>Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick +read it all once more. "I'm your prisoner," he said, returning the +paper. "You can put the handcuffs on me now."</p> + +<p>"No, no, Mr. Northwick!" Pinney pleaded. "I don't want to do that. I'm +not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn't necessary +between gentlemen."</p> + +<p>Northwick held out his wrists. "Put them on, please."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, if I <i>must</i>!" protested Pinney. "But I <i>swear</i> I won't lock +'em." He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were +noticing. "You can slip 'em off whenever you get tired of 'em." He +pushed Northwick's sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. +"Don't let people see the damned things, for God's sake!'"</p> + +<p>"That's good!" murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased +him.</p> + +<p>The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of +the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation +with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he +left him. His head had fallen on his breast. "Poor old fellow, he's +asleep," Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick's shoulder. +"I'll have to wake you here," he said. "We'll be in, now, in a minute."</p> + +<p>Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the +neck, and lifted his face.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my God! He's dead!"</p> + +<p>The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIC" id="XIC"></a>XI.</h2> + + +<p>After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and +it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given +up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her +father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had +made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the +sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering +from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she +was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her +own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case +forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his +last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had +committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his +creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself +to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was +dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty +in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather +a joyful relief.</p> + +<p>Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the +narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow +conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they +had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had +everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left +her incalculably rich.</p> + +<p>Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept +himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the +comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far +as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's +estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness +to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the +money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in +the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more +for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow +Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic +theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be +said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that +in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its +pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them.</p> + +<p>The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment +of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they +had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked +at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former +owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view +of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had +remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no +account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the +owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in +surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to +suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she +conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the +commonwealth.</p> + +<p>"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part +of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. +Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first +duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to +turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It +appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset +dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their +interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's +this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last +that he intended to do; and, of course, the <i>he</i> in question is a <i>she</i>. +'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole +affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing, +beginning with my own. <i>I</i> can look back to the time when I meant to +have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years, +waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected +somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to +justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's +counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of +grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I +wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send +him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off +on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a +little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and +against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The +directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign +from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand, +considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living, +and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope +of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the +money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. +Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William +B. Gerrish,—couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick +himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, +after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to +fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing +he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let +him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed <i>her</i>. +Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first +thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way +with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There +wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's +much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of—incident; and a pretty +common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances—like the rest of +us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. +Sometimes I think there <i>was</i> nothing to Northwick, except what happened +to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we +fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, +and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where +it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I +suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few æons of eternal +punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate."</p> + +<p>"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and +seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll +split the difference with you and call it Mercy."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS" id="WILLIAM_DEAN_HOWELLSS_NOVELS"></a>WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S NOVELS.</h2> + + +<h3>THE QUALITY OF MERCY.</h3> + +<h3>AN IMPERATIVE DUTY.</h3> + +<h3>A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES.</h3> + +<h3>THE SHADOW OF A DREAM.</h3> + +<h3>ANNIE KILBURN.</h3> + +<h3>APRIL HOPES.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER" id="BY_CHARLES_DUDLEY_WARNER"></a>BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.</h2> + + +<h3>AS WE WERE SAYING.</h3> + +<h3>With Portrait, and Illustrated by <span class="smcap">H.W. McVickar</span> and Others.</h3> + +<p>So dainty and delightsome a little book may it be everybody's good hap +to possess.—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<h3>OUR ITALY.</h3> + +<p>In this book are a little history, a little property, a few fascinating +statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and +abundant humor and charm—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<h3>A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD.</h3> + +<h3>A Novel.</h3> + +<p>The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not +its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, +possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.—<span class="smcap">George William Curtis.</span></p> + +<p>A powerful picture of that phase of modern life in which unscrupulously +acquired capital is the chief agent.—<i>Boston Post.</i></p> + +<h3>STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, with Comments on Canada.</h3> + +<p>Perhaps the most accurate and graphic account of these portions of the +country that has appeared, taken all in all.... A book most charming—a +book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly +prize.—<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p> + +<h3>THEIR PILGRIMAGE.</h3> + +<p>Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of +the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities +peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are +as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of +the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the +brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he +mingles.—<i>Christian Union</i>, N. Y.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON" id="BY_CONSTANCE_F_WOOLSON"></a>BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON.</h2> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">JUPITER LIGHTS.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">EAST ANGELS.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">ANNE.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">FOR THE MAJOR.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">CASTLE NOWHERE.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">RODMAN THE KEEPER.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is a certain bright cheerfulness in Miss Woolson's writing which +invests all her characters with lovable qualities.—<i>Jewish Advocate</i>, +N. Y.</p> + +<p>Miss Woolson is among our few successful writers of interesting magazine +stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of +her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local +life.—<i>Jewish Messenger</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>Constance Fentmore Woolson may easily become the novelist +laureate.—<i>Boston Globe.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and +conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the development of a +story is very remarkable.—<i>London Life.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox +novelist, but strikes a new and richly-loaded vein, which so far is all +her own; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh +sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant +task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to +her in very pleasant places; or she has, perhaps, within herself the +wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all she +writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of the +day—a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time.—<i>Whitehall Review</i>, +London.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BY_MARY_E_WILKINS" id="BY_MARY_E_WILKINS"></a>BY MARY E. WILKINS.</h2> + + +<h3><span class="smcap">A New England Nun</span>, and Other Stories.</h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">A Humble Romance</span>, and Other Stories.</h3> + +<p>Only an artistic hand could have written these stories, and they will +make delightful reading.—<i>Evangelist</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of those stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.—<i>Literary World</i>, +Boston.</p> + +<p>The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's +worth in every one of the delightful stories.—<i>Chicago Journal.</i></p> + +<p>Miss Wilkins is a writer who has a gift for the rare art of creating the +short story which shall be a character study and a bit of graphic +picturing in one; and all who enjoy the bright and fascinating short +story will welcome this volume.—<i>Boston Traveller.</i></p> + +<p>The author has the unusual gift of writing a short story which is +complete in itself, having a real beginning, a middle, and an end. The +volume is an excellent one.—<i>Observer</i>, N. Y.</p> + +<p>A gallery of striking studies in the humblest quarters of American +country life. No one has dealt with this kind of life better than Miss +Wilkins. Nowhere are there to be found such faithful, delicately drawn, +sympathetic, tenderly humorous pictures.—<i>N. Y. Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.—<i>Springfield Republican.</i></p> + +<p>There is no attempt at fine writing or structural effect, but the tender +treatment of the sympathies, emotions, and passions of no very +extraordinary people gives to these little stories a pathos and human +feeling quite their own.—<i>N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.</i></p> + +<p>The author has given us studies from real life which must be the result +of a lifetime of patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the +same kind of work so lovingly and so well.—<i>Christian Register</i>, +Boston.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_LEW_WALLACE" id="By_LEW_WALLACE"></a>By LEW. WALLACE</h2> + + +<h3>BEN-HUR:<br /> +<span class="smcap">A Tale of the Christ.</span></h3> + +<p>Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of +this romance does not often appear in works of notion.... Some of Mr. +Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes +described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of +an accomplished master of style.—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p> + +<p>Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at +the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and +brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we +witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman +galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the +tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman +youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of +exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing.—<i>N. Y. +Tribune.</i></p> + +<p>It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and +there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., +to greatly strengthen the semblance.—<i>Boston Commonwealth.</i></p> + +<p>"Ben-Hur" is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. +Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is +laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to +realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman +life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.—<i>Examiner</i>, N.Y.</p> + +<p>The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted +interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel and +romance.—<i>Boston Journal.</i></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quality of Mercy + +Author: W. D. Howells + +Release Date: September 27, 2009 [EBook #30108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUALITY OF MERCY *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from scans of public domain material +produced by Microsoft for their Live Search Books site.) + + + + + + + + + + THE QUALITY OF MERCY + + A NOVEL + + BY W. D. HOWELLS + +AUTHOR OF "AN IMPERATIVE DUTY" "ANNIE KILBURN" "A HAZARD OF NEW +FORTUNES" ETC. + +NEW YORK +HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE +1892 + + + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + + + + +PART FIRST. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick's man met him at the station with the cutter. The train was a +little late, and Elbridge was a little early; after a few moments of +formal waiting, he began to walk the clipped horses up and down the +street. As they walked they sent those quivers and thrills over their +thin coats which horses can give at will; they moved their heads up and +down, slowly and easily, and made their bells jangle noisily together; +the bursts of sound evoked by their firm and nervous pace died back in +showers and falling drops of music. All the time Elbridge swore at them +affectionately, with the unconscious profanity of the rustic Yankee +whose lot has been much cast with horses. In the halts he made at each +return to the station, he let his blasphemies bubble sociably from him +in response to the friendly imprecations of the three or four other +drivers who were waiting for the train; they had apparently no other +parlance. The drivers of the hotel 'bus and of the local express wagon +were particular friends; they gave each other to perdition at every +other word; a growing boy, who had come to meet Mr. Gerrish, the +merchant, with the family sleigh, made himself a fountain of meaningless +maledictions; the public hackman, who admired Elbridge almost as much as +he respected Elbridge's horses (they were really Northwick's, but the +professional convention was that they were Elbridge's), clothed them +with fond curses as with a garment. He was himself, more literally +speaking, clothed in an old ulster, much frayed about the wrists and +skirts, and polished across the middle of the back by rubbing against +counters and window-sills. He was bearded like a patriarch, and he wore +a rusty fur cap pulled down over his ears, though it was not very cold; +its peak rested on the point of his nose, so that he had to throw his +head far back to get Elbridge in the field of his vision. Elbridge had +on a high hat, and was smoothly buttoned to his throat in a plain +coachman's coat of black; Northwick had never cared to have him make a +closer approach to a livery; and it is doubtful if Elbridge would have +done it if he had asked or ordered it of him. He deferred to Northwick +in a measure as the owner of his horses, but he did not defer to him in +any other quality. + +"Say, Elbridge, when you goin' to give me that old hat o' your'n?" asked +the hackman in a shout that would have reached Elbridge if he had been +half a mile off instead of half a rod. + +"What do you want of another second-hand hat, you ---- ---- old fool, +you?" asked Elbridge in his turn. + +The hackman doubled himself down for joy, and slapped his leg; at the +sound of a whistle to the eastward, he pulled himself erect again, and +said, as if the fact were one point gained, "Well, there she blows, any +way." Then he went round the corner of the station to be in full +readiness for any chance passenger the train might improbably bring him. + +No one alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most +remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same +train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed +to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, +and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While +Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove +away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the +highland that lies between Hatboro' and South Hatboro'. The bare line +cut along the horizon where the sunset lingered in a light of liquid +crimson, paling and passing into weaker violet tints with every moment, +but still tenderly flushing the walls of the sky, and holding longer the +accent of its color where a keen star had here and there already pierced +it and shone quivering through. The shortest days were past, but in the +first week of February they had not lengthened sensibly, though to a +finer perception there was the promise of release from the winter dark, +if not from the winter cold. It was not far from six o'clock when +Northwick mounted the southward rise of the street; it was still almost +light enough to read; and the little slender black figure of a man that +started up in the middle of the road, as if it had risen out of the +ground, had an even vivid distinctness. He must have been lying in the +snow; the horses crouched back with a sudden recoil, as if he had struck +them back with his arm, and plunged the runners of the cutter into the +deeper snow beside the beaten track. He made a slight pause, long enough +to give Northwick a contemptuous glance, and then continued along the +road at a leisurely pace to the deep cut through the snow from the next +house. Here he stood regarding such difficulty as Northwick had in +quieting his horses, and getting underway again. He said nothing, and +Northwick did not speak; Elbridge growled, "He's on one of his tears +again," and the horses dashed forward with a shriek of all their bells. +Northwick did not open his lips till he entered the avenue of firs that +led from the highway to his house; they were still clogged with the +snowfall, and their lowermost branches were buried in the drifts. + +"What's the matter with the colt?" he asked. + +"I don't know as that fellow understands the colt's feet very well. I +guess one of the shoes is set wrong," said Elbridge. + +"Better look after it." + +Northwick left Elbridge the reins, and got out of the cutter at the +flight of granite steps which rose to the ground-floor of his wooden +palace. Broad levels of piazza stretched away from the entrance under a +portico of that carpentry which so often passes with us for +architecture. In spite of the effect of organic flimsiness in every +wooden structure but a log cabin, or a fisherman's cottage shingled to +the ground, the house suggested a perfect functional comfort. There were +double windows on all round the piazzas; a mellow glow from the +incandescent electrics penetrated to the outer dusk from them; when the +door was opened to Northwick, a pleasant heat gushed out, together with +the perfume of flowers, and the odors of dinner. + +"Dinner is just served, sir," said the inside man, disposing of +Northwick's overcoat and hat on the hall table with respectful scruple. + +Northwick hesitated. He stood over the register, and vaguely held his +hands in the pleasant warmth indirectly radiated from the steam-pipes +below. + +"The young ladies were just thinking you wouldn't be home till the next +train," the man suggested, at the sound of voices from the dining-room. + +"They have some one with them?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes, sir. The rector, sir; Mr. Wade, sir." + +"I'll come down by and by," Northwick said, turning to the stairs. "Say +I had a late lunch before I left town." + +"Yes, sir," said the man. + +Northwick went on up stairs, with footfalls hushed by the thickly-padded +thick carpet, and turned into the sort of study that opened out of his +bedroom. It had been his wife's parlor during the few years of her life +in the house which he had built for her, and which they had planned to +spend their old age in together. It faced southward, and looked out over +the greenhouses and the gardens, that stretched behind the house to the +bulk of woods, shutting out the stage-picturesqueness of the summer +settlement of South Hatboro'. She had herself put the rocking-chair in +the sunny bay-window, and Northwick had not allowed it to be disturbed +there since her death. In an alcove at one side he had made a place for +the safe where he kept his papers; his wife had intended to keep their +silver in it, but she had been scared by the notion of having burglars +so close to them in the night, and had always left the silver in the +safe in the dining-room. + +She was all her life a timorous creature, and after her marriage had +seldom felt safe out of Northwick's presence. Her portrait, by Hunt, +hanging over the mantelpiece, suggested something of this, though the +painter had made the most of her thin, middle-aged blond good looks, and +had given her a substance of general character which was more expressive +of his own free and bold style than of the facts in the case. She was +really one of those hen-minded women, who are so common in all walks of +life, and are made up of only one aim at a time, and of manifold +anxieties at all times. Her instinct for saving long survived the days +of struggle in which she had joined it to Northwick's instinct for +getting; she lived and died in the hope, if not the belief, that she had +contributed to his prosperity by looking strictly after all manner of +valueless odds and ends. But he had been passively happy with her; since +her death, he had allowed her to return much into his thoughts, from +which her troublesome solicitudes and her entire uselessness in +important matters had obliged him to push her while she lived. He often +had times when it seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, and +then he found he had been thinking of her. At such times, with a pang, +he realized that he missed her; but perhaps the wound was to habit +rather than affection. He now sat down in his swivel-chair and turned it +from the writing-desk which stood on the rug before the fireplace, and +looked up into the eyes of her effigy with a sense of her intangible +presence in it, and with a dumb longing to rest his soul against hers. +She was the only one who could have seen him in his wish to have not +been what he was; she would have denied it to his face, if he had told +her he was a thief; and as he meant to make himself more and more a +thief, her love would have eased the way by full acceptance of the +theories that ran along with his intentions and covered them with +pretences of necessity. He thought how even his own mother could not +have been so much comfort to him; she would have had the mercy, but she +would not have had the folly. At the bottom of his heart, and under all +his pretences, Northwick knew that it was not mercy which would help +him; but he wanted it, as we all want what is comfortable and bad for us +at times. With the performance and purpose of a thief in his heart, he +turned to the pictured face of his dead wife as his refuge from the face +of all living. It could not look at him as if he were a thief. + +The word so filled his mind that it seemed always about to slip from his +tongue. It was what the president of the board had called him when the +fact of his fraudulent manipulation of the company's books was laid so +distinctly before him that even the insane refusal, which the criminal +instinctively makes of his crime in its presence, was impossible. The +other directors sat blankly round, and said nothing; not because they +hated a scene, but because the ordinary course of life among us had not +supplied them with the emotional materials for making one. The +president, however, had jumped from his seat and advanced upon +Northwick. "What does all this mean, sir? I'll tell you what it means. +It means that you're a thief, sir; the same as if you had picked my +pocket, or stolen my horse, or taken my overcoat out of my hall." + +He shook his clenched fist in Northwick's face, and seemed about to take +him by the throat. Afterwards he inclined more to mercy than the others; +it was he who carried the vote which allowed Northwick three days' +grace, to look into his affairs, and lay before the directors the proof +that he had ample means, as he maintained, to meet the shortage in the +accounts. "I wish you well out of it, for your family's sake," he said +at parting; "but all the same, sir, you are a thief." + +He put his hands ostentatiously in his pockets, when some others +meaninglessly shook hands with Northwick, at parting, as Northwick +himself might have shaken hands with another in his place; and he +brushed by him out of the door without looking at him. He came suddenly +back to say, "If it were a question of you alone, I would cheerfully +lose something more than you've robbed me of for the pleasure of seeing +you handcuffed in this room and led to jail through the street by a +constable. No honest man, no man who was not always a rogue at heart, +could have done what you've done; juggled with the books for years, and +bewitched the record so by your infernal craft, that it was never +suspected till now. You've given _mind_ to your scoundrelly work, sir; +all the mind you had; for if you hadn't been so anxious to steal +successfully, you'd have given more mind to the use of your stealings. +You _may_ have some of them left, but it looks as if you'd made ducks +and drakes of them, like any petty rascal in the hands of the Employees' +Insurance Company. Yes, sir, I believe you're of about the intellectual +calibre of that sort of thief. I can't respect you even on your own +ground. But I'm willing to give you the chance you ask, for your +daughter's sake. She's been in and out of my house with my girl like one +of my own children, and I won't send her father to jail if I can help +it. Understand! I haven't any sentiment for _you_, Northwick. You're the +kind of rogue I'd like to see in a convict's jacket, learning to make +shoe-brushes. But you shall have your chance to go home and see if you +can pay up somehow, and you sha'n't be shadowed while you're at it. You +shall keep your outside to the world three days longer, you whited +sepulchre; but if you want to know, I think the best thing that could +happen to you on your way home would be a good railroad accident." + +The man's words and looks were burnt into Northwick's memory, which now +seemed to have the faculty of simultaneously reproducing them all. +Northwick remembered his purple face, with its prominent eyes, and the +swing of his large stomach, and just how it struck against the jamb as +he whirled a second time out of the door. The other directors, some of +them, stood round buttoned up in their overcoats, with their hats on, +and a sort of stunned aspect; some held their hats in their hands, and +looked down into them with a decorous absence of expression, as people +do at a funeral. Then they left him alone in the treasurer's private +room, with its official luxury of thick Turkey rugs, leathern +arm-chairs, and nickel-plated cuspidors standing one on each side of the +hearth where a fire of soft coal in a low-down grate burned with a +subdued and respectful flicker. + + + + +II. + + +If it had not been for the boisterous indignation of the president, +Northwick might have come away from the meeting, after the exposure of +his defalcations, with an unimpaired personal dignity. But as it was, he +felt curiously shrunken and shattered, till the prevailing habit of his +mind enabled him to piece himself together again and resume his former +size and shape. This happened very quickly; he had conceived of himself +so long as a man employing funds in his charge in speculations sometimes +successful and sometimes not, but at all times secured by his personal +probity and reliability. He had in fact more than once restored all that +he had taken, and he had come to trust himself in the course of these +transactions as fully as he was trusted by the men who were ignorant of +his irregularities. He was somehow flattered by the complete confidence +they reposed in him, though he really felt it to be no more than his +due; he had always merited and received the confidence of men associated +with him in business, and he had come to regard the funds of the +corporation as practically his own. In the early days of his connection +with the company, it largely owed its prosperity to his wise and careful +management; one might say that it was not until the last, when he got so +badly caught by that drop in railroads, that he had felt anything wrong +in his convertible use of its money. It was an informality; he would not +have denied that, but it was merely an informality. Then his losses +suddenly leaped beyond his ability to make them good; then, for the +first time, he began to practice that system in keeping the books which +the furious president called juggling with them. Even this measure he +considered a justifiable means of self-defence pending the difficulties +which beset him, and until he could make his losses good by other +operations. From time to time he was more fortunate; and whenever he +dramatized himself in an explanation to the directors, as he often did, +especially of late, he easily satisfied them as to the nature of his +motives and the propriety of his behavior, by calling their attention to +these successful deals, and to the probability, the entire probability, +that he could be at any moment in a position to repay all he had +borrowed of the company. He called it borrowing, and in his long habit +of making himself these loans and returning them, he had come to have a +sort of vague feeling that the company was privy to them; that it was +almost an understood thing. The president's violence was the first +intimation to reach him in the heart of his artificial consciousness +that his action was at all in the line of those foolish peculators whose +discovery and flight to Canada was the commonplace of every morning's +paper; such a commonplace that he had been sensible of an effort in the +papers to vary the tiresome repetition of the same old fact by some +novel grace of wit, or some fresh picturesqueness in putting it. In the +presence of the directors, he had refused to admit it to himself; but +after they adjourned, and he was left alone, he realized the truth. He +was like those fools, exactly like them, in what they had done, and in +the way of doing it; he was like them in motive and principle. All of +them had used others' money in speculation, expecting to replace it, and +then had not been able to replace it, and then had skipped, as the +newspapers said. + +Whether he should complete the parallel, and skip, too, was a point +which he had not yet acknowledged to himself that he had decided. He +never had believed that it need come to that; but, for an instant, when +the president said he could wish him nothing better on his way home than +a good railroad accident, it flashed upon him that one of the three +alternatives before him was to skip. He had the choice to kill himself, +which was supposed to be the gentlemanly way out of his difficulties, +and would leave his family unstained by his crime; that matter had +sometimes been discussed in his presence, and every one had agreed that +it was the only thing for a gentleman to do after he had pilfered people +of money he could not pay back. There was something else that a man of +other instincts and weaker fibre might do, and that was to stand his +trial for embezzlement, and take his punishment. Or a man, if he was +that kind of a man, could skip. The question with Northwick was whether +he was that kind of man, or whether, if he skipped, he would be that +kind of man; whether the skipping would make him that kind of man. + +The question was a cruel one for the self-respect which he had so +curiously kept intact. He had been respectable ever since he was born; +if he was born with any instinct it was the instinct of respectability, +the wish to be honored for what he seemed. It was all the stronger in +him, because his father had never had it; perhaps an hereditary trait +found expression in him after passing over one generation; perhaps an +antenatal influence formed him to that type. His mother was always +striving to keep the man she had married worthy of her choice in the +eyes of her neighbors; but he had never seconded her efforts. He had +been educated a doctor, but never practised medicine; in carrying on the +drug and book business of the village, he cared much more for the +literary than the pharmaceutical side of it; he liked to have a circle +of cronies about the wood-stove in his store till midnight, and discuss +morals and religion with them; and one night, when denying the plenary +inspiration of the Scriptures, he went to the wrong jar for an +ingredient of the prescription he was making up; the patient died of his +mistake. The disgrace and the disaster broke his wife's heart; but he +lived on to a vague and colorless old age, supported by his son in a +total disoccupation. The elder Northwick used sometimes to speak of his +son and his success in the world; not boastfully, but with a certain +sarcasm for the source of his bounty, as a boy who had always +disappointed him by a narrowness of ambition. He called him Milt, and he +said he supposed now Milt was the most self-satisfied man in +Massachusetts; he implied that there were better things than material +success. He did not say what they were, and he could have found very few +people in that village to agree with him; or to admit that the treasurer +of the Ponkwasset Mills had come in anywise short of the destiny of a +man whose father had started him in life with the name of John Milton. +They called him Milt, too, among themselves, and perhaps here and there +a bolder spirit might have called him so to his face if he had ever come +back to the village. But he had not. He had, as they had all heard, that +splendid summer place at Hatboro', where he spent his time when he was +not at his house in Boston; and when they verified the fact of his +immense prosperity by inquiry of some of the summer-folks who knew him +or knew about him, they were obscurely flattered by the fact; just as +many of us are proud of belonging to a nation in which we are enriched +by the fellow-citizenship of many manifold millionnaires. They did not +blame Northwick for never coming to see his father, or for never having +him home on a visit; they daily saw what old Northwick was, and how +little he was fitted for the society of a man whose respectability, even +as it was reflected upon them, was so dazzling. Old Northwick had never +done anything for Milt; he had never even got along with him; the fellow +had left him, and made his own way; and the old man had no right to +talk; if Milt was ever of a mind to cut off his rations, the old man +would soon see. + + + + +III. + + +The local opinion scarcely did justice to old Northwick's imperfect +discharge of a father's duties; his critics could not have realized how +much some capacities, if not tastes, which Northwick had inherited, +contributed to that very effect of respectability which they revered. +The early range of books, the familiarity with the mere exterior of +literature, restricted as it was, helped Northwick later to pass for a +man of education, if not of reading, with men who were themselves less +read than educated. The people whom his ability threw him with in Boston +were all Harvard men, and they could not well conceive of an +acquaintance, so gentlemanly and quiet as Northwick, who was not college +bred, too. By unmistakable signs, which we carry through life, they knew +he was from the country, and they attributed him to a freshwater +college. They said, "You're a Dartmouth man, Northwick, I believe," or, +"I think you're from Williams," and when Northwick said no, they forgot +it, and thought that he was a Bowdoin man; the impression gradually +fixed itself that he was from one or other of those colleges. It was +believed in like manner, partly on account of his name, that he was from +one of those old ministerial families that you find up in the hills, +where the whole brood study Greek while they are sugaring off in the +spring; and that his own mother had fitted him for college. There was, +in fact, something clerical in Northwick's bearing; and it was felt by +some that he had studied for the ministry, but had gone into business to +help his family. The literary phase of the superstition concerning him +was humored by the library which formed such a striking feature of his +house in Boston, as well as his house in Hatboro'; at Hatboro' it was +really vast, and was so charming and so luxurious that it gave the idea +of a cultivated family; they preferred to live in it, and rarely used +the drawing-room, which was much smaller, and was a gold and white +sanctuary on the north side of the house, only opened when there was a +large party of guests, for dancing. Most people came and went without +seeing it, and it remained shut up, as much a conjecture as the memory +of Northwick's wife. She was supposed to have been taken from him early, +to save him and his children from the mortifying consequences of one of +those romantic love-affairs in which a conscientious man had sacrificed +himself to a girl he was certain to outgrow. None of his world knew that +his fortunes had been founded upon the dowry she brought him, and upon +the stay her belief in him had always been. She was a church-member, as +such women usually are, but Northwick was really her religion; and as +there is nothing that does so much to sanctify a deity as the blind +devotion of its worshippers, Northwick was rendered at times worthy of +her faith by the intensity of it. In his sort he returned her love; he +was not the kind of man whose affections are apt to wander, perhaps +because they were few and easily kept together; perhaps because he was +really principled against letting them go astray. He was not merely true +in a passive way, but he was constant in the more positive fashion. When +they began to get on in the world, and his business talent brought him +into relations with people much above them socially, he yielded to her +shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to +them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his +experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that +sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and +qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his +knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, +and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his +money and his business associations authorized them to move, that he +began to see a little of that world. Even then he left it chiefly to his +children; for himself he continued quite simply loyal to his wife's +memory, and apparently never imagined such a thing as marrying again. + +He rose from the chair where he had sat looking up into her pictured +face, and went to open the safe near the window. But he stopped in +stooping over to work the combination, and glanced out across his +shoulder into the night. The familiar beauty of the scene tempted him to +the window for what, all at once, he felt might be his last look, though +the next instant he was able to argue the feeling down, and make his +meditated act work into his schemes of early retrieval and honorable +return. He must have been thinking there before the fire a long time, +for now the moon had risen, and shone upon the black bulk of firs to the +southward, and on the group of outbuildings. These were in a sort the +mechanism that transacted the life of his house, ministering to all its +necessities and pleasures. Under the conservatories, with their long +stretches of glass, catching the moon's rays like levels of water, was +the steam furnace that imparted their summer climate, through heavy +mains carried below the basement, to every chamber of the mansion; a +ragged plume of vapor escaped from the tall chimney above them, and +dishevelled itself in diaphanous silver on the night-breeze. Beyond the +hot-houses lay the cold graperies; and off to the left rose the stables; +in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the +coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the +dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's +business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than +half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial +consequence with regard to his place. It was really a farm in extent, +and it was mostly a grazing farm; his cattle were in the herd-books, and +he raised horses, which he would sell now and then to a friend; they +were so distinctly varied from the original stock as to form almost a +breed of themselves; they numbered scores in his stalls and pastures. +The whole group of the buildings was so great that it was like a sort of +communal village. In the silent moonlight Northwick looked at it as if +it were an expansion or extension of himself, so personally did it seem +to represent his tastes, and so historical was it of the ambitions of +his whole life; he realized that it would be like literally tearing +himself from it, when he should leave it. That would be the real pang; +his children could come to him, but not his home. But he reminded +himself that he was going only for a time, until he could rehabilitate +himself, and come back upon the terms he could easily make when once he +was on his feet again. He thought how fortunate it was that in the +meanwhile this property could not be alienated; how fortunate it was +that he had originally deeded it to his wife in the days when he had the +full right to do so, and she had willed it to their children by a +perfect entail. The horses and the cattle might go, and probably must +go; and he winced to think of it, but the land, and the house,--all but +the furniture and pictures,--were the children's and could not be +touched. The pictures were his, and would have to go with the horses and +cattle; but ten or twelve thousand dollars would replace them, and he +must add that sum to his other losses, and bear it as well as he could. + +After all, when everything was said and done, he was the chief loser. If +he was a thief, as that man said, he could show that he had robbed +himself of two dollars for every dollar that he had robbed anybody else +of; if now he was going to add to his theft by carrying off the +forty-three thousand dollars of the company's which he found himself +possessed of, it was certainly not solely in his own interest. It was to +be the means of recovering all that had gone before it, and that the +very men whom it would enable him to repay finally in full, supposed it +to have gone with. + +Northwick felt almost a glow of pride in clarifying this point to his +reason. The additional theft presented itself almost in the light of a +duty; it really was his duty to make reparation to those he had injured, +if he had injured any one, and it was his first duty to secure the means +of doing it. If that money, which it might almost be said was left +providentially in his hands, were simply restored now to the company, it +would do comparatively no good at all, and would strip him of every hope +of restoring the whole sum he had borrowed. He arrived at that word +again, and reinforced by it, he stooped again to work the combination of +his safe, and make sure of the money, which he now felt an insane +necessity of laying his hands on; but he turned suddenly sick, with a +sickness at the heart or at the stomach, and he lifted himself, and took +a turn about the room. + +He perceived that in spite of the outward calm which it had surprised +him to find in himself, he was laboring under some strong inward stress, +and he must have relief from it if he was to carry this business +through. He threw up the window and stood with his hand on the sash, +quivering in the strong in-rush of the freezing air. But it strengthened +him, and when he put down the window after a few moments, his faintness +passed altogether. Still, he thought he would not go through that +business at once; there was time enough; he would see his girls and tell +them that he was obliged to leave by an early train in the morning. + +He took off his shoes, and put on his slippers and his house-coat, and +went to the stair-landing outside, and listened to the voices in the +library below. He could hear only women's voices, and he inferred that +the young man who had been dining with his daughters was gone. He went +back into his bedroom, and looked at the face of an unmasked thief in +his glass. It was not to get that aspect of himself, though, that he +looked; it was to see if he was pale or would seem ill to his children. + + + + +IV. + + +Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative +in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more +urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the +elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and +remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she +watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him +and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too; +and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin +and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking +frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of +circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her +parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she +preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight, +bony fingers she wore a good many rings. + +Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that +name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow +suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its +suggestion of coquettishness. + +She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he +stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she +seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to +leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her +so. + +"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down +before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where +the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of +the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the +face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him, +he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the +morning, and I still have some things to put in shape." + +"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had +resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her +head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary +beauty, as a stranger might have had. + +"Trouble?" he echoed. + +"With the hands." + +"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick, +rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question, +to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an +instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor +trouble. + +"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all +sorts of reports." + +"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said +Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground." + +"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the +girl, "without wearing your own life out about it." + +"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to +acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well, +that--" + +He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter +said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought +to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge +told James that you almost drove over him, coming up." + +"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the +horses' feet." + +"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of +awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women +often feel. + +"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his +family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to +himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as +possible." + +Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the +inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard +him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home +would be a good railroad accident." + +He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't +for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of +others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a +very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest. +He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish +to judge him. He may have"--Northwick sighed again, and ended +vaguely--"his reasons." + +Suzette laughed. "How moderate you always are, papa! And how tolerant!" + +"I guess Mr. Putney knows pretty well whom he's got to deal with, and +that he's safe in abusing you all he likes," said Adeline. "But I don't +see how such respectable people as Dr. Morrell and Mrs. Morrell can +tolerate him. I've no patience with Dr. Morrell, or his wife, either. To +be sure, they tolerate Mrs. Wilmington, too." + +Suzette went over to her father to kiss him. "Well, I'm going to bed, +papa. If you'd wanted more of my society you ought to have come down +sooner. I suppose I sha'n't see you in the morning; so it's good-bye as +well as good-night. When will you be home?" + +"Not for some days, perhaps," said the unhappy man. + +"How doleful! Are you always so homesick when you go away?" + +"Not always; no." + +"Well, try to cheer up, this time, then. And if you have to be gone a +great while, send for me, won't you?" + +"Yes, yes; I will," said Northwick. The girl gave his head a hug, and +then glided out of the room. She stopped to throw him a kiss from the +door. + +"There!" said Adeline. "I didn't mean to let Mrs. Wilmington slip out; +she can't bear the name, and I _know_ it drove her away. But you mustn't +let it worry you, father. I guess it's all going well, now." + +"What's going well?" Northwick asked, vaguely. + +"The Jack Wilmington business. I know she's really given him up at last; +and we can't be too thankful for that much, if it's no more. I don't +believe he's bad, for all the talk about him, but he's been weak, and +that's a thing she couldn't forgive in a man; she's so strong herself." + +Northwick did not think of Wilmington; he thought of himself, and in the +depths of his guilty soul, in those secret places underneath all his +pretences, where he really knew himself a thief, he wondered if his +child's strength would be against her forgiving his weakness. What we +greatly dread we most unquestioningly believe; and it did not occur to +him to ask whether impatience with weakness was a necessary inference +from strength. He only knew himself to be miserably weak. + +He rose and stood a moment by the mantel, with his impassive, handsome +face turned toward his daughter as if he were going to speak to her. He +was a tall man, rather thin; he was clean shaven, except for the grayish +whiskers just forward of his ears and on a line with them; he had a +regular profile, which was more attractive than the expression of his +direct regard. He took up a crystal ball that lay on the marble, and +looked into it as if he were reading his future in its lucid depths, and +then put it down again, with an effect of helplessness. When he spoke, +it was not in connection with what his daughter had been talking about. +He said almost dryly, "I think I will go up and look over some papers I +have to take with me, and then try to get a little sleep before I +start." + +"And when shall we expect you back?" asked his daughter, submissively +accepting his silence concerning her sister's love affairs. She knew +that it meant acquiescence in anything that Sue and she thought best. + +"I don't know, exactly; I can't say, now. Good-night." + +To her surprise he came up and kissed her; his caresses were for Sue, +and she expected them no more than she invited them. "Why, father!" she +said in a pleased voice. + +"Let James pack the small bag for me, and send Elbridge to me in about +an hour," he said, as he went out into the hall. + + + + +V. + + +Northwick was now fifty-nine years old, but long before he reached this +age he had seen many things to make him doubt the moral government of +the universe. His earliest instruction had been such as we all receive. +He had been taught to believe that there was an overruling power which +would punish him if he did wrong, and reward him if he did right; or +would, at least, be displeased in one case, and pleased in the other. +The precept took primarily the monitory form, and first enforced the +fact of the punishment or the displeasure; there were times when the +reward or the pleasure might not sensibly follow upon good behavior, but +evil behavior never escaped the just consequences. This was the doctrine +which framed the man's intention if not his conduct of life, and +continued to shape it years after experience of the world, and +especially of the business world, had gainsaid it. He had seen a great +many cases in which not only good behavior had apparently failed of its +reward but bad behavior had failed of its punishment. In the case of bad +behavior, his observation had been that no unhappiness, not even any +discomfort, came from it unless it was found out; for the most part, it +was not found out. This did not shake Northwick's principles; he still +intended to do right, so as to be on the safe side, even in a remote and +improbable contingency; but it enabled him to compromise with his +principles and to do wrong provisionally and then repair the wrong +before he was found out, or before the overruling power noticed him. + +But now there were things that made him think, in the surprising misery +of being found out, that this power might have had its eye upon him all +the time, and was not sleeping, or gone upon a journey, as he had +tacitly flattered himself. It seemed to him that there was even a +dramatic contrivance in the circumstances to render his anguish +exquisite. He had not read many books; but sometimes his daughters made +him go to the theatre, and once he had seen the play of Macbeth. The +people round him were talking about the actor who played the part of +Macbeth, but Northwick kept his mind critically upon the play, and it +seemed to him false to what he had seen of life in having all those +things happen just so, to fret the conscience and torment the soul of +the guilty man; he thought that in reality they would not have been +quite so pat; it gave him rather a low opinion of Shakespeare, lower +than he would have dared to have if he had been a more cultivated man. +Now that play came back into his mind, and he owned with a pang that it +was all true. He was being quite as aptly visited for his transgression; +his heart was being wrung, too, by the very things that could hurt it +most. He had not been very well of late, and was not feeling physically +strong; his anxieties had preyed upon him, and he had never felt the +need of the comfort and quiet of his home so much as now when he was +forced to leave it. Never had it all been so precious; never had the +beauty and luxury of it seemed so great. All that was nothing, though, +to the thought of his children, especially of that youngest child, whom +his heart was so wrapt up in, and whom he was going to leave to shame +and ruin. The words she had spoken from her pride in him, her ignorant +censure of that drunkard, as a man who had better die since he had +become nothing but a burden and disgrace to his family, stung on as if +by incessant repetition. He had crazy thoughts, impulses, fantasies, in +which he swiftly dreamed renunciation of escape. Then he knew that it +would not avail anything to remain; it would not avail anything even to +die; nothing could avail anything at once, but in the end, his going +would avail most. He must go; it would break the child's heart to face +his shame, and she must face it. He did not think of his eldest +daughter, except to think that the impending disaster could not affect +her so ruinously. + +"My God, my God!" he groaned, as he went up stairs. Adeline called from +the room he had left, "Did you speak, father?" + +He had a conscience, that mechanical conscience which becomes so active +in times of great moral obliquity, against telling a little lie, and +saying he had not spoken. He went on up stairs without answering +anything. He indulged the self pity, a little longer, of feeling himself +an old man forced from his home, and he had a blind reasonless +resentment of the behavior of the men who were driving him away, and +whose interests, even at that moment, he was mindful of. But he threw +off this mood when he entered his room, and settled himself to business. +There was a good deal to be done in the arrangement of papers for his +indefinite absence, and he used the same care in providing for some +minor contingencies in the company's affairs as in leaving instructions +to his children for their action until they should hear from him again. +Afterwards this curious scrupulosity became a matter of comment among +those privy to it; some held it another proof of the ingrained rascality +of the man, a trick to suggest lenient construction of his general +conduct in the management of the company's finances, others saw in it an +interesting example of the involuntary operation of business instincts +which persisted at a juncture when the man might be supposed to have +been actuated only by the most intensely selfish motives. + +The question was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it +appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful +of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it +further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of +money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider +that this money necessarily belonged to the company, any more than his +daughters' house and farm belonged to it. To be sure it was the fruit of +money he had borrowed or taken from the company and had used in an +enormously successful deal; but the company had not earned it, and in +driving him into a corner, in forcing him to make instant restitution of +all its involuntary loans, it was justifying him in withholding this +part of them. Northwick was a man of too much sense to reason explicitly +to this effect, but there was a sophistry, tacitly at work in him to +this effect, which made it possible for him to go on and steal more +where he had already stolen so much. In fact it presented the further +theft as a sort of duty. This sum, large as it was, really amounted to +nothing in comparison with the sum he owed the company; but it formed +his only means of restitution, and if he did not take it and use it to +that end, he might be held recreant to his moral obligations. He +contended, from that vestibule of his soul where he was not a thief, +with that self of his inmost where he was a thief, that it was all most +fortunate, if not providential, as it had fallen out. Not only had his +broker sent him that large check for his winnings in stocks the day +before, but Northwick had, contrary to his custom, cashed the check, and +put the money in his safe instead of banking it. Now he could perceive a +leading in the whole matter, though at the time it seemed a flagrant +defiance of chance, and a sort of invitation to burglars. He seemed to +himself like a burglar, when he had locked the doors and pulled down the +curtains, and stood before the safe working the combination. He +trembled, and when at last the mechanism announced its effect, with a +slight click of the withdrawing bolt, he gave a violent start. At the +same time there came a rough knock at the door, and Northwick called out +in the choking, incoherent voice of one suddenly roused from sleep: +"Hello! Who's there? What is it?" + +"It's me," said Elbridge. + +"Oh, yes! Well! All right! Hold on, a minute! Ah--you can come back in +ten or fifteen minutes. I'm not quite ready for you, yet." Northwick +spoke the first broken sentences from the safe, where he stood in a +frenzy of dismay; the more collected words were uttered from his desk, +where he ran to get his pistol. He did not know why he thought Elbridge +might try to force his way in; perhaps it was because any presence on +the outside of the door would have terrified him. He had time to +recognize that he was not afraid for the money, but that he was afraid +for himself in the act of taking it. + +Elbridge gave a cough on the other side of the door, and said with a +little hesitation, "All right," and Northwick heard him tramp away, and +go down stairs. + +He went back to the safe and pulled open the heavy door, whose +resistance helped him shake off his nervousness. Then he took the money +from the drawer where he had laid it, counted it, slipped it into the +inner pocket of his waistcoat, and buttoned it in there. He shut the +safe and locked it. The succession of these habitual acts calmed him +more and more, and after he had struck a match and kindled the fire on +his hearth, which he had hitherto forgotten, he was able to settle again +to his preparations in writing. + + + + +VI. + + +When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went +and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said, +carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?" + +"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got +to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a +strong smell of stable through the hot room. + +"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the +morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick +satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula; +and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the +management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his +pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said, +"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine. +You can drive me up with the black mare." + +"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of +reluctance that did not escape Northwick. + +"Anything the matter?" he asked. + +"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well." + +"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for +him to feel. + +"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the +membranous crou--" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped +it down. + +"Oh, I _hope_ not," said Northwick. + +"He's comin' back again--he had to go off to another place--but I could +see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got +himself in hand again, and spoke clearly. + +Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow +thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the +earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must +telephone Simpson to come for me." + +"All right." Elbridge took himself away. + +Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the +coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the +windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck +a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have +been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought +he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people; +but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the +useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His +thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had +lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash +into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his +family ought to feel in the matter. + +No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found +his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor. +The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his +arms thrown wildly about. + +"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the +mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him, +save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him +suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's +hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was +suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What +are you big, strong men good for, any--" She looked down at the child's +face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild +screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment. + +It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless +there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to +go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her +coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he +heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue. + +The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had +been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love +with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since +their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of +exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put +Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the +will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the +little boy who had just died. + +He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full +outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given +him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the +company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses +he must meet at such a time. + +Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out +to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have +liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case +Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this +possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of +Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells +before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his +bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him, +but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of +that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out. +He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried +down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on +the threshold, and took his bag from him. + +"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?" + +"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and +gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I +thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for +the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the +broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the +booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin' +to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway." + +The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank +you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted +to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his +house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to +be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with +himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to +Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving +home--at such a time--when you've--" + +"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested. + +"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously +warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly +lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the +door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on +the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been +some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they +did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and +fixed him severely with his eye. + +"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?" + +Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing +look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I +didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses--" + +"It was the LAW you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with +a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often! +You can't drive over the Law, _yet_--you haven't quite millions enough +for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of +asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it. + +Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set +off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and +Northwick went out and got aboard. + + + + +VII. + + +The president of the Board, who had called Northwick a thief, and yet +had got him a chance to make himself an honest man, was awake at the +hour the defaulter absconded, after passing quite as sleepless a night. +He had kept a dinner engagement, hoping to forget Northwick, but he +seemed to be eating and drinking him at every course. When he came home +toward eleven o'clock, he went to his library and sat down before the +fire. His wife had gone to bed, and his son and daughter were at a ball; +and he sat there alone, smoking impatiently. + +He told the man who looked in to see if he wanted anything that he might +go to bed; he need not sit up for the young people. Hilary had that kind +of consideration for servants, and he liked to practise it; he liked to +realize that he was practising it now, in a moment when every habit of +his life might very well yield to the great and varying anxieties which +beset him. + +He had an ideal of conduct, of what was due from him to himself, as a +gentleman and a citizen, and he could not conceal from himself that he +had been mainly instrumental in the escape of a rogue from justice, when +he got the Board to give Northwick a chance. His ideals had not hitherto +stood in the way of his comfort, his entire repose of mind, any more +than they had impaired his prosperity, though they were of a kind far +above those which commercial honor permits a man to be content with. He +held himself bound, as a man of a certain origin and social tradition, +to have public spirit, and he had a great deal of it. He believed that +he owed it to the community to do nothing to lower its standards of +personal integrity and responsibility; and he distinguished himself by a +gratified consciousness from those people of chromo-morality, who held +all sorts of loose notions on such points. His name stood not merely for +so much money; many names stood for far more; but it meant reliability, +it meant honesty, it meant good faith. He really loved these things, +though, no doubt, he loved them less for their own sake than because +they were spiritual properties of Eben Hilary. He did not expect +everybody else to have them, but his theory of life exacted that they +should be held the chief virtues. He was so conscious of their value +that he ignored all those minor qualities in himself which rendered him +not only bearable but even lovable; he was not aware of having any sort +of foibles, so that any error of conduct in himself surprised him even +more than it pained him. It was not easy to recognize it; but when he +once saw it, he was not only willing but eager to repair it. + +The error that he had committed in Northwick's case, if it was an error, +was one that presented peculiar difficulties, as every error in life +does; the errors love an infinite complexity of disguise, and masquerade +as all sorts of things. There were moments when Hilary saw his mistake +so clearly that it seemed to him nothing less than the repayment of +Northwick's thefts from his own pocket would satisfy the claims of +justice to his fellow-losers if Northwick ran away; and then again, it +looked like the act of wise mercy which it had appeared to him when he +was urging the Board to give the man a chance as the only thing which +they could hopefully do in the circumstances, as common sense, as +business. But it was now so obvious that a man like Northwick could and +would do nothing but run away if he were given the chance, that he +seemed to have been his accomplice when he used the force of his +personal character with them in Northwick's behalf. He was in a +ridiculous position, there was no doubt of that, and he was not going to +get out of it without much painful wear and tear of pride, of +self-respect. + +After a long time he looked at the clock, and found it still early for +the return of his young people. He was impatient to see his son, and to +get the situation in the light of his mind, and see how it looked there. +He had already told him of the defalcation, and of what the Board had +decided to do with Northwick; but this was while he was still in the +glow of action, and he had spoken very hurriedly with Matt who came in +just as he was going out to dinner; it was before his cold fit came on. + +He had reached that time of life when a man likes to lay his troubles +before his son; and in the view his son usually took of his troubles, +Hilary seemed to find another mood of his own. It was a fresher, +different self dealing with them; for the fellow was not only younger +and more vigorous; he was another temperament with the same interests, +and often the same principles. He had disappointed Hilary in some ways, +but he had gratified his pride in the very ways he had disappointed him. +The father had expected the son to go into business, and Matt did go +into the mills at Ponkwasset, where he was to be superintendent in the +natural course. But one day he came home and told his father that he had +begun to have his doubts of the existing relations of labor and capital; +and until he could see his way clearer he would rather give up his +chance with the company. It was a keen disappointment to Hilary; he made +no concealment of that; but he did not quarrel with his son about it. He +robustly tolerated Matt's queer notions, not only because he was a +father who blindly doted on his children and behaved as if everything +they did was right, no matter if it put him in the wrong, but because he +chose to respect the fellow's principles, if those were his principles. +He had his own principles, and Matt should have his if he liked. He bore +entirely well the purpose of going abroad that Matt expressed, and he +wished to give him much more money than the fellow would take, to carry +on those researches which he made in his travels. When he came back and +published his monograph on work and wages in Europe, Hilary paid the +expense, and took as unselfish an interest in the slow and meagre sale +of the little book as if it had cost him nothing. + +Eben Hilary had been a crank, too, in his day, so far as to have gone +counter to the most respectable feeling of business in Boston, when he +came out an abolitionist. His individual impulse to radicalism had +exhausted itself in that direction; we are each of us good for only a +certain degree of advance in opinion; few men are indefinitely +progressive; and Hilary had not caught on to the movement that was +carrying his son with it. But he understood how his son should be what +he was, and he loved him so much that he almost honored him for what he +called his balderdash about industrial slavery. His heart lifted when at +last he heard the scratching of the night-latch at the door below, and +he made lumbering haste down stairs to open and let the young people in. +He reached the door as they opened it, and in the momentary lightness of +his soul at sight of his children, he gave them a gay welcome, and took +his daughter, all a fluff of soft silken and furry wraps, into his arms. + +"Oh, don't kiss my nose!" she called out. "It'll freeze you to death, +papa! What in the world are you up, for? Anything the matter with +mamma?" + +"No. She was in bed when I came home; I thought I would sit up and ask +what sort of a time you'd had." + +"Did you ever know me to have a bad one? I had the best time in the +world. I danced every dance, and I enjoyed it just as much as if I had +'shut and been a Bud again.' But don't you know it's very bad for old +gentlemen to be up so late?" + +They were mounting the stairs, and when they reached the library, she +went in and poked her long-gloved hands well in over the fire on the +hearth while she lifted her eyes to the clock. "Oh, it isn't so very +late. Only five." + +"No, it's early," said her father with the security in a feeble joke +which none but fathers can feel with none but their grown-up daughters. +"It's full an hour yet before Matt would be getting up to feed his +cattle, if he were in Vardley." Hilary had given Matt the old family +place there; and he always liked to make a joke of his getting an honest +living by farming it. + +"Don't speak of that agricultural angel!" said the girl, putting her +draperies back with one hand and confining them with her elbow, so as to +give her other hand greater comfort of the fire. To do better yet she +dropped on both knees before it. + +"Was he nice?" asked the father, with confidence. + +"Nice! Ask all the plain girls he danced with, all the dull girls he +talked with! When I think what a good time I should have with him as a +plain girl, if I were not his sister, I lose all patience." She glanced +up in her father's face, with all the strange charm of features that had +no regular beauty; and then, as she had to do whenever she remembered +them, she asserted the grace which governed every movement and gesture +in her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed +flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with +as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She +was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; +though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery +red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. +She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed herself +tall and slim, with that odd visage of hers drooping from a perfect +neck. "Why," she said, "if we had all been horned cattle, he couldn't +have treated us better." + +"Do you hear that, Matt?" asked the father, as his son came in, after a +methodical and deliberate bestowal of his outer garments below; his +method and his deliberation were part of the joke of him in the family. + +"Complaining of me for making her walk home?" he asked in turn, with the +quiet which was another part of the joke. "I didn't suppose you'd give +me away, Louise." + +"I didn't; I knew I only had to wait and you would give yourself away," +said the girl. + +"Did he make you walk home?" said the father. "That's the reason your +hands are so cold." + +"They're not very cold--now; and if they were, I shouldn't mind it in +such a cause." + +"What cause?" + +"Oh the general shamefulness of disusing the feet God had given me. But +it was only three blocks, and I had my arctics." She moved a little away +toward the fire again and showed the arctics on the floor where she must +have been scuffling them off under her skirts. "Ugh! But it's cold!" She +now stretched a satin slipper in toward the fire. + +"Yes, it's a cold night; but you seem to have got home alive, and I +don't think you'll be the worse for it now, if you go to bed at once," +said her father. + +"Is that a hint?" she asked, with a dreamy appreciation of the warmth +through the toe of her slipper. + +"Not at all; we should be glad to have you sit up the whole night with +us." + +"Ah, now I know you're hinting. Is it business?" + +"Yes, it's business." + +"Well, I'm just in the humor for business; I've had enough pleasure." + +"I don't see why Louise shouldn't stay and talk business with us, if she +likes. I think it's a pity to keep women out of it, as if it didn't +concern them," said the son. "Nine-tenths of the time it concerns them +more than it does men." He had a bright, friendly, philosophical smile +in saying this, and he stood waiting for his sister to be gone, with a +patience which their father did not share. He stood something over six +feet in his low shoes, and his powerful frame seemed starting out of the +dress-suit, which it appeared so little related to. His whole face was +handsome and regular, and his full beard did not wholly hide a mouth of +singular sweetness. + +"Yes; I think so too, in the abstract," said the father. "If the +business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the +term--" + +"Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?" The girl put her +arms round her father's neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a +little way from her cloak and her arctics. "If you hadn't said it was +business, I should have been in bed long ago." Then, as if feeling her +father's eagerness to have her gone, she said, "Good night," and gave +him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said "Good night, Matt," and got +herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and +stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying +to follow her. + + + + +VIII. + + +Louise's father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt +himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred +itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about +picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the +cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove +on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to +it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that +was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to +get sight of. + +"What in the devil is that?" he roared. + +"Louise's pin," said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place +for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went +and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, "It's about Northwick, I +suppose." + +"Yes," said his father, still furious from the pinprick. "I'm afraid the +miserable scoundrel is going to run away." + +"Did you expect there was a chance of that?" asked Matt, quietly. + +"Expect!" his father blustered. "I don't know what I expected. I might +have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at +the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all +sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn't believe him, +but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to +be gained by proceeding against him. You can't get blood out of a +turnip, even by crushing the turnip." + +"That seems sound," said the son, with his reasonable smile. + +"I didn't spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he +was a thief." + +"Oh!" said Matt. + +"Why, wasn't he?" returned his father, angrily. + +"Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so." Matt admitted it with an +air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more. + +"Very well, sir!" he roared. "Then I called him so; and I think that it +will do him good to know it." Hilary did not repeat all of the violent +things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being +rather proud of them; the tone of his son's voice somehow stopped him +for the moment. "I brought them round to my position, and we gave him +the chance he asked for." + +"It was really the only thing you could do." + +"Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won't +seem so when it comes out that he's gone to Canada. I told him I thought +the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on +his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter +who's been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him +handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables." + +Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in +criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the +point he mentioned. "It will be hard for that pretty creature." + +"It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain," said his +father. "It won't break any of us; but it will shake some of us up +abominably. I don't know but it may send one or two people to the wall, +for the time being." + +"Ah, but that isn't the same thing at all. That's suffering; it isn't +shame. It isn't the misery that the sin of your father has brought on +you." + +"Well, of course not!" said Hilary, impatiently granting it. "But Miss +Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I +never quite saw what Louise found to like in her." + +"They were at school together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently +offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a +person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I +suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like +Louise." + +Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, "How is that +affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?" + +"I don't know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to +all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get +married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to +be done with it." + +"Wasn't there some scandal about him, of some kind?" + +"Yes; but I never believed in it." + +"He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn't seem +the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because--" + +"Because her father is a fraud?" Matt suggested. "No, I don't think he +is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the +matter besides a man's feelings, or his principles, even. I can't say +what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next +in the matter?" + +"I promised him he shouldn't be followed up, while he was trying to +right himself. If we find he's gone, we must give the case into the +hands of the detectives, I suppose." The disgust showed itself in +Hilary's face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, +with a smile of sympathy: + +"The apparatus of justice isn't exactly attractive, even when one isn't +a criminal. But I don't know that it's any more repulsive than the +apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to +get on everybody's bread by the time he's earned it, or on his money +even when he's made it in large sums as our class do." + +The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with +himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's +rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may +fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself." + +"I beg your pardon," said the young man. "I didn't wish to annoy you." + +"Don't do it, then." After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his +own sense of deficiency, "The whole thing's as thoroughly distasteful to +me as it can be. But I can't see how I could have acted otherwise than +I've done. I know I've made myself responsible, in a way, for +Northwick's getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give +him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won't change that fact +at all; but I can't conceal from myself that I half-expected him to +abuse it." + +He put this tentatively, and his son responded, "I suppose that +naturally inclines you to suppose he'll run away." + +"Yes." + +"But your supposition doesn't establish the fact." + +"No. But the question is whether it doesn't oblige me to act as if it +had; whether I oughtn't, if I've got this suspicion, to take some steps +at once to find out whether Northwick's really gone or not, and to mix +myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I +promised him he shouldn't be shadowed in any way till his three days +were over." + +"It's a nice question," said Matt, "or rather, it's a nasty one. Still, +you've only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your +fears before. I don't think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry +one into the catchpole business." Matt laughed again with that fondness +he had for his father. "Though as for any peculiar disgrace in +catchpoles as catchpoles, I don't see it. They're a necessary part of +the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I +don't see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as +respectably employed as the judge who sentences him, or the hangman who +puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is +one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in +every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It's +all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn't any duty at all in +the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board +know that you have your misgivings?" + +"Yes," said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, "I +felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to _him_! And I wanted +to talk with you." + +"It was just as well to let them have their night's rest. There isn't +really anything to be done." Matt rose from the low chair where he had +been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. "If the man was +going he's gone past recall by this time; and if he isn't gone, there's +no immediate cause for anxiety." + +"Then you wouldn't do anything at present?" + +"I certainly shouldn't. What could you do?" + +"Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose." + +"Good night," the son said, suggestively, "I suppose there isn't really +anything more?" + +"No, what could there be? You had better go to bed." + +"And you, too, I hope, father." + +"Oh, I shall go to bed--as a matter of form." + +The son laughed. "I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go +to sleep, too. I shall." + +"I sha'n't sleep," said the father, bitterly. "When things like this +happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them." + +"Well, I dare say Northwick's doing that." + +"I doubt it," said Hilary. "I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing +slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this +time." + +"I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he's only going to a +larger prison if he's going into exile. He may be on the Montreal +express, but I guess he isn't sleeping," said Matt. + +"Yes," his father admitted. "Poor devil! He'd much better be dead." + + + + +IX. + + +The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that +day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister +that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, +but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch +with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o'clock +train. + +She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four +balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had +promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night. + +"I don't see how she lives through it," said Adeline. "And at her age, +it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud." + +"Louise is only twenty-three," said Suzette. "If she were married, she +would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older." + +"But she isn't married, and that makes all the difference." + +"Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of +his being with them." + +"Has he given up his farming? It's about time." + +"No; not at all, I believe. She says he's in Boston merely as a matter +of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to +go with her." + +"Well," said Adeline, "I should think he would want to be of _some_ use +in the world; and if he won't help his father in business, he had better +help his mother in society." + +Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if +she had not heeded, "I think I will give a little dance here, next week. +Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We +made out the list--just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, +and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert +will matronize them; it'll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls +are concerned, but I've asked two or three buds; and some of the young +married people. It will be very pleasant, don't you think?" + +"Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?" + +Suzette smiled. "I dare say he would. I wasn't thinking of him in making +it, but I don't see why he shouldn't look in." + +"He might come to the supper," Adeline mused aloud, "if it isn't one of +his church days. I never can keep the run of them." + +"We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be +perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could +make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have +been certain to object if we had made any mistake." + +"I'm very glad," said Adeline. "I know father will be glad to have Mr. +Wade here. He's taken a great fancy to him." + +"Mr. Wade's very nice," said Suzette, coolly. "I shouldn't have liked to +have it without him." + +They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at +larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her +escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and +from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and +then went on talking. + +"Shall you have any of the South Hatboro' people?" her sister asked. + +"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little +smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; +or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack +Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she +went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he +were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now +to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise +suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a +quarrel." + +Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always +afraid you'll get--" + +"To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly +dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in +the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, +"whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put +an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't +believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the +point." + +"I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you +needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; +and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him +here." + +Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see +me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him +at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his +explanations." + +"I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak." + +"Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his +weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and +didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be +explained." + +"Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the +world, after the way he's treated you!" + +"Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in +love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other +things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?" + +She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the +chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet +nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second +husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a +rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and +returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and +undying thing is a slight. That lasts--with _me_!" + +Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from +the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant +it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced--" + +Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. "Oh, _you're_ in love with him! +Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let's look at +the drawing-room." She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each +rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, +across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. "Yes," she said, +with a critical look at the room, "it will do splendidly. We shall have +to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb--as +good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, +come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!" + +She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. +"You shouldn't think," she said, as if something in Sue's words had +reminded her of it, "that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton's little +boy--" + +"Well, that's _like_ you, Adeline! To bring _that_ up! _No_, indeed! +It'll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he _isn't_ quite one of the +family. What an idea!" + +"Of course," her sister assented, abashed by Sue's scornful surprise. + +"It's too bad it should have happened just at this time," said the girl, +with some relenting. "When is it to be?" + +"To-morrow, at eleven," said Adeline. She perceived that Sue's +selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts +or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them +you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will +understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly +fib like this seemed no harm to her. + + + + +X. + + +In the morning before her sister was astir, Adeline went out to the +coachman's quarters in the stabling, and met the mother of the dead +child at the door. "Come right in!" she said, fiercely, as she set it +wide. "I presume you want to know if there's anything you can do for me; +that's what they all ask. Well, there ain't, unless you can bring him +back to life. I've been up and doin', as usual, this mornin'," she said, +and a sound of frying came from the kitchen where she had left her work +to let her visitor in. "We got to eat; we got to live." + +The farmer's wife came in from the next chamber, where the little one +lay; she had her bonnet and shawl on as if going home after a night's +watching. She said, "I tell her he's better off where he's gone; but she +can't seem to sense the comfort of it." + +"How do you know he's better off?" demanded the mother, turning upon +her. "It makes me tired to hear such stuff. Who's goin' to take more +care of the child where he's gone, than what his mother could? Don't you +talk nonsense, Mrs. Saunders! You don't know anything about it, and +nobody does. I can bear it; yes, I've got the stren'th to stand up +against death, but I don't want any _comfort_. You want to see Elbridge, +Miss Northwick? He's in the harness room, I guess. He's got to keep +about, too, if he don't want to go clear crazy. One thing, he don't have +to stand any comfortin'. I guess men don't say such things to each other +as women do, big fools as they be!" + +Mrs. Saunders gave Miss Northwick a wink of pity for Mrs. Newton and +expressed that she was hardly accountable for what she was saying. + +"He used to complain of me for lettin' Arty get out into the stable +among the horses; but I guess he won't be troubled that way _much_ +more," said the mother; and then something in Miss Northwick's face +seemed to stay her in her wild talk; and she asked, "Want I should call +him for you?" + +"No, no," said Adeline, "I'll go right through to him, myself." She knew +the way from the coachman's dwelling into the stable, and she found +Elbridge oiling one of the harnesses, with a sort of dogged attention to +the work, which he hardly turned from to look at her. "Elbridge," she +asked, "did you drive father to the depot yesterday morning?" + +"Yes, ma'am, I did." + +"When did he say he would be back?" + +"Well, he said he couldn't say, exactly. But I understood in a day or +two." + +"Did he expect to be anywhere but Ponkwasset?" + +"No, ma'am, I didn't hear him say as he did." + +"Then it's a mistake; and of course I knew it was a mistake. There's +more than one Northwick in the world, I presume." She laughed a little +hysterically; she had a newspaper in her hand, and it shook with the +nervous tremor that passed over her. + +"Why, what is it, Miss Northwick?" said Elbridge with a perception of +the trouble in her voice through the trouble in his own heart. He +stopped pulling the greasy sponge over the trace in his hand, and turned +towards her. + +"Oh, nothing. There's been an accident on the Union and Dominion +Railroad; and of course it's a mistake." + +She handed him the paper, folded to the column which she wished to show, +and he took it between two finger-tips, so as to soil it as little as +possible, and stood reading it. She went on saying, "He wouldn't be on +the train if he was at Ponkwasset; I got the paper when I first came +down stairs, but I didn't happen to read the account till just now; and +then I thought I'd run out and see what father said to you about where +he was going. He told us he was going to the Mills, too, and--" Her +voice growing more and more wistful, died away in the fascination of +watching the fascination of Elbridge as he first took in the half-column +of scare-heads, and then followed down to the meagre details of the +dispatch eked out with double-leading to cover space. + +It appeared that the Northern express had reached Wellwater Junction, on +the Union and Dominion line, several hours behind time, and after the +usual stop there for supper, had joined the Boston train, on the United +States and Canada, for Montreal, and had, just after leaving the +Junction, run off the track. "The deadly car stove got in its work" on +the wreck, and many lives had been lost by the fire, especially in the +parlor car. It was impossible to give a complete list of the killed and +wounded, but several bodies were identified, and among the names of +passengers in the Pullman that of T. W. Northwick was reported, from a +telegram received by the conductor at Wellwater asking to have a seat +reserved from that point to Montreal. + +"It ain't him, I know it ain't, Miss Northwick," said Elbridge. He +offered to give her the paper, but took another look at it before he +finally yielded it. "There's lots of folks of the same name, I don't +care what it is, and the initials ain't the ones." + +"No," she said, doubtfully, "but I didn't like the last name being the +same." + +"Well, you can't help that; and as long as it ain't the initials, and +you know your father is safe and sound at the Mills, you don't want to +worry." + +"No," said Adeline. "You're sure he told you he was going to the Mills?" + +"Why, didn't he tell _you_ he was? I don't recollect just what he said. +But he told me about that note he left for me, and that had the money in +it for the fun'al--" Elbridge stopped for a moment before he added, "He +said he'd telegraph just which train he wanted me to meet him when he +was comin' back.... Why, dumn it! I guess I _must_ be crazy. We can +settle it in half an hour's time--or an hour or two at the outside--and +no need to worry about it. Telegraph to the Mills and find out whether +he's there or not." + +He dropped his harness, and went to the telephone and called up the +Western Union operator at the station. He had the usual telephonic +contention with her as to who he was, and what he wanted, but he got her +at last to take his dispatch to Ponkwasset Falls, asking whether +Northwick was at the Mills. + +"There!" he said, "I don't believe but what that'll fix it all right. +And I'll bring you in the answer myself, when it comes, Miss Northwick." + +"I do hate to trouble you with my foolishness, when--" + +"I guess you needn't mind about that," said Elbridge. "I guess it +wouldn't make much difference to me, if the whole world was burnt up. Be +a kind of a relief." He did not mean just the sense the words conveyed, +and she, in her preoccupation with her own anxiety, and her pity for +him, interpreted them aright. + +She stayed to add, "I don't know what he could have been on that train +for, any way, do you?" + +"No, and he wa'n't on it; you'll find that out." + +"It'll be very provoking," she said, forecasting the minor trouble of +the greater trouble's failure. "Everybody will wonder if it isn't +father, and we shall have to tell them it isn't." + +"Well, that won't be so bad as havin' to tell 'em it is," said Elbridge, +getting back for the moment to his native dryness. + +"That's true," Adeline admitted. "Don't speak to anybody about it till +you hear." She knew from his making no answer that he would obey her, +and she hid the paper in her pocket, as if she would hide the +intelligence it bore from all the rest of the world. + +She let Suzette sleep late, after the fatigues of her day in Boston and +the excitement of their talk at night, which she suspected had prevented +the girl from sleeping early. Elbridge's sympathetic incredulity had +comforted her, if it had not convinced her, and she possessed herself in +such patience as she could till the answer should come from the mills. +If her father were there, then it would be all right; and in the +meantime she found some excuses for not believing the worst she feared. +There was no reason in the world why he should be on that train; there +was no reason why she should identify him with that T. W. Northwick in +the burnt-up car; that was not his name, and that was not the place +where he would have been. + + + + +XI. + + +There was trouble with the telegraph and telephone connections between +Hatboro' and Ponkwasset, and Adeline had to go to the funeral without an +answer to Elbridge's message. Below her surface interest in the ceremony +and the behavior of the mourners and the friends, which nothing could +have alienated but the actual presence of calamity, she had a nether +misery of alternating hope and fear, of anxieties continually reasoned +down, and of security lost the instant it was found. The double strain +told so upon her nerves, that when the rites at the grave were ended, +she sent word to the clergyman and piteously begged him to drive home +with her. + +"Why, aren't you well, Miss Northwick?" he asked, with a glance at her +troubled face, as he got into the covered sleigh with her. + +"Oh, yes," she said, and she flung herself back against the cushioning +and began to cry. + +"Poor Mrs. Newton's grief has been very trying," he said, gently, and +with a certain serenity of smile he had, and he added, as if he thought +it well to lure Miss Northwick from the minor affliction that we feel +for others' sorrows to the sorrow itself, "It has been a terrible blow +to her--so sudden, and her only child." + +"Oh, it isn't that," said Adeline, frankly. "Have--have you seen +the--paper this morning?" + +"It came," said the clergyman. "But in view of the duty before me, I +thought I wouldn't read it. Is there anything particular in it?" + +"No, nothing. Only--only--" Adeline had not been able to separate +herself from the dreadful thing, and she took it out of the carriage +pocket. "There has been an accident on the railroad," she began firmly, +but she broke down in the effort to go on. "And I wanted to have you +see--see--" She stopped, and handed him the paper. + +He took it and ran over the account of the accident, and came at her +trouble with an instant intelligence that was in itself a sort of +reassurance. "But had you any reason to suppose your father was on the +train?" + +"No," she said from the strength he gave her. "That is the strange part +about it. He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, and he couldn't +have been on the train at all. Only the name--" + +"It isn't quite the name," said Wade, with a gentle moderation, as if he +would not willingly make too much of the difference, and felt truth to +be too sacred to be tampered with even while it had merely the form of +possibility. + +"No," said Adeline, eager to be comforted, "and I'm sure he's at the +Mills. Elbridge has sent a dispatch to find out if he's there, but there +must be something the matter with the telegraph. We hadn't heard before +the funeral; or, at least, he didn't bring the word; and I hated to keep +round after him when--" + +"He probably hadn't heard," said the clergyman, soothingly, "and no news +is good news, you know. But hadn't we better drive round by the station, +and find out whether any answer has been--" + +"O, no! I couldn't do that!" said Adeline, nervously. "They will +telephone the answer up to Elbridge. But come home with me, if you +haven't something to do, and stay with us till we--" + +"Oh, very willingly." On the way the young clergyman talked of the +accident, guessing that her hysterical conjectures had heightened the +horror, and that he should make it less dreadful by exploring its facts +with her. He did not declare it impossible her father should have been +on the train, but he urged the extreme improbability. + +Elbridge and his wife passed them, driving rapidly in Simpson's booby, +which Adeline had ordered for their use at the funeral; and when she got +into the house Elbridge was waiting there for her. He began at once; +"Miss Northwick, I don't believe but what your father's staid over at +Springfield for something. He was talkin' to me last week about some +hosses there--" + +"Isn't he at the Mills?" she demanded sharply. + +Elbridge gave his hat a turn on his hand, before he looked up. "Well, +no, he hain't been, yet--" + +Adeline made no sound, but she sank down as a column of water sinks. + +At the confusion of movements and voices that followed, Suzette came to +the door of the library, and looked wonderingly into the hall, where +this had happened, with a book clasped over her finger. "What in the +world is the matter?" she asked with a sort of sarcastic amaze, at sight +of Elbridge lifting something from the floor. + +"Don't be alarmed, Miss Suzette," said Mr. Wade, "Your sister seems a +little faint, and--" + +"It's this sickening heat!" cried the girl, running to the door, and +setting it wide. "It suffocates me when I come in from the outside. I'll +get some water." She vanished and was back again instantly, stooping +over Adeline to wet her forehead and temples. The rush of the cold air +began to revive her. She opened her eyes, and Suzette said, severely, +"What has come over you, Adeline? Aren't you well?" and as Adeline +answered nothing, she went on: "I don't believe she knows where she is. +Let us get her into the library on the lounge." + +She put her strength with that of the young clergyman, and they carried +Adeline to the lounge; Suzette dispatched Elbridge, hanging helplessly +about, for some of the women. He sent the parlor-maid, and did not come +back. + +Adeline kept looking at her sister as if she were afraid of her. When +she was recovered sufficiently to speak, she turned her eyes on the +clergyman, and said huskily, "Tell her." + +"Your sister has had a little fright," he began; and with his gentle +eyes on the girl's he went on to deal the pain that priests and +physicians must give. "There's the report of a railroad accident in the +morning paper, and among the passengers--the missing--was one of the +name of Northwick--" + +"But father is at the Mills!" + +"Your sister had telegraphed before the funeral, to make sure--and word +has come that he--isn't there." + +"Where is the paper?" demanded Suzette, with a kind of haughty +incredulity. + +Wade found it in his pocket, where he must have put it instead of giving +it back to Adeline in the sleigh. Suzette took it and went with it to +one of the windows. She stood reading the account of the accident, while +her sister watched her with tremulous eagerness for the help that came +from her contemptuous rejection of the calamity. + +"How absurd! It isn't father's name, and he couldn't have been on the +train. What in the world would he have been going to Montreal for, at +this time of year? It's ridiculous!" Suzette flung the paper down, and +came back to the other two. + +"I felt," said Wade, "that it was extremely improbable--" + +"But where," Adeline put in faintly, "could he have been if he wasn't at +the Mills?" + +"Anywhere in the world except Wellwater Junction," returned Suzette, +scornfully. "He may have stopped over at Springfield, or--" + +"Yes," Adeline admitted, "that's what Elbridge thought." + +"Or he may have gone on to Willoughby Junction. He often goes there." + +"That is true," said the other, suffering herself to take heart a +little. "And he's been talking of selling his interest in the quarries +there; and--" + +"He's there, of course," said Suzette with finality. "If he'd been going +farther, he'd have telegraphed us. He's always very careful. I'm not in +the least alarmed, and I advise you not to be, Adeline. When did you see +the paper first?" + +"When I came down to breakfast," said Adeline, quietly. + +"And I suppose you didn't eat any breakfast?" + +Adeline's silence made confession. + +"What I think is, we'd better all have _lunch_," said Suzette, and she +went and touched the bell at the chimney. "You'll stay with us, won't +you, Mr. Wade? We want lunch at once, James," she said to the man who +answered her ring. "Of course, you must stay, Mr. Wade, and help see +Adeline back to her right mind." She touched the bell again, and when +the man appeared, "My sleigh at once, James," she commanded. "I will +drive you home, Mr. Wade, on my way to the station. Of course I shall +not leave anything in doubt about this silly scare. I fancy it will be +no great difficulty to find out where father is. Where is that railroad +guide? Probably my father took it up to his room." She ran upstairs and +came down with the book in her hand. "Now we will see. I don't believe +he could get any train at Springfield, where he would have to change for +the Mills, that would take him beyond the Junction at that hour last +night. The express has to come up from Boston--" She stopped and ran +over the time-table of the route. "Well, he _could_ get a connecting +train at the Junction; but that doesn't prove at all that he did." + +She talked on, mocking the mere suggestion of such a notion, and then +suddenly rang the bell once more, to ask sharply, "Isn't lunch ready +yet? Then bring us tea, here. I shall telegraph to the Mills again, and +I shall telegraph to Mr. Hilary in Boston; he will know whether father +was going anywhere else. They had a meeting of the Board day before +yesterday, and father went to the Mills unexpectedly. I shall telegraph +to Ponkwasset Junction, too; and you may be sure I shall not come home, +Adeline, till I know something definite." + +The tea came, and Suzette served the cups herself, with nerves that +betrayed no tremor in the clash of silver or china. But she made haste, +and at the sound of sleigh-bells without, she put down her own cup, +untasted. + +"Oh, must you take Mr. Wade away?" Adeline feebly pleaded. "Stay till +she comes back!" she entreated. + +Suzette faltered a moment, and then with a look at Mr. Wade, she gave a +harsh laugh. "Very well!" she said. + +She ran into the hall and up the stairs, and in another moment they +heard her coming down again; the outer door shut after her, and then +came the flutter of the sleigh-bells as she drove away. + +Over the lunch the elder sister recovered herself a little, and ate as +one can in the suspense of a strong emotion. + +"Your sister is a person of great courage," said the clergyman, as if he +were a little abashed by it. + +"She would never show that she's troubled. But I know well enough that +she's troubled, by the way she kept talking and doing something every +minute; and now, if she hadn't gone to telegraph, she'd--I mustn't keep +you here, any longer, Mr. Wade," she broke off in the sense of physical +strength the food had given her. "Indeed, I mustn't. You needn't be +anxious. I shall do very well, now. Yes! I shall!" + +She begged him to leave her, but he perceived that she did not really +wish him to go, and it was nearly an hour after Suzette drove away, +before he got out of the house. He would not let her send him home; and +he walked toward the village in the still, sunny cold of the early +winter afternoon, thinking of the sort of contempt with which that girl +had spurned the notion of calamity, as if it were something to be +resented, and even snubbed, in its approach to her. It was as if she had +now gone to trace it to its source, and defy it there; to stamp upon the +presumptuous rumor and destroy it. + +Just before he reached the crest of the upland that shut out the village +from him, he heard the clash of sleigh-bells; a pair of horses leaped +into sight, and came bearing down upon him with that fine throw of their +feet, which you get only in such a direct encounter. He stepped into the +side track, and then he heard Miss Sue Northwick call to her horses and +saw her pulling them up. She had her father's fondness for horses, and +the pair of little grays were a gift from him with the picturesque +sledge they drew. The dasher swelled forward like a swan's breast, and +then curved deeply backward; from either corner of the band of iron +filagree at the top, dangled a red horsetail. The man who had driven her +to the station sat in a rumble behind; on the seat with Suzette was +another young lady, who put out her hand to Wade with a look of uncommon +liking, across the shining bearskin robe, and laughed at his +astonishment in seeing her. While they talked, the clipped grays +nervously lifted and set down their forefeet in the snow, as if +fingering it; they inhaled the cold air with squared nostrils, and blew +it out in blasts of white steam. Suzette said, in, explanation of her +friend's presence: "Louise had seen the account, and she made her +brother bring her up. They think just as I do, that there's nothing of +it; one of the papers had the name Nordeck; but we've left Mr. Hilary at +the station, fighting the telegraph and telephone in all directions, and +he isn't to stop till he gets something positive. He's trying Wellwater +now." She said all this very haughtily, but she added, "The only thing +is, I can't understand why my father hasn't been heard of at the Mills. +Some one was asking for him there yesterday." + +"Probably he went on to Willoughby Junction, as you suggested." + +"Of course he did," said Louise. "We haven't heard from there yet." + +"Oh, I'm not in the least troubled," said Sue, "but it's certainly very +provoking." She lifted her reins. "I'm hurrying home to let Adeline +know." + +"She'll be very glad," Wade returned, as if it were the certainty of +good news she was carrying. "I think I'll join Matt at the station," he +suggested to Louise. + +"Do!" she answered. "You can certainly manage something between you. +Matt will be almost as glad of your coming as my going. I thought we +were coming up here to reassure Sue, but I seem strangely superfluous." + +"You can reassure Adeline," said Sue. She added to Wade, "I keep +thinking what an annoyance it will be to my father, to have all this +fuss made over him. I sometimes feel vexed with Adeline. Good-bye!" she +called back to him as she drove away, and she stopped again to add, +"Won't you come up with Mr. Hilary when you've heard something +definite?" + +Wade promised, and they repeated their good-byes all round with a +resolute cheerfulness. + + + + +XII. + + +The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the +suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two +more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade +loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was +such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its +strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the +moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed +roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the +witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to +her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help +bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible. + +He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the +platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two +of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some +wornout rails with new ones. + +"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, +Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his +face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in +position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the +plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, +free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer. + +"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor, +even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association +with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of +the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief +just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: +in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their +work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which +ennobled the scene. + +When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade, +who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the +moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her +father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that +matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it. +"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or--" + +Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height +with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss +Northwick's father?" + +"Very little--nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in +the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just +met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at +the station." + +Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk +from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the +station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of +the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't +follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and +directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the +station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he +met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I +should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our +state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust +can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the +business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that +doesn't belong to him?" + +"What do you mean, Matt?" + +"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick +was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked." + +"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe +that?" + +"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss +Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I +was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that +wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt +that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In +fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut +their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding +defaulter." + +"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These +things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind +of--" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's +revery in which he seemed to have been far absent. + +"Have you seen much of the family this winter?" + +"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've +been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at +their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with +the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I +don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all +kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was +willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that _she_ kept the +family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture." + +"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared +anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her." + +Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean, +Matt? Is there anything besides--" + +"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him +steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary +tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something +that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what +Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their +suspicions." + +"Right?" + +"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter +to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the +directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the +face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make +up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best +thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke +his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the +defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no +question about it." + +"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts +which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible--do you +suppose--imagine--that it was really he who was in that burning car? +What an awful fate!" + +"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe +ground in regard to a thing of that kind--the only ground." + +"The only ground?" + +"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt. + +"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of +the Board--called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names--and told +him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident +on his way home." + +"Ah!" + +"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this +morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he +was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused +his death--I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything +of the kind." + +"Of course," said Wade, compassionately. + +"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the +devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean +anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any +superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a +friend--or a victim--of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way +out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke +from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been +telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his +business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my +coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two +poor women." + +"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst +always seems to do." + +"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to +fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be +when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that +awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was +running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it." + +"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?" + +"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but +sorrow and shame have to come out--I don't know why, but they do. Then, +when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the +cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in +silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in +words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that +bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she +took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating +with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it +was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!" + +"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was +very good of her to come." + +"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head +up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her +friendship with Miss Northwick--she's so much younger than I, and they +came together when I was abroad--but I've fancied she wasn't much liked +among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read +that report, nothing would do but she must come." + +"Of course." + +"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a +sacrifice for him to let us come." + +"I don't understand." + +"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick; +and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to +cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a +rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have +some interest in getting him out of the way." + +"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as +Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even +from the man's son. + +"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach +to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt. + +Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the +case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor +sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so +little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to +make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins +to God!" + +"Ah, I'm with you _there_!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther +through his friend's arm. + +They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for +mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life, +which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had +thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to +verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good +deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points +in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life. +Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard +they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was +not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured +in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them: +Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his +back on manufacturing. + +They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the +calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their +sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the +victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so +much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick +old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of +her doom which Matt tried to put into words. + +"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I +don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when +I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were +taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and +I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with +my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the +most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why, +just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They +will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up +everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the +world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her +head!" + +Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of +course she won't be allowed to come to want." + +"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a +disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve +everything." + +"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade. + +"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that +you--" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed +nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get +Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is." + +They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a +head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet +of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and +then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could. + +"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks +best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick. +Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your +sister." + +"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll +see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch." + +The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to +meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it +to Matt and promptly turned his back on him. + +Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car +passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at +Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling. + +"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst." + +Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no. +This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting. +And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go +up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to +send if anything else comes." + +"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left +the station. "I'm going to my study, there." + +They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more +elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow. + +From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous +little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I +beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly +transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to +Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?" + +"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is +impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car." + +"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be +_our_ Mr. Northwick. Er--good-morning, sir." + +He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked +Wade, "Who in the world is that?" + +"He's a Mr. Gerrish--keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant +type." + +Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so +low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business +standing." + +"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar +of material success." + +Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is +simply seething with curiosity." + +Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down +to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was +alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble. + +"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply. + +Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater. + +"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. +"It's perfectly ridiculous! _Why_ should he have been there? I think +there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating +false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the +train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some +horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm +going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's +bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out." + +"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt. + +"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you +back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she +handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell +them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes." + +The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the +paper in his hand. + +"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully +backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing +from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater +Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's +the worst, I want to know the worst." + +Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to +gain time. + +"Of course! At such a time, I would _rather_ be alone." + +At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he +said he would like to speak with her there. + +She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, +"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my +sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this +week. What have you heard?" + +"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?" + +"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? +Must you go back?" + +"No--not exactly." + +"Not exactly? What are you driving at?" + +"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go +up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she +wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose +she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she +do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the +accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was--" + +"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She +mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her +go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this +point. "She must send somebody--some of their men. She mustn't go. It's +too hideous!" + +"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go." + +"You!" + +"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I +can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible +suspense for her." + +"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that +poor, sick old maid." + +"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left +her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for +her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more." + +"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, +Matt. _You_ couldn't do _less_! It's magnificent of you. Have you told +her, yet, that you would go?" + +"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first." + +"Oh, _I_ approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay +here till you come back--" + +"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. +"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for +them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts +with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to +Canada to escape arrest." + +He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her. + +"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope +he's killed." + +Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much +the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way." + +"When must it come out?" + +"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may +come out--some rumor of it--in the morning papers. The question is +whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be +wise, or useful." + +"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a +thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me +get away alive. I must go at once!" + +She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up +a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from. + +"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without +telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would +insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed." + +"Oh, _that_ was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to +get away." + +"I hope you won't let her suspect--" + +"Well, I _think_ you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning +round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as +sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a +warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he +was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and +he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, +fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other +than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from +her friend. + +Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library. + +"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at +Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would +be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the +same farm." + +The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head +in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, +she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe +herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an +apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable." + +"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no +news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to +that." + +"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were +red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears +came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. +Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time +we went to Quebec?" + +Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at +least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?" + +Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. +"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map +of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal +and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the +Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get +to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly +frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of +_course_, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's +usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans--" + +She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and +began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at +the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might +not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the +Springfield train at Wellwater." + +"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the +ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a +man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot +help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time +does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train--if I +don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear." + +A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette +went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing +the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on, +and her jacket over her arm. + +"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you--I had to do that--but we +both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences." +Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite +know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she +spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with, +she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell +you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time +for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could +out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about +all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But +remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can +send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm +simply waiting. Will you remember that--_whatever_ happens?" + +Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief. + +"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in +formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of +them than it could to the other. + +"Come, Matt!" said Louise. + +She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they +would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then +Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and +wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette." + +"That is a good idea," said Louise. + +"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston +alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!" + +"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive, +I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him +I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall +be set down at our door in perfect safety." + +They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined +reluctantly in it. + +When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she +will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she +will trust you enough to turn to us?" + +"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall +come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections, +as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is--" + +"Yes, of course," said Matt. + +"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But +I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?" + +"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at +the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country +person." + +"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise. + +Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven +knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation +of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see +him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits +seem ugly." + +They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked +up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father +might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question +whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief +for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided +motive. + +"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said +Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness." + +"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt +answered. + +There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, +released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station +an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming +and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with +envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were +both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their +fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of +good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against +whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help +carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to +help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality +she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the +front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell +plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed +with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls +who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a +young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; +she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated +operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was +no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why +he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second +glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a +studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his +clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however +he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned +from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came +up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, +and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went +to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for +Miss Northwick. + +She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it +up." + +"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's," +said Matt. + +"All right." + +Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting +quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the +station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short +of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as +observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from +the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the +awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of +the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called +from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the +depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?" + +"Yes, I have a telegram." + +"Oh, give it to me!" + +He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But +if isn't what you expected, will you let--will you allow me--" + +As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from +his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been +there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously +in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins. + +Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn't. You--you must let me go." + +"You?" + +"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I +can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn't do. +Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I +solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or +forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish +done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if +you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you've borne +with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust +me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go +in your place on such an errand, but it really isn't so. You ought to +know that I wouldn't offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all +that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!" + +He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without +strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she +answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of +assent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping +his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that +day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he +stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the +rise of ground to the southward. + + + + +XIII. + + +The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight +thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to +Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and +shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young +man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of _The +Boston Events_' young men," found his way into an eating-house not far +from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young +man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a +woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual +sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching +the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in +rows on either side of the room. + +She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for +his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself. + +"Well," he said, "let's see. No use asking if you've got coffee?" He +inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a +deep breath. + +"Baked beans?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I don't think there's anything much better than baked beans. Do +you?" + +"Well, not when you git 'em _good_," the woman admitted. "_Ril_ good." + +"And what's the matter with a piece of mince pie?" + +"I don't see's there's any great deal. Hot?" + +"Every time." + +"I _thought_ so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I'd as soon +eat a piece of I don't know what as a piece o' _cold_ mince pie." + +"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I +guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor +round inside of five minutes." + +The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship +established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need +to. Nothin' else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot +plate, and a Japanese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them +on the table before the young man, "Your pie's warmin' for you; I got +you some rolls; they're just right out the oven; and here's some the +best butter I ever put a knife to, if I _do_ say so. It's just as good +and sweet as butter can be, if it _didn't_ come from the Northwick place +at a dollar a pound." + +"Well, now, I should have thought you'd have used the Northwick butter," +said the young man with friendly irony. + +"You know the Northwick butter?" said the woman, charmed at the +discovery of another tie. + +"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a +fancy brand for the table." + +The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I'll bet you +grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy +which he did not disallow. + +"Well, I'm pretty particular," said the young man. "But I _have_ to be, +to find anything to find fault with in the way _my_ wife manages. I +don't suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick butter, now." + +"Why not?" + +"Why, if he was killed in that accident--" + +"Oh, I guess there ain't anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it +was some other Northwick. Their coachman--Elbridge Newton--was tellin' +my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at +some hosses there. He's always buyin' more hosses. I guess he must have +as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don't place any dependence on +that report." + +"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at +the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?" + +"What fellow?" + +"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and +blazing, as you may say." + +"Oh,--Mr. Putney! That's just one of his jokes. He's always down on Mr. +Northwick." + +"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble +there." + +"Labor trouble?" + +"I guess so." + +The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" +and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor +trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?" + +"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward +inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the _Events_' +young man. + +"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost +so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston +to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles." + +"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?" + +"Well, I'm a reporter--same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps +you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?" + +"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in +Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the +_Events_' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee +caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him. + +"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the +drug store that seemed to be pretty happy." + +"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife." + +"Who _is_ Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the _Events_' man. + +"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for +instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the +old Hatboro' Putneys, here." + +"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?" + +"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much +liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man +perceived that he had struck a false note. + +"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more +bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a +month on a strict prohibition basis." + +The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, +I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is +bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way +you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in +every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as +anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband." + +"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go +ahead of him, well, not in _this_ town," said the husband. + +"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes +him so down on Mr. Northwick?" + +"Well, I dunno," said the host, "_what_ it is. He's always been so. I +presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is +anything else." + +"Why, what kind of a man _is_ Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man +asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had +now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason." + +"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's +only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never +did have much to do with the place, before." + +"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?" + +"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered. + +His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue +Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to." + +"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be +merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more +available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose +slippers require constant attention?" + +"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as +that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the +workin' folks, since Mr. Peck." + +"Who was Mr. Peck?" + +"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here +two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort +of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union." + +"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. +"Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard +history of co-operation." + +"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly. + +"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he +isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on +that big place of his; and give work." + +"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the +neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The +hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been +quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a +man of the reporter's wide observation. "_He_ thinks Hatboro' was better +off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place." + +"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and +he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. +Northwick, personally?" + +The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a +moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had +anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything +against him. I guess he's a pretty good man." + +"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he _was_ going +to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. +With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to +throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?" + +"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, +sarcastically. + +"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on +in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line +of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed. + +"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion +road there. Then it's on a branch." + +"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. +_What_ did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick +family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up +his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. +"Married man myself, you know." + +"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her +husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk +in the corner of the room, and brought back the change. + +"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" +the young man asked, in pocketing his money. + +"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. +"There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the +hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. +Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, +either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't +suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to +talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell." + +"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter. + +"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew." + +"Oh, I see: second wife. Then _he's_ the young man, heigh!" + +The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat +the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en." + +The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, +and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he +had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. +Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband +long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth +crying for. + +The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of +accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so +much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his +own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist +the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended +himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular +belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one +else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if +you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was +what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the +happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, +and on his own exceptional good fortune in it. + +He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat +he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the +pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in. + +The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You +onto it, too?" + +"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion. + +"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him +alone. + +"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." +Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting +Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably +shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, +"some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He +rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and +pressed his fingers against his temples. + +"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one +another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take +something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache." + +The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth +while?" + +"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?" + +"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of +the news with us," he suggested. + +"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney. + +"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, +Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an +object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the +consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away." + +"The what is?" asked Pinney. + +"The consensus." + +"Anything like the United States Census?" + +"It isn't spelt like it." + +Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my +own wherever I find it, as George Washington said." + +"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't +know what the word means." + +"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his +book. + +"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had +revived himself with a sip or two. + +"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?" + +"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do +you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have +you. There are no scoops in it." + +"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly. + +Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a +detective--in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, +like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion. + +"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney. + +"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a +space-man can't do." + +"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and +superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at +trifles." + +"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt +up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their +emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome +to it." + +"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name +and--" + +"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind." + +"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, +anyhow. It's not a personal thing." + +"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, +but it makes the man's face burn." + +"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that +stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay +there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for +a reporter. When are you going to Boston?" + +"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own." + +"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously. + +"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you." + +"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the +cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your +diffidence is infectious, Maxwell." + + + + +XIV. + + +Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it +appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to +pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him +suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They +would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see +him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all +the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family +required him to use every means for making copy. + +He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably +doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly +well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden +palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the +inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of +baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance +gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or +a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring. + +"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney +in, and in his absence, the representative of the _Events_ made note of +the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and +of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The +inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he +returned with his card still in his hand. + +"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at +home." + +"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see +Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home." + +"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. +She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence +of an interviewer. + +"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card +which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. +Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words _Representing the Boston +Events_. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and +business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a +certain shade of authority. + +"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some +conversation with you in regard to this--this rumor--accident. Can you +tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?" + +"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. +She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the +mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to +its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She +wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do +this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not +telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; +and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to +have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this +reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior. + +"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully. + +"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days." + +"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney. + +"Yes, three or four. There _is_ one train, at half-past-twelve, I +think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you +there in three hours." + +"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?" + +"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often +take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the +Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses +from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have +run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any +reliance on that story"--she gasped the rest out--"about--that +accident." + +"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those +flying rumors--they get the names all mixed up, those country +operators." + +"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. +"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs." + +"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are +they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed +questionings. + +"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, +and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the +Falls." + +"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope +you'll find out it's all a mistake about--" + +"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman--a friend of ours--has +just gone up to Wellwater to see about it." + +"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. +I suppose you've telegraphed?" + +"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went." + +It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did +not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, +"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to +see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd +taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, +smiling. + +There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by +seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They +take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; +their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts +warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use +to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about +him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five +minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later. + +When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't +at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the +troubles." + +"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her +relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, +in summer, Miss Northwick." + +"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been +enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long +time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to +their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and +to warrant her father's safety. + +"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my +wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the +country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have +to live there." + +Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the +vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper +from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to +your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth +in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She +thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and +keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to +ask him not to do so. + +"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to--it's very kind of +you--I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely +human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away +from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now +suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home +life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, +he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, +it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him +down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given +him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; +on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and +dropped them into the deep snow. + +His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success +he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an +enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done. + +She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, +you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the _Abstract_ clear out +of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and +the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on +the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the +world." + +Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are +ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big +default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a +chance to make up his shortage--it's the old story. I've got just the +setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the +word to go ahead--" + +"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall +do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute." + +Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her +enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why +he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective +authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. +"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm +going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. +There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, +any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell +you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk. + +His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work +on the table there. It's bigger than this desk." + +"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and +followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their +simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" +He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into +it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!" + +"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a +pathetic little mouth. + +Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he +was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his +dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, +of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter +which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which +enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do +justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's +home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with +a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit +in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when +he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as +plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would +sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his +daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't +quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently +hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to +Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!" + +His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. +"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure +out of it for _me_; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of +his family, I can't help you any more." + +"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I +guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall +handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. +"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it +hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to +Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I +knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so +I didn't go." + +"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes +upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back." + +"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he +asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, +and the love he saw in them. + +Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take +air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife +often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she +saw him. + +This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, +when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the _Events_. She +had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in +a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up +the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main +dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the +clerks. + +At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in +the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready +to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, +and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under +his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more +like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He +wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they +began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the +summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first +meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. +They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social +splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that +they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value +each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the +greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they +were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was +good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great +deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a +virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual +devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great +merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they +prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so +deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of +altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and +content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married +on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been +rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their +happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest. + + + + +XV. + + +Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached +the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house +his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told +her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work. + +"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying +round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. +You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks +it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the +defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't +_do_ that." + +"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to +have you." + +"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young +fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a +business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is +getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an +owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years." + +"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother. + +"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at +this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a +wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and +he's sure to get on." + +"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged +soothingly. + +"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my +own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of +working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first +thing is to earn your bread." + +"Well, you _do_ earn yours, my son--and no one works harder to earn +it." + +"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it." + +"Oh, my son!" + +"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the +rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the +door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar +and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to +leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he +finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on +the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! +He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only +chance for a scoop." + +"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a +gentleman." + +"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the +room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of +business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I +intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to +pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps _he_ isn't +a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to +write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility +with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it." + +"He's very kind to you, Brice." + +"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my +life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every +now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room +in independent journalism?" + +Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning +the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had +not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to +put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call. + +The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, +but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He +tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat +and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather +haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, +and led him in there. + +Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after +dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange +experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and +comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over +the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the +contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', +with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she +remembered. + +The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood +irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father." + +"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very +soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along +unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for +the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes +were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her +nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far +as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of +man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, +and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's +very cold out, isn't it?" + +"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell. + +He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an +illogical sense of acquaintance with him. + +"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the +beginning of February." + +"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than +she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold +weather after the January thaw." + +"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought +of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes +any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the +proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be +a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some +of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a +walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her +father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision +gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, +he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he +found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, +as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking +up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's +library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which +was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare +Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes +without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a +scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say +next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with +no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what +he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the +country." + +"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town." + +"And how dreary," he added. + +"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be +debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this +rate." + +"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, +to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color +and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the +literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to +get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall +below. + +Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that +brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the _Daily +Abstract_, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about +this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick." + +"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about +the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! +Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?" + +"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out. + +"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how _could_ you treat him so?" + +"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! +What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of +my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?" + +"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!" + +"Saw that he was a gentleman?" + +"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not--not a common reporter +at _all_!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, +and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous +experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father +who had not been the gentleman. "You--you might have been a little +kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether +you would say anything. He didn't persist." + +"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw +always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find +himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and +admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the +way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for +you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What +does it all mean?" + +The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: +"Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I +should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I +_could_. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if +you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you +did." + +Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as +you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise +gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a +tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have +been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters +after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this +bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to +Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and +more?" + +"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was +going alone. He couldn't do less." + +"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He +turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a +strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's +this?" + +He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, +"Of course he will come back for it." + +"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll--I'll write him a note," Hilary +groaned. + +Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor +fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? +It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, +and meet all kinds of rebuffs." + +"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, +with some return to his grudge. + +"Oh, I didn't mean _you_, papa," said Louise, sweetly. + +The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came +up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his +note-book, he--" + +Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it +is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell. + + + + +XVI. + + +Louise stole a glance at herself across the room in the little triptych +mirror against one of the shelves. Her hair was not tumbled, and she +completed her toilet to the eye by dropping her shoes and extending the +edge of her skirt over them where she stood. + +Her father brought Maxwell in by the door, and she smiled a fresh +greeting to him. "We--I had just picked your note-book up. I--I'm glad +you came back, I--was a little short with you a moment ago. I--I--Mayn't +I offer you a cigar?" + +"No, thanks. I don't smoke," said Maxwell. + +"Then a glass of--It's pretty cold out!" + +"Thank you; I never drink." + +"Well, that's good! That's--sit down; sit down!--that's a very good +thing. I assure you, I don't think it's the least use, though I do both. +My boy doesn't, he's a pattern to his father." + +In spite of Hilary's invitation Maxwell remained on foot, with the +effect of merely hearing him out as he went on. + +"I--I'm sorry I haven't anything to tell about that accident. I've been +telegraphing all day, without finding out anything beyond the fact as +first reported; and now my son's gone up to Wellwater, to look it up on +the ground. It may have been our Mr. Northwick, or it may not. May I ask +how much you know?" + +"I don't know that I'm quite free to say," answered Maxwell. + +"Oh!" + +"And I didn't expect you to say anything unless you wished to make +something known. It's a matter of business." + +"Exactly," said Hilary. "But I think I might been a little civiller in +saying what I did. The rumor's been a great annoyance to me; and I like +to share my annoyances with other people. I suppose your business often +brings you in contact with men of that friendly disposition? Heigh?" +Hilary rolled the cigar he was about to light between his lips. + +"We see the average man," said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his +poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that +from the bore it is to interview." + +"I dare say that's often the worst part of it," said Hilary, lighting +his cigar, and puffing out the first great clouds. "Well, then, I may +congratulate myself on sparing you an unpleasant duty. I didn't know I +should come off so handsomely." + +There seemed nothing more to say, and Maxwell did not attempt to make +conversation. Hilary offered him his hand, and he said, as if to relieve +the parting of abruptness, "If you care to look in on me again, later +on, perhaps--" + +"Thank you," said Maxwell, and he turned to go. Then he turned back, and +after a moment's hesitation, bowed to Louise, and said very stiffly, +"Good-evening!" and went out. + +Louise fetched a deep breath. "Why didn't you keep him longer, papa, and +find out all about him?" + +"I think we know all that's necessary," said her father, dryly. "At +least he isn't on my conscience any longer; and now I hope you're +satisfied." + +"Yes--yes," she hesitated. "You don't think you were too patronizing in +your reparation, papa?" + +"Patronizing?" Hilary's crest began to rise. + +"Oh, I don't mean that; but I wish you hadn't let him see that you +expected him to leap for joy when you stooped to excuse yourself." + +Hilary delayed, for want of adequate terms, the violence he was about to +permit himself. "The next time, if you don't like my manner with people, +don't stay, Louise." + +"I knew you wanted me to stay, papa, to see how beautifully you could do +it; and you _did_ do it beautifully. It was magnificent--perhaps _too_ +magnificent." She began to laugh and to kiss away the vexation from her +father's face, keeping her hands behind her with her shoes she had +picked up again, in them, as she came and leaned over him, where he sat. + +"And did I want you to stay and entertain him here till I came in?" he +demanded, to keep from being mollified too soon. + +"No," she faltered. "_That_ was a work of necessity. He looked so sick +and sad, that he appealed to my sympathy, and besides--Do you think I +could trust you with a secret, papa?" + +"What are you talking about?" + +"Why, you see I thought he was a walking-delegate at first." + +"And was that the reason you stayed?" + +"No. That was what frightened me, and then interested me. I wanted to +find out what they were like. But that isn't the secret." + +"It's probably quite as important," Hilary growled. + +"Well, you see it's such a good lesson to me! I had slipped off my shoes +when I was lying down, and I couldn't get away, he came in so suddenly." + +"And do you mean to tell me, Louise, that you were talking to that +reporter all the time in--" + +"How should he know it? You didn't know it yourself, papa. I couldn't +get my shoes on after he came, of course!" She brought them round before +her in evidence. + +"Well, it's scandalous, Louise, simply scandalous! I never come in after +you've been here without finding some part of your gear lying +round--hair-pins, or gloves, or ribbons, or belts, or handkerchiefs, or +something--and I won't have it. I want you to understand that I think +it's disgraceful. I'm ashamed of you." + +"Oh, no! Not _ashamed_, papa!" + +"Yes, I am!" said her father; but he had to relent under her look of +meek imploring, and say, "or I ought to be. I don't see how you could +hold up your head." + +"I held it very _high_ up. When you haven't got your shoes on--in +company--it gives you a sort of--internal majesty; and I behaved very +loftily. But it's been a fearful lesson to me, papa!" She made her +father laugh, and then she flung herself upon him, and kissed him for +his amiability. + +She said at the end of this rite, "He didn't seem much impressed even +after you had apologized, do you think, papa?" + +"No, he didn't," Hilary grumbled. "He's as stiff-necked as need be." + +"Yes," said Louise, thoughtfully. "He must be proud. How funny proud +people are, papa! I can't understand them. That was what always +fascinated me with Suzette." + +Hilary's face saddened as it softened. "Ah, poor thing! She'll have need +of all her pride, now." + +"You mean about her father," said Louise, sobered too. "Don't you hope +he's got away?" + +"What do you mean, child? That would be a very rascally wish in me." + +"Well, you'd rather he had got away than been killed?" + +"Why, of course, of course," Hilary ruefully assented. "But if Matt +finds he wasn't--in the accident, it's my business to do all I can to +bring him to justice. The man's a thief." + +"Well, then, _I_ hope he's got away." + +"You mustn't say such things, Louise." + +"Oh, _no_, papa! Only _think_ them." + + + + +XVII. + + +Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look +into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It +was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have +three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have +justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing +to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way. +Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same +errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with +them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in +agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end; +but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith +with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could +have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do, +and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards. +The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck. +There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely +swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to +the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent +and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of +derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the +locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that +had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a +wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were +ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing +to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter +and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of +passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the +operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved +in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but +those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his +death. + +This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to +Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it +left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt +struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself +in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind +he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and +whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real +course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide +his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If +the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that +Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all. +But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must +be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In +any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who +must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were +really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other +fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family; +he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only +thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming +a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive; +but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse +when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her +father was dead. + +She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they +were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell +them so. + +Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he +urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was +not in the accident. + +She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no +difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her +father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by +this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was +doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when +they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight +change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to +his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them +know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very +suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else. + +Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he +thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that +he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered +nothing, she did not ask him. + +It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that +she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she +will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a +slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline +jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes; +but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief. +She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and +she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister. + +Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved, +when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel +it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of +hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help +those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it; +these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their +bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude. + +Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to +linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell. +Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was +astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last. + +"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never! +Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I +wonder you could do it!" + +"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as +well as their loss, and were of one mind about it. + +"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it--" + +"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because _you_ would have +done it for any one! But you have done it for _us_; and as long as I +live I shall remember that! Oh"--She broke off; and dropped her face +with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he +was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after +they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of +encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had +accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be +born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make +women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his +heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity +that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from +every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from +that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He +went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned +from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was +respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was +foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for +them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he +had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it +was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair. + +The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away +from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and +followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the +night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all +that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him +to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick +was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his +name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all +the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he +had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his +misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal +justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his +stand. + + + + +XVIII. + + +For forty-eight hours longer the fact of the defalcation was kept back; +but then, in view of the legal action urged by those who did not accept +the theory of Northwick's death, it had to come out, and it broke all +bounds in overwhelming floods of publicity. + +Day after day the papers were full of the facts, and it was weeks before +the editorial homilies ceased. From time to time, fresh details and +unexpected revelations, wise guesses and shameless fakes, renewed the +interest of the original fact. There were days when there was nothing +about it in the papers, and then days when it broke out in vivid +paragraphs and whole lurid columns again. It was not that the fraud was +singular in its features; these were common to most of the defalcations, +great and small, which were of daily fame in the newspapers. But the +doubt as to the man's fate, and the enduring mystery of his whereabouts, +if he were still alive, were qualities that gave peculiar poignancy to +Northwick's case. Its results in the failure of people not directly +involved, were greater than could have been expected; and the sum of his +peculations mounted under investigation. It was all much worse than had +been imagined, and in most of the editorial sermons upon it the moral +gravity of the offence was measured by the amounts stolen and indirectly +lost by it. There was a great deal of mere astonishment, as usual, that +the crime should have been that of a man whom no one would have dreamed +of suspecting, and there was some sufficiently ridiculous consternation +at the presence of such moral decay in the very heart of the commercial +life of Boston. + +In the _Events_, Pinney made his report of the affair the work of art +which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's +masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with +its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to +page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In +the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a +devotion to the interests of the _Events_ and its readers. With every +hour the painful impressions of his interview with Miss Northwick grew +fainter, and the desire to use it stronger, and he ended by sparing no +color of it. But he compromised with his sympathy for her, by deepening +the shadows in the behavior of the man who could bring all this sorrow +upon those dearest to him. He dwelt upon the unconsciousness of the +family, the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly +on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the +victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the +facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the +capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force +the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase +widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the +library into which "the _Events_' representative was politely ushered," +was furnished with "all the appliances of a cultured taste." The works +of the standard authors in costly bindings graced its shelves; +magnificent paintings and groups of statuary adorned its walls and +alcoves. The dress of the lady who courteously received the _Events_' +reporter, was suitably enriched; her years were discounted, and her +beauty approached to the patrician cast. There was nothing mean about +Pinney, and while he was at it he lavished a manorial grandeur upon the +Northwick place, outside as well as inside. He imparted a romantic +consequence to Hatboro' itself: "A thriving New England town, proud of +its historic past, and rejoicing in its modern prosperity, with a +population of some five or six thousand souls, among whose working men +and women modern ideas of the most advanced character had been realized +in the well-known Peck Social Union, with its co-operative kitchen and +its clientele of intelligent members and patrons." + +People of all occupations became leading residents in virtue of taking +Pinney into their confidence, and "A Prominent Proletarian" achieved the +distinction of a catch-line by freely imparting the impressions of J. M. +Northwick's character among the working-classes. "The Consensus of +Public Feeling," in portraying which Pinney did not fail to exploit the +proprietary word he had seized, formed the subject of some dramatic +paragraphs; and the whole formed a rich and fit setting for the main +facts of Northwick's undoubted fraud and flight, and for the conjectures +which Pinney indulged in concerning his fate. + +Pinney's masterpiece was, in fine, such as he could write only at that +moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the _Events_ could publish +only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was +flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by +accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But +it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more +philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the Middle Ages. + +The _Abstract_ addressed a different class of readers, and aimed at a +different effect in its treatment of public affairs. We look upon +newspapers as having a sort of composite temperament, formed from the +temperaments of all the different men employed on them; but, as a matter +of fact, they each express the disposition and reflect the temperament +of one controlling spirit, which all the other dispositions and +temperaments yield to. This is so much the case that it is hard to +efface the influence of a strong mind from the journal it has shaped, +even when it is no longer actively present in it. A good many years +before the time of the Northwick defalcation, the _Events_ had been in +the management of a journalist, once well-known in Boston, a certain +Bartley Hubbard, who had risen from the ranks of the reporters, and who +had thoroughly reporterized it in the worst sense. After he left it, the +owner tried several devices for elevating and reforming it, but failed, +partly because he was himself a man of no ideals but those of the +counting-room, and largely because the paper could not recover from the +strong slant given it without self-destruction. So the _Events_ +continued what Bartley Hubbard had made it, and what the readers he had +called about it liked it to be: a journal without principles and without +convictions, but with interests only; a map of busy life, indeed, but +glaringly colored, with crude endeavors at picturesqueness, and with no +more truth to life than those railroad maps where the important centres +converge upon the broad black level of the line advertised, and leave +rival roads wriggling faintly about in uninhabited solitudes. In +Hubbard's time the _Abstract_, then the _Chronicle-Abstract_, was in +charge of the editor who had been his first friend on the Boston press, +and whom he finally quarreled with on a point which this friend +considered dishonorable to Hubbard. Ricker had not since left the paper, +and though he was called a crank by some of the more progressive and +reckless of the young men, he clung to his ideal of a conscience in +journalism; he gave the Abstract a fixed character and it could no more +have changed than the _Events_, without self-destruction. The men under +him were not so many as Caesar's soldiers, and that, perhaps, was the +reason why he knew not only their names but their qualities. When +Maxwell came with the fact of the defalcation which the detectives had +entrusted to him for provisional use, and asked to be assigned to the +business of working it up, Kicker consented, but he consented +reluctantly. He thought Maxwell was better for better things; he knew he +was a ravenous reader of philosophy and sociology, and he had been early +in the secret of his being a poet; it had since become an open secret +among his fellow-reporters, for which he suffered both honor and +dishonor. + +"I shouldn't think you'd like to do it, Maxwell," said Ricker, kindly. +"It isn't in your line, is it? Better give it to some of the other +fellows." + +"It's more in my line than you suppose, Mr. Ricker," said the young +fellow. "It's a subject I've looked up a great deal lately. I once +thought"--he looked down bashfully--"of trying to write a play about a +defaulter, and I got together a good many facts about defalcation. +You've no idea how common it is; it's about the commonest fact of our +civilization." + +"Ah! Is that so?" asked Ricker with ironical deference to the bold +generalizer. "Who else is 'onto' this thing?" + +"Pinney, of the _Events_." + +"Well, he's a dangerous rival, in some ways," said Ricker. "When it +comes to slush and a whitewash brush, I don't think you're a match for +him. But perhaps you don't intend to choose the same weapons." Ricker +pulled down the green-lined pasteboard peak that he wore over his +forehead by gaslight, and hitched his chair round to his desk again, and +Maxwell knew that he was authorized to do the work. + +He got no word from the detective, who had given him a hint of the +affair, to go ahead the night after his return from Hatboro', as he had +expected, but he knew that the fact could not be kept back, and he +worked as hard at his report as Pinney and Pinney's wife had worked at +theirs. He waited till the next morning to begin, however, for he was +too fagged after he came home from the Hilarys'; he rose early and got +himself a cup of tea over the gas-burner; before the house was awake he +was well on in his report. By nightfall he had finished it, and then he +carried it to Ricker. The editor had not gone to dinner yet, and he gave +Maxwell's work the critical censure of a hungry man. It was in two +separate parts: one, a careful and lucid statement of all the facts +which had come to Maxwell's knowledge, in his quality of reporter, set +down without sensation, and in that self-respectful decency of tone +which the _Abstract_ affected; the other, an editorial comment upon the +facts. Ricker read the first through without saying anything; when he +saw what the second was, he pushed up his green-lined peak, and said, +"Hello, young man! Who invited you to take the floor?" + +"Nobody. I found I couldn't embody my general knowledge of defalcation +in the report without impertinence, and as I had to get my wisdom off my +mind somehow, I put it in editorial shape. I don't expect you to take +it. Perhaps I can sell it somewhere." + +Ricker seemed to pay no attention to his explanation. He went on reading +the manuscript, and when he ended, he took up the report again, and +compared it with the editorial in length. "If we printed these things as +they stand it would look like a case of the tail wagging the dog." + +Maxwell began again, "Oh, I didn't expect--" + +"Oh, yes, you did," said Ricker. "Of course, you felt that the report +was at least physically inadequate." + +"I made as much as I honestly could of it. I knew you didn't like +padding or faking, and I don't myself." + +Ricker was still holding the two manuscripts up before him. He now +handed them over his shoulder to Maxwell, where he stood beside him. "Do +you think you could weld these two things together?" + +"I don't know." + +"Suppose you try." + +"As editorial, or--" + +"Either. I'll decide after you're done. Do it here." + +He pushed some papers off the long table beside him, and Maxwell sat +down to his task. It was not difficult. The material was really of +kindred character throughout. He had merely to write a few prefatory +sentences, in the editorial attitude, to his report, and then append the +editorial, with certain changes, again. It did not take him long; in +half an hour he handed the result to Ricker. + +"Yes," said Ricker, and he began to read it anew, with his blue pencil +in his hand. + +Maxwell had come with nerves steeled to bear the rejection of his +article entire, but he was not prepared to suffer the erasure of all his +pet phrases and favorite sentences, sometimes running to entire +paragraphs. + +When Ricker handed it back to him at last with "What do you think of it +now?" Maxwell had the boldness to answer, "Well, Mr. Ricker, if I _must_ +say, I think you've taken all the bones and blood out of it." + +Ricker laughed. "Oh, no! Merely the fangs and poison-sacks. Look here, +young man! Did you believe all those cynical things when you were saying +them?" + +"I don't know--" + +"_I_ know. I know you _didn't_. Every one of them rang false. They were +there for literary effect, and for the pleasure of the groundlings. But +by and by, if you keep on saying those things, you'll get to thinking +them, and what a man thinks a man is. There are things there that you +ought to be ashamed of, if you really thought them, but I know you +didn't, so I made free to strike them all out." Maxwell looked foolish; +he wished to assert himself, but he did not know how. Ricker went on: +"Those charming little sarcasms and innuendoes of yours would have +killed your article for really intelligent readers. They would have +suspected a young fellow having his fling, or an old fool speaking out +of the emptiness of his heart. As it is, we have got something unique, +and I don't mind telling you I'm very glad to have it. I've never made +any secret of my belief that you have talent." + +"You've been very good," said Maxwell, a little rueful still. The +surgeon's knife hurts though it cures. + +When Maxwell went home, he met his mother. "Why, mother," said the +young fellow, "old Ricker is going to print my report as editorial; and +we're not going to have any report." + +"I told you it was good!" + +Maxwell felt it was due to himself to keep some grudge, and he said, +"Yes; but he's taken all the life out of it with his confounded blue +pencil. It's perfectly dead." + +It did not seem so when he saw it in proof at the office later, and it +did not seem so when he got it in the paper. He had not slept well; he +was excited by several things; by the use Ricker had made of his work, +and by the hopes of advancement which this use quickened in him. He was +not ashamed of it; he was very proud of it; and he wondered at its +symmetry and force, as he read and read it again. + +He had taken very high philosophical ground in his view of the matter, +and had accused the structure of society. There must be something +rotten, he said, at the core of our civilization, when every morning +brought the story of a defalcation, great or small, in some part of our +country: not the peculations of such poor clerks and messengers as their +employers could be insured against, but of officials, public and +corporate, for whom we had no guaranty but the average morality of our +commercial life. How low this was might be inferred from the fact that +while such a defalcation as that of J. M. Northwick created dismay in +business and social circles, it could not fairly be said to create +surprise. It was, most unhappily, a thing to be expected, in proof of +which no stronger evidence need be alleged than that patent to the +_Abstract_ reporter in the community where the defaulter had his home, +and where, in spite of his reputation for the strictest probity, it was +universally believed that he had run away with other people's money +merely because he had been absent twenty-four hours without accounting +for his whereabouts. + +At this point Maxwell wove in the material he had gathered on his visit +to Hatboro', and without using names or persons contrived to give a +vivid impression of the situation and the local feeling. He aimed at the +historical attitude, and with some imitation of Taino's method and +manner, he achieved it. His whole account of the defalcation had a +closeness of texture which involved every significant detail, from the +first chance suspicion of the defaulter's honesty, to the final opinions +and conjectures of his fate. At the same time the right relation and +proportion of the main facts were kept, and the statement was throughout +so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote +in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical +comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had +been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and +quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young +fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it +when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt +afterwards he had not been just to. Of course it owed much to the mere +accident of Maxwell's accumulation of material about defalcations for +his play; but he had known men break down under the mass of their +material, and it surprised and delighted him to see how easily and +strongly Maxwell handled his. That sick little youngster carried it all +off with an air of robust maturity that amused as well as surprised +Ricker. He saw where the fellow had helped himself out, consciously or +unconsciously, with the style and method of his favorite authors; and he +admired the philosophic poise he had studied from them; but no one +except Maxwell himself was in the secret of the forbearance, the humane +temperance with which Northwick was treated. This was a color from the +play which had gone to pieces in his hands; he simply adapted the +conception of a typical defaulter, as he had evolved it from a hundred +instances, to the case of the defaulter in hand, and it fitted +perfectly. He had meant his imaginary defaulter to appeal rather to the +compassion than the justice of the theatre, and he presented to the +reader the almost fatal aspect of the offence. He dwelt upon the fact +that the case, so far from being isolated or exceptional, was without +peculiarities, was quite normal. He drew upon his accumulated facts for +the proof of this, and with a rapid array of defaulting treasurers, +cashiers, superintendents, and presidents, he imparted a sense of the +uniformity in their malfeasance which is so evident to the student. They +were all comfortably placed and in the way to prosperity if not fortune; +they were all tempted by the possession of means to immediate wealth; +they all yielded so far as to speculate with the money that did not +belong to them; they were all easily able to replace the first loans +they made themselves; they all borrowed again and then could not replace +the loans; they were all found out, and all were given a certain time to +make up their shortage. After that a certain diversity appeared: some +shot themselves, and some hanged themselves, others decided to stand +their trial; the vastly greater number ran away to Canada. + +In this presentation of the subject, Maxwell had hardly to do more than +to copy the words of a certain character in his play: one of those +cynical personages, well-known to the drama, whose function is to +observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon +the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker +employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of +almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black +pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was +adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the +leg-burlesque as immoral. In a soliloquy intended to draw tears from the +listener, the hero of Maxwell's play, when he parted from his young wife +and children, before taking poison, made some apposite reflections on +his case, in which he regarded himself as the victim of conditions, and +in prophetic perspective beheld an interminable line of defaulters to +come, who should encounter the same temptations and commit the same +crimes under the same circumstances. Maxwell simply recast this +soliloquy in editorial terms; and maintained that not only was there +nothing exceptional in Northwick's case, but that it might be expected +to repeat itself indefinitely. On one hand, you had men educated to +business methods which permitted this form of dishonesty and condemned +that; their moral fibre was strained, if not weakened, by the struggle +for money going on all around us; on the other hand, you had +opportunity, the fascination of chance, the uncertainty of punishment. +The causes would continue the same, and the effects would continue the +same. He declared that no good citizen could wish a defaulter to escape +the penalty of his offence against society; but it behooved society to +consider how far it was itself responsible, which it might well do +without ignoring the responsibility of the criminal. He ended with a +paragraph in which he forecast a future without such causes and without +such effects; but Ricker would not let this pass, even in the +semi-ironical temper Maxwell had given it. He said it was rank +socialism, and he cut it out in the proof, where he gave the closing +sentences of the article an interrogative instead of an affirmative +shape. + + + + +XIX. + + +The Hilarys always straggled down to breakfast as they chose. When Matt +was at home, his mother and he were usually first; then his father came, +and Louise last. They took the _Events_, as many other people did, +because with all its faults it was a thorough newspaper; and they +maintained their self-respect by taking the _Abstract_. The morning that +the defalcation came out, Matt sent and got all the other papers, which +he had glanced through and talked over with his mother before his father +joined them at nine o'clock. + +Several of them had illustrations: likenesses of Northwick, and views of +his house in Boston, and his house in Hatboro'; views of the company's +Mills at Ponkwasset; views of the railroad wreck at Wellwater; but it +was Pinney's masterpiece which really made Hilary sick. All the papers +were atrocious, but that was loathsome. Yet there was really nothing +more to blame in the attitude of the papers than in that of the +directors, who gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of +publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were +fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against +his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had +suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised +the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, +even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these +blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called +him. He got through the various accounts in the various papers, by +broken efforts, taking them as if in successive shocks from these +terrible particulars, which seemed to shower themselves upon him when he +came in range of them, till he felt bruised and beaten all over. + +"Well, at least, it's out, my dear," said his wife, who noted the final +effect of his sufferings across the table, and saw him pause bewildered +from the last paper he had dropped. "There's that comfort." + +"Is that a comfort?" he asked, huskily. + +"Why, yes, I think it is. The suspense is over, and now you can begin to +pick yourself up." + +"I suppose there's something in that." He kept looking at Matt, or +rather, at the copy of the _Abstract_ which Matt was hiding behind, and +he said, "What have you got there, Matt?" + +"Perhaps I'd better read it out," said Matt. "It seems to me most +uncommonly good. I wonder who could have done it!" + +"Suppose you do your wondering afterwards," said his father impatiently; +and Matt began to read. The positions of the article were not such as +Hilary could have taken, probably, if he had been in a different mood; +its implications were, some of them, such as he must have decidedly +refused; but the temper of the whole was so humane, so forbearing, so +enlightened, that Hilary was in a glow of personal gratitude to the +writer, for what he called his common decency, by the time the reading +was over. "That is a very extraordinary article," he said, and he joined +Matt in wondering who could have done it, with the usual effect in such +cases. + +"I wish," said Mrs. Hilary, "that every other newspaper could be kept +from those poor things." She meant Northwick's daughters, and she added, +"If they must know the facts, they couldn't be more mercifully told +them." + +"Why, that was what I was thinking, mother," said Matt. "But they can't +be kept to this version, unhappily. The misery will have to come on them +shapelessly, as all our miseries do. I don't know that the other papers +are so bad--" + +"Not bad!" cried his father. + +"No. They're not unkind to them, except as they are just to him. They +probably represent fairly enough the average thinking and feeling about +the matter; the thing they'll have to meet all their lives and get used +to. But I wish I knew who did this _Abstract_ article; I should like to +thank him." + +"The question is, now," said Mrs. Hilary, "What can we do for them +there? Are you sure you made it clear to them, Matt, that we were +willing to have them come to us, no matter _what_ happened?" + +"Louise and I both tried to do that," said her son, "when we were there +together; and when I reported to them after Wellwater, I told them again +and again what our wish was." + +"Well," said Mrs. Hilary, "I am glad we have done everything we could. +At first I doubted the wisdom of your taking Louise to see them; but now +I'm satisfied that it was right. And I'm satisfied that your father did +right in getting that wretched creature the chance he abused." + +"Oh, yes," said Matt. "That was right. And I'm thoroughly glad he's out +of it. If he's still alive, I'm glad he's out of it." + +Hilary had kept silent, miserably involved in his various remorses and +misgivings, but now he broke out. "And I think you're talking abominable +nonsense, Matt. I didn't get Northwick given that chance to enable him +to escape the consequences of his rascality. Why shouldn't he be +punished for it?" + +"Because it wouldn't do the least good, to him or to any one else. It +wouldn't reform him, it wouldn't reform anything. Northwick isn't the +disease; he's merely the symptom. You can suppress him; but that won't +cure the disease. It's the whole social body that's sick, as this +article in the _Abstract_ implies." + +"I don't see any such implication in it," his father angrily retorted. +"Your theory would form an excuse for the scoundrelism of every +scoundrel unhung. Where is the cure of the social body to begin if it +doesn't begin at home, with every man in it? I tell you, it would be a +very good thing for Northwick, and every rogue like him, if he could be +made serve his term in State's prison." + +The controversy raged a long time without departing from these lines of +argument on either side. Mrs. Hilary listened with the impatience women +feel at every absence from the personal ground, the only ground of +reality. When Matt had got so far from it as to be saying to his father, +"Then I understand you to maintain that if A is properly punished for +his sins, B will practice virtue in the same circumstances and under the +same temptations that were too much for A," his mother tried to break in +upon them. She did not know much about the metaphysical rights and +wrongs of the question; she only felt that Matt was getting his father, +who loved him so proudly and indulgently, into a corner, and she saw +that this was unseemly. Besides, when anything wrong happens, a woman +always wants some one punished; some woman, first, or then some other +woman's men kindred. Every woman is a conservative in this, and Mrs. +Hilary made up her mind to stop the talk between her son and husband, +because she felt Matt to be doubly wrong. + +But when she spoke, her husband roared at her, "Don't interrupt, Sarah!" +and then he roared at Matt, "I tell you that the individual is not +concerned in the matter! I tell you that it is the interest, the +necessity of the community to punish A for his sins without regard to B, +and for my part, I shall leave no stone unturned till we have found +Northwick, dead or alive; and if he is alive, I shall spare no effort to +have him brought to trial, conviction and punishment." He shouted these +words out, and thumped the breakfast table so that the spoons clattered +in the cups, and Mrs. Hilary could hardly hear what Patrick was saying +just inside the door. + +"To see Mr. Hilary? A lady? Did she send her card?" + +"She wouldn't give her name, ma'am; she said she didn't wish to, ma'am. +She wished to see Mr. Hilary just a moment in the reception-room." + +Hilary was leaning forward to give the table another bang with his fist, +but his wife succeeded in stopping him, with a repetition of Patrick's +message. + +"I won't see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're +in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are +claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your +sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a +brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other +letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's +little game has landed him in jail." + +"Oh, I admit that the A's had better suffer for their sins; but I doubt +if the punishment which a man gets against his will is the right kind of +suffering. If this man had come forward voluntarily, and offered to bear +the penalty he had risked by his misdeed, it would have been a good +thing for himself and for everybody else; it would have been a real +warning. But he ran away." + +"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry +come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of +your company." + +"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, +as I've told you." + +"What _I_ did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I +gave him a chance to make himself an honest man--" + +"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you _must_ go and get rid of that woman, +at least; or let _me_." + +Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look +about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out +of the room. + +His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a +dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed," +before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For +the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the +apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with +the demand: + +"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?" + +"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with +her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could +say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other. + +"Is it true?" she asked. + +He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do +it. "Why, we hope--we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about +his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt--" + +"It isn't _that_. It's worse than that. It's that other thing--that the +papers say--that he was a defaulter--dishonest. Is _that_ true?" + +"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he +felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would +have been possible. "Those newspapers--confound them!--you know how they +get things all--You needn't mind what the papers say." + +"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when +he's--What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and +so I came to you--as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would +tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how +_good_ he is! I--You know that he never wronged any one--that he +_couldn't_!" + +"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to +me--quite right. How--how is your sister? You must stay, now--Louise +isn't down, yet--and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary +at the table. You must join us. She can assure you--Matt is quite +confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to +the--He--" + +Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, +and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she +dropped into a chair, and he had to stay. + +"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest +foundation for what the papers say this morning?" + +"How, foundation? My dear child--" + +"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?" + +"Well--well, there are always questions arising." + +"Is there any question of my father's accounts--his honesty?" + +"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much--want of +confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to +time." + +"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one +suspect him?" + +Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring +to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us--some of +the directors--have had doubts--" + +"Have _you_?" + +"My dear girl--my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly +say, that when this examination--when the subject came up for discussion +at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father +should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed +that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the +girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his +part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing +for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, +and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm +is meant, and none is done--unless--unless the venture turns out +unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was +getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; +but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and +that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole +affair was very well put in the _Abstract_. Have you seen it? You must +see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. +Hilary--we have the paper--" + +Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has +been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?" + +"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point--" + +"Do _you_?" + +"I can't say--I don't think he meant----He expected to restore it, of +course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he +thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the +company's funds in his private enterprises." + +"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the +room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise +coming down the stairs. + +"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms +around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a +woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and +sympathizes utterly with her. + +Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise." + +"No, no! You shan't go. I want you--you must stay with us, now. I know +Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report." + +"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another +report--don't you know it?--in the paper this morning." Louise tried to +look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And +your father has been saying my father is a thief." + +"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out. + +It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave +a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he +could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone. + + + + +XX. + + +The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to +Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any +sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and +accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, +that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to +work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to +establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could +shake. + +Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused +him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. +But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in +business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would +not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed +other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his +own, and could not; that was all. + +With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they +were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they +encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. +But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, +when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly +establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this +servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. +She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she +willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her +husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and +tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not +freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the +Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had +always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind. + +Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in +the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of +their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the +house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the +consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of +mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages +and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that +the next time she hoped to see him. + +One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her +winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, +upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she +failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with +urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second +attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of +Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity +which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs. +Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished +himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the +directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband +forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief +in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused +him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the +railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came +upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced +before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick +had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in +seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was +now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', +those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty +leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to +his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and +exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But +Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. +He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing +to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive. + +"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to +the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance +conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, +in Boston, who has shielded and--and protected him from the start, +and--and right along. I don't know _why_; but if I was one of the +Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I _should_. I should make a point of +inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had +plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on." + +The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one +cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, +I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate +belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The +listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother +Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have +done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of +the soldier's monument." + +"I _never_ wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr. +Gerrish retorted angrily. + +Putney's spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the +contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he +was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by +which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects +and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the +worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went +on, now: "Didn't you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl +they've got there in circus-clothes." They all laughed; Putney had a +different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier's monument +every time he spoke of it. "And it would suggest what those poor fellows +really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a +whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don't have to +be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a +necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the +courts if there were no rogues? We must _have_ Northwicks. It's a pity +that the Northwicks should have families; but I don't blame the +Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure +to end in. I'm glad the roof can't be taken from over those women's +heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding +the property to them." + +"It's downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!" Gerrish +shouted. + +"Oh, no, it isn't, Billy. It's law. You must respect the law and the +rights of property. You'll be wanting the strikers to burn down the +shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You're getting awfully +incendiary, Billy." + +Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the +group, and there were many people in Hatboro', including most of the +women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with +Northwick's case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those +girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their +father's crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest +people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where +the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the +houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not +even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro' shops who +said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much +about them, and the noise of Northwick's misdeeds died first amid the +din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the +respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded +envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, +and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and +that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those +daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak +to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset +Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and +perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to +do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they +learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the +Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not +long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in +the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see +the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy +of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of +judging or of meting with the fullest measure. + +In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands +were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but +Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of +sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men +of Hatboro' a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded +as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, +but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be +expected of a man in Northwick's position; it happened every day +somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did +not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were +fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, +reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them +regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot +of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to +gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, +and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the +matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely +believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the +same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were +mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the +railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing +his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue's Rest, as Putney called the +Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick's +survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When +Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something +like, "Well, Joel, how's cremation, this morning?" + +"Just booming, Squire. That stock's coming up, right along. Bound to be +worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin', yet." This, or +something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he +asked, "Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They +say--paper does--that the reason the president hung off from making a +complaint was that he didn't rightly see how he could have the ashes +indicted. _He_ believes in it, any way." + +"Well," said Putney, "the fathers of New England all died in the blessed +hope of infant damnation. But that didn't prove it." + +"That's something so, Squire. Guess you got me there," said Gates. + +"I can understand old Hilary's not wanting to push the thing, under the +circumstances, and I don't blame him. But the law must have its course. +Hilary's got his duty to do. _I_ don't want to do it for him." + + + + +XXI. + + +Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he +was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the +persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was +really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as +any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the +tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But +still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was +all talked over in Hilary's family, where he was pitied and forgiven in +that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks +we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, +and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had +tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed +that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when +he did not talk of it, no one must mention it. + +Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly +because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. +He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business +repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the +defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the +wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed +that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a +public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that +Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice +but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could +not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick's escape. + +He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would +work Northwick's daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette +answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went +away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally +appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever +warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that +they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were +generally known it might be criticised; but in the last resort, with a +thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go +to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience. + +It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate +her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She +treated her own father's course as something above suspicion, as +something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have +returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to +her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day +his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home +where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it +from them. + +Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might +have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father's +regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and +she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the +sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression +in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The +sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their +forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like +compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her +will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked +and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve +themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited +wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her +mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; +she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom +the girl saw. + +Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did +not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of +truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the +sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started +to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go +to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take +Louise back to the station. + +It was a clear day of middle March; the sun rode high in a blue sky, and +some jays bragged and jeered in the spruces. The frost was not yet out +of the ground, but the shaded road was dry underfoot. + +They talked at arm's length of the weather; and then Suzette said +abruptly, "Of course, Louise, your father will have to do what they want +him to, against--papa. I understand that." + +"Oh, Sue--" + +"Don't! I should wish him to know that I wasn't stupid about it." + +"I'm sure," Louise adventured, "he would do anything to help you!" + +Suzette put by the feeble expression of mere good feeling. "We don't +believe papa has done anything wrong, or anything he wouldn't have made +right if he had lived. We shall not let them take his property from us +if we can help it." + +"Of course not! I'm sure papa wouldn't wish you to." + +"It would be confessing that they were right, and we will _never_ do +that. But I don't blame your father, and I want him to know it." + +Louise stopped short and kissed Suzette. In her affectionate optimism it +seemed to her for the moment that all the trouble was over now. She had +never realized anything hopelessly wrong in the affair; it was like a +misunderstanding that could be explained away, if the different people +would listen to reason. + +Sue released herself, and said, looking away from her friend: "It has +been hard. He is dead; but we haven't even been allowed to see him laid +in the grave." + +"Oh, perhaps," Louise sobbed out, "he _isn't_ dead! So many people think +he isn't--" + +Suzette drew away from her in stern offence. "Do you think that if he +were alive he would leave us without a word--a sign?" + +"No, no! He couldn't be so cruel! I didn't mean that! He is dead, and I +shall always say it." + +They walked on without speaking, but at the gate Suzette offered to +return Louise's embrace. The tears stood in her eyes, as she said, "I +would like to send my love to your mother--if she would care for it." + +"Care for it!" + +"And tell your brother I can never forget what he did for us." + +"He can never forget that you let him do it," said Louise, with eager +gratitude. "He would have liked to come with me, if he hadn't thought it +might seem intrusive." + +"_Intrusive!_ Your _brother_!" Sue spoke the words as if Matt were of +some superior order of beings. + +The intensity of feeling she put into her voice brought another gush of +tears into Louise's eyes. "Matt _is_ good. And I will tell him what you +say. He will like to hear it." They looked down the road, but they could +not see Simpson coming yet. "Don't wait, Sue," she pleaded. "Do go back! +You will be all worn out." + +"No, I will stay till your carriage comes," said Suzette; and they +remained a moment silent together. + +Then Louise said, "Matt has got a new fad: a young man that writes on +the newspapers--" + +"The newspapers!" Suzette repeated with an intimation of abhorrence. + +"Oh, but he isn't like the others," Louise hastened to explain. "Very +handsome, and interesting, and pale, and sick. He is going to be a poet, +but he's had to be a reporter. He's awfully clever; but Matt says he's +awfully poor, and he has had such a hard time. Now they think he won't +have to interview people any more--he came to interview papa, the first +time; and poor papa was very blunt with him; and then so sorry. He's got +some other kind of newspaper place; I don't know what. Matt liked what +he wrote about--about, your--troubles, Sue." + +"Where was it?" asked Sue. "They were all wickedly false and cruel." + +"His wasn't cruel. It was in the _Abstract_." + +"Yes, I remember. But he said papa had taken the money," Sue answered +unrelentingly. + +"Did he? I thought he only said _if_ he did. I don't believe he said +more. Matt wouldn't have liked it so much if he had. He's in such bad +health. But he's awfully clever." + +The hack came in sight over the rise of ground, with Simpson driving +furiously, as he always did when he saw people. Louise threw her arms +round her friend again. "Let me go back and stay with you, Sue! Or, come +home with me, you and Miss Northwick. We shall all be so glad to have +you, and I hate so to leave you here alone. It seems so dreadful!" + +"Yes. But it's easier to bear it here than anywhere else. Some day all +the falsehood will be cleared up, and then we shall be glad that we bore +it where he left us. We have decided what we shall do, Adeline and I. We +shall try to let the house furnished for the summer, and live in the +lodge here." + +Louise looked round at the cottage by the avenue gate, and said it would +be beautiful. + +"We've never used it for any one, yet," Suzette continued, "and we can +move back into the house in the winter." + +This again seemed to Louise an admirable notion, and she parted from her +friend in more comfort than she could have imagined when they met. She +carried her feeling of elation home with her, and was able to report Sue +in a state of almost smiling prosperity, and of perfect resignation, if +not acquiescence, in whatever the company should make Hilary do. She +figured her father, in his reluctance, as a sort of ally of the +Northwicks, and she was disappointed that he seemed to derive so little +pleasure from Sue's approval. But he generally approved of all that she +could remember to have said for him to the Northwicks, though he did not +show himself so appreciative of the situation as Matt. She told her +brother what Sue had said when she heard of his unwillingness to intrude +upon her, and she added that now he must certainly go to see her. + + + + +XXII. + + +A day or two later, when Matt Hilary went to Hatboro', he found Wade in +his study at the church, and he lost no time in asking him, "Wade, what +do you know of the Miss Northwicks? Have you seen them lately?" + +Wade told him how little he had seen Miss Northwick, and how he had not +seen Suzette at all. Then Matt said, "I don't know why I asked you, +because I knew all this from Louise; she was up here the other day, and +they told her. What I am really trying to get at is, whether you know +anything more about how that affair with Jack Wilmington stands. Do you +know whether he has tried to see her since the trouble about her father +came out?" + +Adeline Northwick had dropped from the question, as usual, and it really +related so wholly to Suzette in the thoughts of both the young men, that +neither of them found it necessary to limit it explicitly. + +"I feel quite sure he hasn't," said Wade, "though I can't answer +positively." + +"Then that settles it!" Matt walked away to one of Wade's gothic +windows, and looked out. When he turned and came back to his friend, he +said, "If he had ever been in earnest about her, I think he would have +tried to see her at such a time, don't you?" + +"I can't imagine his not doing it. I never thought him a cad." + +"No, nor I." + +"He would have done it unless--unless that woman has some hold that +gives her command of him. He's shown great weakness, to say the least. +But I don't believe there's anything worse. What do the village people +believe?" + +"All sorts of lurid things, some of them; others believe that the affair +is neither more nor less than it appears to be. It's a thing that could +be just what it is in no other country in the world. It's the phase that +our civilization has contributed to the physiognomy of scandal, just as +the exile of the defaulter is the phase we have contributed to the +physiognomy of crime. Public opinion here isn't severe upon Mrs. +Wilmington or Mr. Northwick." + +"I'm not prepared to quarrel with it on that account," said Matt, with +the philosophical serenity which might easily be mistaken for irony in +him. "The book we get our religion from teaches leniency in the judgment +of others." + +"It doesn't teach cynical indifference," Wade suggested. + +"Perhaps that isn't what people feel," said Matt. + +"I don't know. Sometimes I dread to think how deeply our demoralization +goes in certain directions." + +Matt did not follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and +Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal +ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further +considered in regard to her?" + +"In regard to Miss Sue Northwick? I don't know whether I quite +understand what you mean." + +"I mean, is it anybody's duty--yours or mine--to go to the man and find +him out; what he really thinks, what he really feels? I don't mean, make +an appeal to him. That would be unworthy of her. But perhaps he's +holding back from a mistaken feeling of delicacy, of remorse; when if he +could be made to see that it was his right, his privilege, to be +everything to her now that a man could be to a woman, and infinitely +more than any man could hope to be to a happy or fortunate woman--What +do you think? He could be reparation, protection, safety, everything!" + +Wade shook his head. "It would be useless. Wilmington knows very well +that such a girl would never let him be anything to her now when he had +slighted her fancy for him before. Even if he were ever in love with +her, which I doubt, he couldn't do it." + +"No, I suppose not," said Matt. After a little pause, he added, "Then I +must go myself." + +"Go, yourself? What do you mean?" Wade asked. + +"Some one must try to make them understand just how they are situated. I +don't think Louise did; I don't think she knew herself, how the legal +proceedings would affect them; and I think I'd better go and make it +perfectly clear." + +"I can imagine it won't be pleasant," said Wade. + +"No," said Matt, "I don't expect that. But I inferred, from what she +said to Louise, that she would be willing to see me, and I think I had +better go." + +He put his conviction interrogatively, and Wade said heartily, "Why, of +course. It's the only thing," and Matt went away with a face which was +cheerful with good-will, if not the hope of pleasure. + +He met Suzette in the avenue, dressed for walking, and coming forward +with the magnificent, haughty movement she had. As she caught sight of +him, she started, and then almost ran toward him. "Oh! _You_!" she said, +and she shrank back a little, and then put her hand impetuously out to +him. + +He took it in his two, and bubbled out, "Are you walking somewhere? Are +you well? Is your sister at home? Don't let me keep you! May I walk with +you?" + +Her smile clouded. "I'm only walking here in the avenue. How is Louise? +Did she get home safely? It was good of her to come here. It isn't the +place for a gay visit." + +"Oh, Miss Northwick! It was good of you to see her. And we were very +happy--relieved--to find that you didn't feel aggrieved with any of _us_ +for what must happen. And I hope you don't feel that I've taken an +advantage of your kindness in coming?" + +"Oh, no!" + +"I've just been to see Wade." Matt reddened consciously. "But it doesn't +seem quite fair to have met you where you had no choice but to receive +me!" + +"I walk here every morning," she returned, evasively. "I have nowhere +else. I never go out of the avenue. Adeline goes to the village, +sometimes. But I can't meet people." + +"I know," said Matt, with caressing sympathy; and his head swam in the +sudden desire to take her in his arms, and shelter her from that shame +and sorrow preying upon her. Her eyes had a trouble in them that made +him ache with pity; he recognized, as he had not before, that they were +the translation in feminine terms, of her father's eyes. "Poor Wade," he +went on, without well knowing what he was saying, "told me that he--he +was very sorry he had not been able to see you--to do anything--" + +"What would have been the use? No one can do anything. We must bear our +burden; but we needn't add to it by seeing people who believe that--that +my father did wrong." + +Matt's breath almost left him. He perceived that the condition on which +she was bearing her sorrow was the refusal of her shame. Perhaps it +could not have been possible for one of her nature to accept it, and it +required no effort in her to frame the theory of her father's innocence; +perhaps no other hypothesis was possible to her, and evidence had +nothing to do with the truth as she felt it. + +"The greatest comfort we have is that none of _you_ believe it; and your +father knew my father better than any one else. I was afraid I didn't +make Louise understand how much I felt that, and how much Adeline did. +It was hard to tell her, without seeming to thank you for something that +was no more than my father's due. But we do feel it, both of us; and I +would like your father to know it. I don't blame him for what he is +going to do. It's necessary to establish my father's innocence to have +the trial. I was very unjust to your father that first day, when I +thought he believed those things against papa. We appreciate his +kindness in every way, but we shall not get any lawyer to defend us." + +Matt was helplessly silent before this wild confusion of perfect trust +and hopeless error. He would not have known where to begin to set her +right; he did not see how he could speak a word without wounding her +through her love, her pride. + +She hurried on, walking swiftly, as if to keep up with the rush of her +freed emotions. "We are not afraid but that it will come out so that our +father's name, who was always so perfectly upright, and so good to every +one, will be cleared, and those who have accused him so basely will be +punished as they deserve." + +She had so wholly misconceived the situation and the character of the +impending proceedings that it would not have been possible to explain it +all to her; but he could not leave her in her error, and he made at last +an effort to enlighten her. + +"I think my father was right in advising you to see a lawyer. It won't +be a question of the charges against your father's integrity, but of his +solvency. The proceedings will be against his estate; and you mustn't +allow yourselves to be taken at a disadvantage." + +She stopped. "What do we care for the estate, if his good name isn't +cleared up?" + +"I'm afraid--I'm afraid," Matt entreated, "that you don't exactly +understand." + +"If my father never meant to keep the money, then the trial will show," +the girl returned. + +"But a lawyer--indeed you ought to see a lawyer!--could explain how such +a trial would leave that question where it was. It wouldn't be the case +against your father, but against _you_." + +"Against us? What do they say we have done?" + +Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if +it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take +everything here that belonged to your father--everything on the place, +to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I +can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your +rights in the case." + +"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything +to us!" + +"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his +debts." + +"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have +paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed +of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one." + +Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was +essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure +effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much +was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to +wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred +from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have +been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face +seemed to stay her. + +"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?" + +"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in +every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as +her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the +last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever +wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it." + +"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I _know_ +what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any reassurance. I'm sorry +to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank +you very much for the kind advice you have given me." + +"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to +you--all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see +that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you +couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has +said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, +or--" + +"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we +understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I +think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, +and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained +staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She +suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say +that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you +have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these +words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then +whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again. + + + + +XXIII. + + +That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner +they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving +out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating +their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for +them." + +"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, passively. +Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her +why; each knew why the other cried. + +"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, +that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell +some of the cattle." + +"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over." + +Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which +they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to +speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when +a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, +and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, +they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but +they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning +such matters, and they did not know his name. + +Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept +from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister +went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and +let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had +left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given +her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said +that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely +enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces +were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her +death. + +Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely +village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her +heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her +mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of +his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed +that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time +she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came +to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, +and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her +against the right in her interest than a friendlier person. + +Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he +was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her. +"Can I see--see--see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some--some +law business?" + +"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He +led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and +placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for +her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch. + +"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave +him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know +what it means." + +"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit +against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot +sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares +him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his +debts." + +"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they +will suffer," cried Adeline. + +"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of +the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors." + +"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our +house--mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me +long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill. + +Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endorsement before +he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears +till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the +buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's +creditors can't touch them." + +The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair +and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, +gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?" + +"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers +together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an +anxiety she could not keep out of her voice. + +"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you +showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried +to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for +her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!" + +"Yes. I'm not at all afraid--" + +"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and +plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it. + +Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it +seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without +help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, +early spring night. + +After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice +I _should_ like to give you." + +"Well?" she quavered, meekly. + +"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this +case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply +involved--" + +"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline +hastened to put in, nervously. + +"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could +safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his +creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything +but the real estate." + +"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We +intended just to let it go." + +"That's the best way," Putney said. + +"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place +from us." + +"That was right, and I assure you they can't touch either. If you get +anxious, come to me again--as often as you like." + +"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let +him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the +house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, +with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if +she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested. + +"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better +act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way." + +"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think +just as you do, Mr. Putney." + +"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor. + +When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, +Ralph?" + +"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline +Northwick." + +"Ralph, what _do_ you mean?" + +He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange +phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her +coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!" + +"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, +you know, Ellen." + +"Ralph!" + +"Oh. I may have spent my whole natural life in denouncing him as +demoralization incarnate, and a curse to the community, but I always +_liked_ him, Ellen. Yes, I loved J. Milton, and I was merely waiting for +him to prove himself a first-class scoundrel, to find out just how +_much_ I loved him. I've no doubt but if we could have him among us +again, in the attractive garb of the State's-prison inmates, I should be +hand and glove with brother Northwick." + + + + +XXIV. + + +Adeline's reasons for going to Putney in their trouble had to avail with +Suzette against the prejudice they had always felt towards him. In the +tangible and immediate pressure that now came upon them they were glad +to be guided by his counsel; they both believed it was dictated by a +knowledge of law and a respect for justice, and by no regard for them. +They had a comfort in it for this reason, and they freely relied upon +it, as in some sort the advice of an honest and faithful enemy. They +remembered that the last evening he was with them, their father had +spoken leniently of Putney's infirmity, and admiringly of his wasted +ability. Now each step they took was at his suggestion. They left the +great house before the creditors were put in possession of the personal +property, and went to live in the porter's lodge at the gate of the +avenue, which they furnished with the few things they could claim for +their own out of their former belongings, and from the ready money +Suzette had remaining in her name at the bank. They abandoned everything +of value in the house they had left, even to their richer dresses and +their jewels: they preferred to do this, and Putney approved; he saw +that it saved them more than it cost them in their helpless pride. + +The Newtons continued in their quarters unmolested; the furniture was +theirs and the building belonged to the Northwick girls, as the Newtons +called them. Mrs. Newton went every day to help them to get going in +their new place, and Elbridge and she lived there for a few weeks with +them, till they said they should not be afraid to stay alone. He stood +guard over their rights, as far as he could ascertain them in the +spoliation that had to come. He locked the avenue gate against the +approach of those who came to the assignee's sale, and made them enter +and take away their purchases by the farm road; and in all lawful ways +he rendered himself obstructive and inconvenient. + +His deference to the law was paid entirely through Putney, whose +smartness inspired Elbridge with a respect he felt for no other virtue +in man. Putney arranged with him to take the Northwick place and manage +it on shares for the Northwick girls; he got for him two of the old +horses which Elbridge wanted for his work, and one of the cheaper cows. +The rest of the stock was sold to gentleman farmers round about, who had +fancies for costly cattle: the horses, good, bad and indifferent, were +sent to a sale-stable in Boston. The greenhouses were stripped of all +that was valuable in them, and nothing was left upon the place, of its +former equipment, except the few farm implements, a cart or two, and an +ancient carryall that Putney bid off for Newton's use. + +Then, when all was finished, he advertised the house to let for a term +of years, and failing a permanent tenant before the season opened, he +rented it to an adventurous landlady, who proposed to fill it with +summer boarders, and who engaged to pay a rental for it monthly, in +advance, that would enable the Northwick girls to live on, in the +porter's lodge, without fear of want. For the future, Putney imagined a +scheme for selling off some of the land next the villas of South +Hatboro', in lots to suit purchasers. That summer sojourn had languished +several years in uncertainty of its own fortunes; but now, by a caprice +of the fashion which is sending people more and more to the country for +the spring and fall months, it was looking up decidedly. Property had so +rapidly appreciated there, that Putney thought of asking so much a foot +for the Northwick lands, instead of offering it by the acre. + +In proposing to become a land operator, in behalf of his clients, he had +to reconcile his practice with theories he had held concerning unearned +land-values; and he justified himself to his crony, Dr. Morrell, on the +ground that these might be justly taken from such rich and idle people +as wanted to spend the spring and fall at South Hatboro'. The more land +at a high price you could get into the hands of the class South Hatboro' +was now attracting, and make them pay the bulk of the town tax, the +better for the land that working men wanted to get a living on. In +helping the Northwick girls to keep all they could out of the clutches +of their father's creditors, he held that he was only defending their +rights; and any fight against a corporation was a kind of holy war. He +professed to be getting on very comfortably with his conscience, and he +promised that he would not let it worry other people. To Mr. Gerrish he +made excuses for taking charge of the affairs of two friendless women, +when he ought to have joined Gerrish in punishing them for their +father's sins, as any respectable man would. He asked Gerrish to +consider the sort of fellow he had always been, drinking up his own +substance, while Gerrish was thriftily devouring other people's houses, +and begged him to make allowance for him. + +The anomalous relation he held to the Northwicks afforded him so much +excitement and enjoyment, that he passed his devil's dividend, as he +called his quarterly spree. He kept straight longer than his fellow +citizens had known him to do for many years. But Putney was one of those +men who could not be credited by people generally with the highest +motives. He too often made a mock of what people generally regarded as +the highest motives; he puzzled and affronted them; and as none of his +most intimate friends could claim that he was respectable in the +ordinary sense of the word, people generally attributed interested +motives, or at least cynical motives, to him. Adeline Northwick profited +by a call she made upon Dr. Morrell for advice about her dyspepsia, to +sound him in regard to Putney's management of her affairs; and if the +doctor's powders had not so distinctly done her good, she might not have +been able to rely upon the assurance he gave her, that Putney was acting +wisely and most disinterestedly toward her and her sister. + +"He has such a strange way of talking, sometimes," she said. + +But she clung to Putney, and relied upon him in everything, not so much +because she implicitly trusted him, as because she knew no one else to +trust. The kindness that Mr. Hilary had shown for them in the first of +their trouble, had, of course, become impossible to both the sisters. He +had, in fact, necessarily ceased to offer it directly, and Sue had +steadily rejected all the overtures Louise made her since they last met. +Louise wanted to come again to see her; but Sue evaded her proposals; at +last she would not answer her letters; and their friendship outwardly +ceased. Louise did not blame her; she accounted for her, and pitied and +forgave her; she said it was what she herself would do in Sue's place, +but probably if she had continued herself, she would not have done what +Sue did, even in Sue's place. She remembered Sue with a tender constancy +when she could no longer openly approach her without hurting more than +she helped; and before the day of the assignee's sale came, she thought +out a scheme which Wade carried into effect with Putney's help. Those +things of their own that the sisters had meant to sacrifice, were bidden +off, and restored to them in such a way that it was not possible for +them to refuse to take back the dresses, the jewels, the particular +pieces of furniture which Louise associated with them. + +Each of the sisters dealt with the event in her sort; Adeline simply +exulted in getting her things again; Sue gave all hers into Adeline's +keeping, and bade her never let her see them. + + + + +PART SECOND. + + + + +I. + + +Northwick kept up the mental juggle he had used in getting himself away +from Hatboro', and as far as Ponkwasset Junction he made believe that he +was going to leave the main line, and take the branch road to the mills. +He had a thousand-mile ticket, and he had no baggage check to define his +destination; he could step off and get on where he pleased. At first he +let the conductor take up the mileage on his ticket as far as Ponkwasset +Junction; but when he got there he kept on with the train, northward, in +the pretence that he was going on as far as Willoughby Junction, to look +after some business of his quarries. He verified his pretence by +speaking of it to the conductor who knew him; he was not a person to +take conductors into his confidence, but he felt obliged to account to +the man for his apparent change of mind. He was at some trouble to make +it seem casual and insignificant, and he wondered if the conductor meant +to insinuate anything by saying in return that it was a pretty brisk day +to be knocking round much in a stone quarry. Northwick smiled in saying, +"It was, rather;" he watched the conductor to see if he should betray +any particular interest in the matter when he left him. But the +conductor went on punching the passengers' tickets, and seemed to forget +Northwick as soon as he left him. At the next station, Northwick +followed him out on the platform to find if he sent any telegram off. +When he had once given way to this anxiety, which he knew to be +perfectly stupid and futile, he had to yield to it at every station. He +took his bag with him each time he left the car, and he meant not to go +back if he saw the conductor telegraphing. It was intensely cold, and in +spite of the fierce heat of the stove at the end of the car, the frost +gathered thickly on the windows. The train creaked, when it stopped and +started, as if it were crunching along on a bed of dry snow; the noises +of the wheels seemed at times to lose their rhythmical cadence, and then +Northwick held his breath for fear one of them might be broken. He had a +dread of accident such as he had never felt before; his life had never +seemed so valuable to him as now; he reflected that it was so because it +was to be devoted now to retrieving the past in a new field under new +conditions. His life, in this view, was not his own; it was a precious +trust which he held for others, first for his children, and then for +those whom he was finally to save from loss by the miscarriage of his +enterprises. He justified himself anew in what he was intending; it +presented itself as a piece of self-sacrifice, a sacred duty which he +was bound to fulfil. All the time he knew that he was a defaulter who +had used the money in his charge, and tampered with the record so as to +cover up the fact, and that he was now absconding, and was carrying off +a large sum of money that was not morally his. At one of the stations +where he got out to see whether the conductor was telegraphing, he +noticed the conductor eyeing his bag curiously; and he knew that he +believed there was money in it. Northwick felt a thrill of gratified +cunning in realizing how mistaken the conductor was; but he was willing +the fellow should think he was carrying up money to pay off his quarry +hands. + +He was impatient to reach the Junction, where this conductor would leave +the train, and it would continue northward in the charge of another man; +he seldom went beyond Willoughby on that road, and the new conductor +would hardly know him. He meant to go on to Blackbrook Junction, and +take the New England Central there for Montreal; but he saw the +conductor go to the telegraph office at Willoughby Junction, and it +suddenly occurred to him that he must not go to Montreal by a route so +direct that any absconding defaulter would be expected to take it. He +had not the least proof that the conductor's dispatch had anything to do +with him; but he could not help acting as if it had. He said good-day to +the conductor as he passed him, and he went out of the station, with his +bag, as if he were going up into the town. He watched till he saw the +conductor go off in another direction, and then he came back, and got +aboard the train just as it was drawing out of the station. He knew that +he was not shadowed in any way, but his consciousness of stealth was +such that he felt as if he were followed, and that he must act so as to +baffle and mislead pursuit. + +At Blackbrook, where the train stopped for dinner, he was aware that no +one knew him, and he ate hungrily; he felt strengthened and encouraged, +and he began to react against the terror that had possessed him. He +perceived that it was senseless and ridiculous; that the conductor could +not possibly have been telegraphing about him from Willoughby, and there +was as yet no suspicion abroad concerning him; he might go freely +anywhere, by any road. + +But he had now let the New England Central train leave without him, and +it only remained for him to push on to Wellwater, where he hoped to +connect with the Boston train for Montreal, on the Union and Dominion +road. He remembered that this train divided at Wellwater, and certain +cars ran direct to Quebec, up through Sherbrooke and Lennoxville. He +meant to go from Montreal to Quebec, but now he questioned whether he +had better not go straight on from Wellwater; when he recalled the long, +all-night ride without a sleeper, which he had once made on that route +many summers before, he said to himself that in his shaken condition, he +must not run the risk of such a hardship. If he were to get sick from +it, or die, it would be as bad as a railroad accident. The word now made +him think of what Hilary had said; Hilary who had called him a thief. He +would show Hilary whether he was a thief or not, give him time; he would +make him eat his words, and he figured Hilary retracting and apologizing +in the presence of the whole Board; Hilary apologized handsomely, and +Northwick forgave him, while it was also passing through his mind that +he must reduce the risks of railroad accident to a minimum, by +shortening the time. They reduced the risk of ocean travel in that way, +by reducing the time, and logically the fastest ship was the safest. If +he could get to Montreal from Wellwater in four or five hours, when it +would take him twelve hours to get to Quebec, it was certainly his duty +to go to Montreal. First of all, he must put himself out of danger of +every kind. He must not even fatigue himself too much; and he decided to +telegraph on to Wellwater, and secure a seat in the Pullman car to +Montreal. He had been travelling all day in the ordinary car, and he had +found it very rough. + +It suddenly occurred to him that he must now assume a false name; and he +reflected that he must take one that sounded like his own, or else he +would not answer promptly and naturally to it. He chose Warwick, and he +kept saying it over to himself while he wrote his dispatch to the +station-master at Wellwater, asking him to secure a chair in the +Pullman. He was pleased with the choice he had made; it seemed like his +own name when spoken, and yet very unlike when written. But while he +congratulated himself on his quickness and sagacity, he was aware of +something detached, almost alien, in the operation of his mind. It did +not seem to be working normally; he could govern it, but it was like +something trying to get away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. +The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if +Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the +other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his +love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, +and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the +demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his +children, that he thought it must show in his face; and he made a feint +of having to rise and arrange his overcoat so that he could catch sight +of himself in the mirror at the end of the car. His face betrayed +nothing; it looked, as it always did, like the face of a kindly, +respectable man, a financially reliable face, the face of a leading +citizen. He gathered courage and strength from it to put away the +remorse that was devouring him. If that was the way he looked that was +the way he must be; and he could only be leaving those so dear to him +for some good purpose. He recalled that his purpose was to clear the +name they bore from the cloud that must fall upon it; to rehabilitate +himself; to secure his creditors from final loss. This was a good +purpose, the best purpose that a man in his place could have; he +recollected that he was to be careful of his life and health, because he +had dedicated himself to this purpose. + +He determined to keep this purpose steadily in mind, not to lose thought +of it for an instant; it was his only refuge. Then a new anguish seized +him; a doubt that swiftly became certainty; and he knew that he had +signed that dispatch Northwick and not Warwick; he saw just how his +signature looked on the yellow manilla paper of the telegraph blank. Now +he saw what a fool he had been to think of sending any dispatch. He +cursed himself under his breath, and in the same breath he humbly prayed +to God for some way of escape. His terror made it certain to him that he +would be arrested as soon as he reached Wellwater. That would be the +next stop, the conductor told him, when he halted him with the question +on his way through the cars. The conductor said they were behind time, +and Northwick knew by the frantic pull of the train that they were +running to make up the loss. It would simply be death to jump from the +car; and he must not die, he must run the risk. In his prayer he +bargained with God that if He would let him escape, he would give every +thought, every breath to making up the loss of his creditors; he half +promised to return the money he was carrying away, and trust to his own +powers, his business talent in a new field, to retrieve himself. He +resolved to hide himself as soon as he reached Wellwater; it would be +dark, and he hoped that by this understanding with Providence he could +elude the officer in getting out of the car. But if there were two, one +at each end of the car? + +There was none, and Northwick walked away from the station with the +other passengers, who were going to the hotel near the station for +supper. In the dim light of the failing day and the village lamps, he +saw with a kind of surprise, the deep snow, and felt the strong, still +cold of the winterland he had been journeying into. The white drifts +were everywhere; the vague level of the frozen lake stretched away from +the hotel like a sea of snow; on its edge lay the excursion steamer in +which Northwick had one summer made the tour of the lake with his +family, long ago. + +He was only a few miles from the Canadian frontier; with a rebound from +his anxiety, he now exulted in the safety he had already experienced. He +remained tranquilly eating after the departure of the Montreal train was +cried; and when he was left almost alone, the head-waiter came to him +and said, "Your train's just going, sir." + +"Thank you," he answered, "I'm going out on the Quebec line." He wanted +to laugh, in thinking how he had baffled fate. Now, if any inquiry were +made for him it would be at the Montreal train before it started, or at +the next station, which was still within the American border, on that +line. But on the train for Quebec, which would reach Stanstead in half +an hour, he would be safe from conjecture, even, thanks to that dispatch +asking for a chair on the Montreal Pullman. The Quebec train was slow in +starting; but he did not care; he walked up and down the platform, and +waited patiently. He no longer thought with anxiety of the long +all-night ride before him. If he did not choose to keep straight on to +Quebec, he could stop at Lenoxville or Sherbrooke, and take up his +journey again the next day. At Stanstead he ceased altogether to deal +with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any +possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had +prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, +with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every +faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that +perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he +was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed +his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no longer +agonized him. He took a calm and prudent survey of the work before him; +and he saw how essential it was that he should make no false step, but +should act at every moment with the sense that he was merely the agent +of others in the effort to retrieve his losses. + + + + +II. + + +At Stanstead a party of three gentlemen came into the car; and their +talk presently found its way through Northwick's revery, at first as an +interruption, an annoyance, and afterwards as a matter of intensifying +personal interest to him. They were in very good spirits, and they made +themselves at home in the car; there were only a few other passengers. +They were going to Montreal, as he easily gathered, and some friends +were to join them at the next junction, and go on with them. They talked +freely of an enterprise which they wished to promote in Montreal; and +they were very confident of it if they could get the capital. One of +them said, It was a thing that would have been done long ago, if the +Yankees had been in it. "Well, we may strike a rich defaulter, in +Montreal," another said, and they all laughed. Their laughter shocked +Northwick; it seemed immoral; he remembered that though he might seem a +defaulter, he was a man with a sacred trust, and a high purpose. But he +listened eagerly; if their enterprise were one that approved itself to +his judgment, the chance of their discussing it before him might be a +leading of Providence which he would be culpable to refuse. Providence +had answered his prayer in permitting him to pass the American frontier +safely, and Northwick must not be derelict in fulfilling his part of the +agreement. The Canadians borrowed the brakeman's lantern, and began to +study a map which they spread out on their knees. The one who seemed +first among them put his finger on a place in the map, and said that was +the spot. It was in the region just back of Chicoutimi. Gold had always +been found there, but not in paying quantity. It cost more to mine it +than it was worth; but with the application of his new process of +working up the tailings, there was no doubt of the result. It was simply +wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. + +Northwick had heard that song before; and he fell back in his seat, with +a smile which was perhaps too cynical for a partner of Providence, but +which was natural in a man of his experience. He knew something about +processes to utilize the tailings of gold mines which would not +otherwise pay for working; he had paid enough for his knowledge: so much +that if he still had the purchase-money he need not be going into exile +now, and beginning life under a false name, in a strange land. + +By and by he found himself listening again, and he heard the Canadian +saying, "And there's timber enough on the tract to pay twice over what +it will cost, even if the mine wasn't worth a penny." + +"Well, we might go down and see the timber, any way," said one of the +party who had not yet spoken much. "And then we could take a look at +Markham's soap-mine, too. Unless," he added, "you had to tunnel under a +hundred feet of snow to get at it. A good deal like diggin' the north +pole up by the roots, wouldn't it be?" + +"Oh, no! Oh, no!" said he who seemed to be Markham, with the optimism of +an enthusiast. "There's no trouble about it. We've got some shanties +that we put up about the mouth of the hole in the ground we made in the +autumn, and you can see the hole without digging at all. Or at least you +could in the early part of January, when I was down there." + +"The hole hadn't run away?" + +"No. It was just where we left it." + +"Well, that's encouragin'. But I say, Markham, how do you get down there +in the winter?" + +"Oh! very easily. Simplest thing in the world. Lots of fellows in the +lumber trade do it all winter long. Do it by sleigh from St. Anne's, +about twenty miles below Quebec--from Quebec you have your choice of +train or sleigh. But I prefer to make a clean thing of it, and do it all +by sleigh. I take it by easy stages, and so I take the long route: there +is a short cut, but the stops are far between. You make your twenty +miles to St. Anne from Quebec one day; eighteen to St. Joachim, the +next; thirty-nine to Baie St. Paul, the next; twenty to Malbaie, the +next; then forty to Tadoussac; then eighteen to Riviere Marguerite. You +can do something every day at that rate, even in the new snow; but on +the ice of the Saguenay, to Haha Bay, there's a pull of sixty miles; +you're at Chicoutimi, eleven miles farther, before you know it. Good +feed, and good beds, all along. You wrap up, and you don't mind. Of +course," Markham concluded, "it isn't the climate of Stanstead," as if +the climate of Stanstead were something like that of St. Augustine. + +"Well, it sounds a mere bagatelle," said the more talkative of the other +two, "but it takes a week of steady travel." + +"What is a week on the way to Golconda, if Golconda's yours when you get +there?" said Markham. "Why, Watkins, the young spruce and poplar alone +on that tract are worth twice the price I ask for the whole. A +pulp-mill, which you could knock together for a few shillings, on one of +those magnificent water-powers, would make you all millionnaires, in a +single summer." + +"And what would it do in the winter when your magnificent water-power +was restin'?" + +"Work harder than ever, my dear boy, and set an example of industry to +all the lazy _habitans_ in the country. You could get your fuel for the +cost of cutting, and you could feed your spruce and poplar in under your +furnace, and have it come out paper pulp at the other end of the mill." + +Watkins and the other listener laughed with loud haw-haws at Markham's +drolling, and Watkins said, "I say, Markham, weren't you born on the +other side of the line?" + +"No. But my father was; and I wish he'd stayed there till I came. Then +I'd be going round with all the capitalists of Wall Street fighting for +a chance to put their money into my mine, instead of wearing out the +knees of my trousers before you Canucks, begging you not to slap your +everlasting fortune in the face." + +They now all roared together again, and at Sherbrooke they changed cars. + +Northwick had to change too, but he did not try to get into the same car +with them. He wanted to think, to elaborate in his own mind the +suggestion for his immediate and remoter future which he had got from +their talk; and he dreaded the confusion, and possibly he dreaded the +misgiving, that might come from hearing more of their talk. He thought +he knew, now, just what he wanted to do, and he did not wish to be +swerved from it. + +He felt eager to get on, but he was not impatient. He bore very well the +long waits that he had to make both at Sherbrooke and Richmond; but when +the train left the Junction for Quebec at last, he settled himself in +his seat with a solider content than he had felt before, and gave +himself up to the pleasure of shaping the future, that was so obediently +plastic in his fancy. The brakeman plied the fierce stove at the end of +the car with fuel, and Northwick did not suffer from the cold that +strengthened and deepened with the passing night outside, though he was +not overcoated and booted for any such temperature as his +fellow-travellers seemed prepared for. They were all Canadians, and they +talked now and then in their broad-vowelled French, but their voices +were low, and they came and went quietly at the country stations. The +car was old and worn, and badly hung; but in spite of all, Northwick +drowsed in the fervor of the glowing stove, and towards morning he fell +into a long and dreamless sleep. + +He woke from it with a vigor and freshness that surprised him, and found +the train pulling into the station at Pointe Levis. The sun burned like +a soft lamp through the thick frost on the car-window; when he emerged, +he found it a cloudless splendor on a world of snow. The vast landscape, +which he had seen in summer all green from the edge of the mighty rivers +to the hilltops losing themselves in the blue distance, showed rounded +and diminished in the immeasurable drifts that filled it, and that hid +the streams in depths almost as great above their ice as those of the +currents below. The villages of the _habitans_ sparkled from tinned roof +and spire, and the city before him rose from shore and cliff with a +thousand plumes of silvery smoke. In and out among the frozen shipping +swarmed an active life that turned the rivers into highroads, and +speckled the expanse of glistening white with single figures and groups +of men and horses. + +It was all gay and bizarre, and it gave Northwick a thrill of boyish +delight. He wondered for a moment why he had never come to Quebec in +winter before, and brought his children. He beckoned to the walnut-faced +driver of one of the carrioles which waited outside the station to take +the passengers across the river, and tossed his bag into the bottom of +the little sledge. He gave the name of a hotel in the Upper Town, and +the driver whipped his tough, long-fetlocked pony over the space of ice +which was kept clear of snow by diligent sweeping with fir-tree tops, +and then up the steep incline of Mountain Hill. The streets were +roadways from house-front to house-front, smooth, elastic levels of +thickly-bedded, triply-frozen snow; and the foot passengers, muffled to +the eyes against the morning cold, came and went among the vehicles in +the middle of the street, or crept along close to the house-walls, to +keep out of the light avalanches of an overnight snow that slipped here +and there from the steep tin roofs. + +Northwick's unreasoned gladness grew with each impression of the beauty +and novelty. It quickened associations of his earliest days, and of the +winter among his native hills. He felt that life could be very pleasant +in this latitude; he relinquished the notion he had cherished at times +of going to South America with his family in case he should finally fail +to arrange with the company for his safe return home; he forecast a +future in Quebec where he could build a new home for his children, among +scenes that need not be all so alien. This did not move him from his +fixed intention to retrieve himself, though it gave him the courage of +indefinitely expanded possibilities. He was bent upon the scheme he had +in mind, and as soon as he finished his breakfast he went out to prepare +for it. + + + + +III. + + +The inn he had chosen was one which he remembered, from former visits to +Quebec, as having seemed a resort of old world folk of humble fortunes. +He got a room, and went to it long enough to count the money he had with +him, and find it safe. Then he took one of the notes from the others, +and went to a broker's to get it changed. + +The amount seemed to give the broker pause; but he concerned himself +only with the genuineness of the greenback, and after a keen glance at +Northwick's unimpeachable face, he paid over the thousand dollars in +Canadian bills. "We used to make your countrymen give us something +over," he said with a smile in recognition of Northwick's nationality. + +"Yes; that's all changed, now," returned Northwick. "Do I look so very +American?" he asked. + +"Oh, I don't know that," said the broker, with an airy English +inflection. "I suppose it's your hard hat, as much as anything. We all +wear fur caps in such weather." + +"Ah, that's a good idea," said Northwick. He spoke easily, but with a +nether torment of longing to look at the newspaper lying open on the +counter. He could see that it was the morning paper; there might be +something about him in it. The thought turned him faint; but he knew +that if the paper happened to have anything about him in it, any rumor +of his offence, any conjecture of his flight, he could not bear it. He +could bear to keep himself deaf and blind to the self he had put behind +him, but he could not bear anything less. The papers seemed to thrust +themselves upon him; newsboys followed him up in the street with them; +he saw them in all the shops, where he went for the fur cap and fur +overcoat he bought, for the underclothing and changes of garments that +he had to provide; for the belt he got to put his money in. This great +sum, which he dared not bank, must be carried about with him; it must +not leave him night or day; it must be buckled into the chamois belt and +worn round his waist, sleeping and waking. The belt was really for gold, +but the forty-two thousand-dollar notes, which were not a great bulk, +would easily go into it. + +He returned to his hotel and changed them to it, and put the belt on. +Then he felt easier, and he looked up the landlord to ask about the +route he wished to take. He found, as he expected, that it was one very +commonly travelled by lumber merchants going down into the woods to look +after their logging camps. Some took a sleigh from Quebec; but the +landlord said it was just as well to go by train to St. Anne, and save +that much sleighing; you would get enough of it then. Northwick thought +so too, and after the early dinner they gave him he took the cars for +St. Anne. + +He was not tired; he was curiously buoyant and strong. He thought he +might get a nap on the way; but he remained vividly awake; and even that +night he did not sleep much. He felt again that pulling of his mind, as +if it were something separate from him, and were struggling to get +beyond the control of his will. The hotel in the little native village +was very good in its way; he had an excellent supper and an easy bed; +but he slept brokenly, and he was awake long before the early breakfast +which he had ordered for his start next day. The landlord wished to +persuade him that there was no need of such great haste; it was only +eighteen miles to St. Joachim, where he was to make his first stop, and +the road was so good that he would get there in a few hours. He had +better stop and visit the church, and see the sick people's offerings, +which they left there every year, in gratitude to the saint for healing +them of their maladies. The landlord said it was a pity he could not +come some time at the season of the pilgrimage; his countrymen often +came then. Northwick perceived that in spite of his fur cap and +overcoat, and his great Canadian boots, he was easily recognizable for +an American to this man, though he could not definitely decide whether +his landlord was French or Irish, and could not tell whether it was in +earnest or in irony that he invited him to try St. Anne for any trouble +he happened to be suffering from. But he winced at the suggestion, while +his heart leaped at the fantastic thought of hanging that money-belt at +her altar, and so easing himself of all his pains. He grotesquely +imagined the American defaulters in Canada making a pilgrimage to St. +Anne, and devoting emblems of their moral disease to her: forged notes, +bewitched accounts, false statements. At the same time, with that part +of him which seemed obedient, he asked the landlord if he knew of the +gold discoveries on the Chicoutimi River, and tried to account for +himself as an American speculator going to look into the matter in his +own way and at his own time. + +In spite of his uncertainty about the landlord in some ways, Northwick +found him a kindly young fellow. He treated Northwick with a young +fellow's comfortable deference for an elderly man, and helped him forget +the hurts to his respectability which rankled so when he remembered +them. He explained the difference between the two routes from Malbaie +on, and advised him to take the longer, which lay through a more settled +district, where he would be safer in case of any mischance. But if he +liked to take the shorter, he told him there were good _campes_, or +log-house stations, every ten or fifteen miles, where he would find +excellent meals and beds, and be well cared for by people who kept them +in the winter for travellers. Ladies sometimes made the journey on that +route, which the government had lately opened, and the mails were +carried that way; he could take passage with the mail-carriers. + +This fact determined Northwick. He shrank from trusting himself in +government keeping, though he knew he would be safe in it. He said he +would go by Tadoussac; and the landlord found a carriole driver, with a +tough little Canadian horse, who agreed to go the whole way to +Chicoutimi with him. + +After an early lunch the man came, with the low-bodied sledge, set on +runners of solid wood, and deeply bedded with bearskins for the lap and +back. The day was still and sunny, like the day before, and the air +which drove keenly against his face, with the rush of the carriole, +sparkled with particles of frost that sometimes filled it like a light +shower of snow. The drive was so short that he reached St. Joachim at +noon, and he decided to push on part of the way to Baie St. Paul after +dinner. His host at St. Joachim approved of that. "You goin' have snow +to-night and big drift to-morrow," he said, and he gave his driver the +name of an habitant whom they could stop the night with. The driver was +silent, and he looked sinister; Northwick thought how easily the man +might murder him on that lonely road and make off with the money in his +belt; how probably he would do it if he dreamed such wealth was within +his grasp. But the man did not notice him after their journey began, +except once to turn round and say, "Look out you' nose. You' goin' +freeze him." For the rest he talked to his horse, which was lazy, and +which he kept urging forward with "Marche donc! Marche donc!" finally +shortened to "'Ch' donc! 'Ch' donc!" and repeated and repeated at +regular intervals like the tolling of a bell. It made Northwick think of +a bell-buoy off a ledge of rocks, which he had spent a summer near. He +wished to ask the man to stop, but he reflected that the waves would not +let him stop; he had to keep tolling. + +Northwick started. He must be going out of his mind, or else he was +drowsing. Perhaps he was freezing, and this was the beginning of the +death drowse. But he felt himself warm under his furs, where he touched +himself, and he knew he had merely been dreaming. He let himself go +again, and arrived at his own door in Hatboro'. He saw the electric +lights through the long piazza windows, and he was going to warn +Elbridge again about that colt's shoes. Then he heard a sharp fox-like +barking, and found that his carriole had stopped at the cabin of the +habitant who was to keep him over night. The open doorway was filled +with children; the wild-looking dogs leaping at his horse's nose were in +a frenzy of curiosity and suspicion. + +Northwick rose from his nap refreshed physically, but with a desolate +and sinking heart. The vision of his home had taken all his strength +away with it; but from his surface consciousness he returned the +greeting of the man with a pipe in his mouth and what looked like a blue +stocking on his head, who welcomed him. It was a poor place within, but +it had a comfort and kindliness of its own, and it was well warmed from +the great oblong stove of cast-iron set in the partition of the two +rooms. The meal that the housewife got him was good and savory, but he +had no relish for it, and he went early to bed. He did not understand +much French, and he could not talk with the people, but he heard them +speak of him as an old man, with a sort of surprise and pity at his +being there. He felt this surprise and pity, too; it seemed such a wild +and wicked thing that he should be driven away from his home and +children at his age. He tried to realize what had done it. + +The habitant had given Northwick his best bed, in his large room; he +went with his wife into the other, and they took two or three of the +younger children; the rest all scattered up into the loft; each bade the +guest a well-mannered good-night. Before Northwick slept he heard his +host get up and open the outer door. Some Indians came in and lay down +before the fire with the carriole driver. + + + + +IV. + + +In the morning, Northwick did not want to rise; but he forced himself; +and that day he made the rest of the stage to Baie St. Paul. It snowed, +but he got through without much interruption. The following day, +however, the drifts had blocked the roads so that he did not make the +twenty miles to Malbaie till after dark. He found himself bearing the +journey better than he expected. He was never so tired again as that +first day after St. Anne. He did not eat much or sleep much, but he felt +well. The worst was that the breach between his will and his mind seemed +to grow continually wider: he had a sense of the rift being like a chasm +stretching farther and farther, the one side from the other. At first +his mind worked clearly but disobediently; then he began to be aware of +a dimness in its record of purposes and motives. At times he could not +tell where he was going, or why. He reverted with difficulty to the fact +that he had wished to get as far as possible, not only beyond pursuit, +but beyond the temptation to return voluntarily and give himself up. He +knew, in those days before the treaty, that he was safe from +extradition; but he feared that if a detective approached he would yield +to him, and go back, especially as he could not always keep before +himself the reasons for not going back. When from time to time these +reasons escaped him, it seemed as if nothing could be done to him in +case he went home and restored to the company the money he had brought +away. It needed a voluntary operation of logic to prove that this +partial restitution would not avail; that he would be arrested, and +convicted. He would not be allowed to go on living with his children in +his own house. He would be taken from them, and put in prison. + +He made an early start for Tadoussac, after a wakeful night. His driver +wished to break the forty mile journey midway, but Northwick would not +consent. The road was not so badly drifted as before, and they got +through a little after nightfall. Northwick remembered the place because +it was here that the Saguenay steamer lay so long before starting up the +river. He recognized in the vague night-light the contour of the cove, +and the hills above it, with the villages scattered over them. It was +twenty years since he had made that trip with his wife, who had been +nearly as long dead, but he recalled the place distinctly, and its +summer effect; it did not seem much lonelier now than it seemed in the +summer. The lamps shone from the windows where he had seen them then, +when he walked about a little just after supper; the village store had a +group of _habitans_ and half-breeds about its stove, and there was as +much show of life in the streets as there used to be at the same hour +and season in the little White Mountain village where his boyhood was +passed. It did not seem so bad; if Chicoutimi was no worse he could live +there well enough till he could rehabilitate himself. He imagined +bringing his family there after his mills had got successfully going; +then probably other people from the outside world would be living there. + +He ate a hearty supper, but again he did not sleep well, and in the +night he was feverish. He thought how horrible it would be if he were to +fall sick there; he might die before he could get word to his children +and they reach him. He thought of going back to Quebec, and sailing for +Europe, and having his children join him there. They could sell the +place at Hatboro', and with what it brought, and with what he had, they +could live comfortably in some cheap country which had no extradition +treaty with the United States. He remembered reading of a defaulter who +went to a little republic called San Marino, somewhere in Italy, and was +safe there; he found the President treading his own grape vats; and it +cost nothing to live there, though it was dull, and the exile became so +homesick that he returned and gave himself up. He wondered that he had +not thought of that place before; then he reflected that no ships could +make their way from Quebec to the sea before May, at the earliest. He +would be arrested if he left any American port, or arrested as soon as +he reached England. He remembered the advertisement of a line of +steamships between Quebec and Brazil; he must wait for the St. Lawrence +to open, and go to Brazil, and in the morning must go back to Quebec. + +But in the morning he felt so much better that he decided to keep on to +Chicoutimi. He could not bear the thought of being found out by +detectives at Quebec, and by reporters who would fill the press with +paragraphs about him. He must die to the world, to his family, before he +could hope to revisit either. + +The morning was brilliant with sunlight, and the glare of the snow hurt +his eyes. He went to the store to get some glasses to protect them, and +he bought some laudanum to make him sleep that night, if he should be +wakeful again. It was sixty miles to Haha Bay, but the road on the +frozen river was good, and he could do a long stretch of it. From +Riviere Marguerite, he should travel on the ice of the Saguenay, and the +going would be smooth and easy. + +All the landscape seemed dwarfed since he saw it in that far-off summer. +The tops of the interminable solitudes that walled the river in on both +sides appeared lower, as if the snow upon them weighed them down, but +doubtless they had grown beyond their real height in his memory. They +had lost the mystery of the summer aspect when they were dimmed with +rain or swathed in mist; all their outlines were in plain sight, and the +forests that clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that +unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their +stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of +white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a +fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the +photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, +and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white +between the ranges of extinct volcanoes. + +At times the cliffs rose from the river too sheer for the snow to lodge +on; then their rocky faces shone harsh and stern; and sometimes the +springs that gushed from them in summer were frozen in long streams of +ice, like the tears bursting from the source of some Titanic grief. +These monstrous icicles, blearing the visage of the rock, which he +figured as nothing but icicles, affected Northwick with an awe that he +nowhere felt except when his driver slowed his carriole in front of the +great Capes Trinity and Eternity, and silently pointed at them with his +whip. He had no need to name them, the fugitive would have known them in +another planet. It was growing late; the lonely day was waning to the +lonely night. While they halted, the scream of a catamount broke from +the woods skirting the bay between the capes, and repeated itself in the +echo that wandered from depth to depth of the frozen wilderness, and +seemed to die wailing away at the point where it first tore the silence. + +Here and there, at long intervals, they passed a point or a recess where +a saw-mill stood, with a few log houses about it, and with signs of +human life in the smoke that rose weakly on the thin, dry air from their +chimneys, or in the figures that appeared at the doorways as the +carriole passed. At the next of these beyond the capes, the driver +proposed to stop and pass the night, and Northwick consented. He felt +worn out by his day's journey; his nerves were spent as if by a lateral +pressure of the lifeless desert he had been travelling through, and by +the stress of his thoughts, the intensity of his reveries. His mind ran +back against his will, and dwelt with his children. By this time, long +before this time, they must be wild with anxiety about him; by this time +their shame must have come to poison their grief. He realized it all, +and he realized that he could not, must not help them. He must not go +back to them if ever he was to live for them again. But at last he asked +why he should live, why he should not die. There was laudanum enough in +that bottle to kill him. + +As he walked up from the carriole at the river's edge to the door of the +saw-miller's cabin, he drew the cork of the vial, and poured out the +poison; it followed him a few steps, a black dribble of murder on the +snow, that the miller's dog smelt at and turned from in offence. That +night he could not sleep again; toward morning, when all the house was +snoring, he gave way to the sobs that were bursting his heart. He heard +the sleepers, men and dogs, start a little in their dreams; then they +were still, and he fell into a deep sleep. + +They let him sleep late; and he had a dream of himself, which must have +been caused by the nascent consciousness of the going and coming around +him. People were talking of him, and one said how old he was; and +another looked at his long, white beard which flowed down over the +blanket as far as his waist. He told them that he wore it so that they +should not know him when he got home; and he showed them how he could +take it off and put it on at pleasure. He started awake, and found his +carriole driver standing over him. + +"You got you' sleep hout, no?" + +"What time is it?" said Northwick, stupidly, scanning the man to make +sure that it was he, and waiting for a full sense of the situation to +reach him. + +"Nine o'clock," said the man, and he turned away. + +Northwick got up, and found the place empty of the men and dogs. A +woman, who looked like a half-breed, brought him his breakfast of fried +venison and bean-coffee; her little one held by her skirt, and stared at +him. He thought of Elbridge's baby that he had seen die. It seemed ages +ago. He offered the child a shilling; it shyly turned its face into its +mother's dress. The driver said, "'E do'n' know what money is, yet," but +the mother seemed to know; she showed her teeth, and took it for the +child. Northwick sat a moment thinking what a strange thing it was not +to know what money was; it had never occurred to him before; he asked +himself a queer question, What was money? The idea of it seemed to go to +pieces, as a printed word does when you look steadily at it, and to have +no meaning. It affected him as droll, fantastic, like a piece of +childish make-believe, when the woman took some more money from him for +his meals and lodging. But that was the way the world was worked. You +could get anything done for money; it was the question of demand and +supply; nothing more. He tried to think where money came in when he went +out to see Elbridge's sick boy; when Elbridge left the dead child to +drive him to the station. It was something else that came in there; but +that thing and money were the same, after all: he had proved his love +for his children by making money for them; if he had not loved them so +much he would not have tried to get so much money, and he would not have +been where he was. + +His mind fought away from his control, as the sledge slipped along over +the frozen river again. It was very cold, but the full sun on his head +afflicted him like heat. It was the blaze of light that beat up from the +snow, too. His head felt imponderable; and yet he could not hold it up. +It was always sinking forward; and he woke from naps without being sure +that he had been asleep. + +He intended to push through that day to Chicoutimi; but his start was so +late that it seemed to him as if they would never get to Haha Bay. When +they arrived, late in the afternoon, all sense of progress thither faded +away; it was as if the starting and stopping were one, or contained in +the same impulse. It might be so if he kept on eleven miles further to +Chicoutimi, but he would not be able to feel it so at the beginning; the +wish could involve its accomplishment only at the end. He said to +himself that this was unreasonable; it was a poor rule that would not +work both ways. + +This ran through his mind in the presence of the old man who bustled out +of the door of the cabin where his carriole had stopped. It was larger +than most of the other cabins of the place, which Northwick remembered +curiously well, some with their logs bare, and some sheathed in +birch-bark. He remembered this man, too, when his white moustache, which +branched into either ear, was a glistening brown, and the droop of his +left eyelid was more like a voluntary wink. But the gayety of his face +was the same, and his welcome was so cordial, that a fear of recognition +went through Northwick. He knew the man for the talkative Canadian who +had taken him and his wife a drive over the hills around the bay, in the +morning, when their boat arrived, and afterwards stopped with them at +this cabin, and had them in to drink a glass of milk. Northwick's wife +liked the man, and said she would like to live in such a house in such a +place, and should not be afraid of the winter that he told her was so +terrible. It was almost as if her spirit were there; but Northwick said +to himself that he must not let the man know that he had ever seen him +before. The resolution cost him something, for he felt so broken and +weak that he would have liked to claim his kindness as an old +acquaintance. He would have liked to ask if he still caught wild animals +for showmen, and how his trade prospered; if he had always lived at Haha +Bay since they met. But he was the more decided to ignore their former +meeting because the man addressed him in English at once, and apparently +knew him for an American. Perhaps other defaulters had been there +before; perhaps the mines had brought Americans there prospecting. + +"Good morning, sir!" cried the Canadian. "I am glad to see you! Let me +'elp you hout, sir. Well, it is a pleasure to speak a little English +with some one! The English close hup with the river in the autumn, but +it open early this year. I 'ope you are a sign of many Americans. They +are the life of our country. Without the Americans we could not live. +No, sir. Not a day. Come in, come in. You will find you' room ready for +you, sir." + +Northwick hung back suspiciously. "Were you expecting me?" he asked. + +"No one!" cried the man, with a shrug and opening of the hands. "But +hall the travellers they stop with Bird, and where there are honly two +rooms, 'eat with one stove between the walls, their room is always +ready. Do me the pleasure!" He set the door open, and bowed Northwick +in. "Baptiste!" he called to the driver over his shoulder, "take you' +'orse to the stable." He added a long queue of unintelligible French to +his English, and the driver responded, "Hall right." + +"I am the only person at Haha Bay who speaks English," he said, in the +same terms he had used twenty years before, when he presented himself to +Northwick and his wife on their steamboat, and asked them if they would +like to drive before breakfast. "But you must know me? Bird--_Oiseau_? +You have been here before?" + +"No," said Northwick, with one lie for all. The man, with his cheer and +gayety, was even terribly familiar; and Northwick could have believed +that the room and the furniture in it were absolutely unchanged. There +was the little window that he knew opened on the poor vegetable garden, +with its spindling corn, and its beans for soup and coffee. There was +the chair his wife had sat in to look out on the things; but for the +frost on the pane he could doubtless see them growing now. + +He sank into the chair, and said to himself that he should die there, +and it would be as well, it would be easy. He felt very old and weak; +and he did not try to take off the wraps which he had worn in the +sledge. He wished that he might fall so into his grave, and be done with +it. + + + + +V. + + +Bird walked up and down the room, talking; he seemed overjoyed with the +chance, and as if he could not forego it for a moment. "Well, sir, I +wish that I could say as much! But I have been here forty years, hoff +and on. I am born at Quebec"--in his tremulous inattention, Northwick +was aware that the man had said the same thing to him all those years +before, with the same sidelong glance for the effect of the fact upon +him--"and I came here when I was twenty. Now I am sixty. Hall the +Americans know me. I used to go into the bush with them for bear. Lots +of bear in the bush when I first came; now they get pretty scarce. I +have the best moose-dog. But I don't care much for the hunting now; I am +too hold. That's a fact. I am sixty; and forty winters I 'ave pass at +Haha Bay. You know why it is call Haha Bay? It is the hecho. Well, I +don't hear much ha-ha nowadays round this bay. But it is pretty here in +the summer; yes, very pretty. Prettier than Chicoutimi; and more gold in +the 'ills." + +He let his bold, gay eye rest confidently on Northwick, as if to say he +knew what had brought him there, and he might as well own the fact at +once; and Northwick tried to get his mind to grapple with his real +motive. But his mind kept pulling away from him, like that unruly horse, +and he could not manage it. He knew, in that self which seemed apart +from his mind, that it would be a very good thing to let the man suppose +he was there to look into the question of the mines; but there was +something else that seemed to go with that intention; something like a +wish to get away from the past so remotely and so completely that no +rumor of it should reach him till he was willing to let it; to be absent +from all who had known him so long that no one of them would know him if +he saw him. He was there not only to start a pulp-mill, but to grow a +beard that should effectually disguise him. He recalled how he had +looked with that long beard in his dream; he put his hand to his chin +and felt the eight days' stubble there, and he wondered how much time it +would take to grow such a beard. + +Bird went on talking. "I know that Chicoutimi Company. I told Markham +about the gold when he was here for bear. He is smart; but he don't know +heverything. You think he can make it pay with that invention? I doubt, +me. There is one place in those 'ills," and Bird came closer to +Northwick, and dropped his voice, "where you don't 'ave to begin with +the tailings. I know the place. But what's the good? All the same, you +want capital." + +He went to the shelf in the wall above the stove, and took a pipe, which +he filled with tobacco, and then he drew some coals out on the stove +hearth. But before he dropped one of them on his pipe with his horny +thumb and finger, he asked politely, "You hobject to the smoking?" + +Northwick said he did not, and Bird said, "It is one of three things you +can do here in the winter; smoke the pipe, cut the wood, court the +ladies." Northwick remembered his saying that before, too, and how it +had made his wife laugh. "I used to do all three. Now I smoke the pipe. +Well, while you are young, it is all right, and it is fun in the woods. +But I was always 'omesick for Quebec, more or less. You know what it is +to be 'omesick." + +The word pierced Northwick through the vagary which clothed his +consciousness like a sort of fog, and made his heart bleed with +self-pity. + +"Well, I been 'omesick forty years, and I don't know what for, any more. +I been back to Quebec; it is not the same. You know 'ow they pull down +those city gate? What they want to do that for? The gate did not keep +the stranger hout; it let them in! And there were too many people dead! +Now I think I am 'omesick just to get away from here. If I had some +capital--ten, fifteen thousand dollars--I would hopen that mine, and +take out my hundred, two hundred thousand dollar, and then, Good-by, +Haha Bay! I would make it hecho like it never hecho before. I don't want +nothing to work up the tailings of my mine, me! There is gold enough +there to pay, and I can hire those _habitans_ cheap, like dirt. What is +their time worth? The bush is cut away: they got nothing to do. It is +the time of a setting 'en, as you Americans say, their time." + +Bird smoked away for a little while in silence, and then he seemed +aware, for the first time, that Northwick had not taken off his wraps, +and he said, hospitably, "I 'ope you will spend the night with me here?" + +Northwick said, "Thank you, I don't know. Is it far to Chicoutimi?" He +knew, but he asked, hoping the man would exaggerate the distance, and +then he would not have to go. + +"It is eleven mile, but the road is bad. Drifted." + +"I will wait till to-morrow," said Northwick, and he began to unswathe +and unbutton, but so feebly that Bird noticed. + +"Allow me!" he said, putting down his pipe, and coming to his aid. He +was very gentle and light-handed, like a woman; but Northwick felt one +touch on the pouch of his belt, and refused further help. + +He let his host carry his two bags into the next room for him; the bag +that he had brought with the few things from home, when he pretended +that he was coming away for a day or two, and the bag that he had got in +Quebec to hold the things he had to buy there. When Bird set them down +beside his bed he could not bear to see the bag from home, and he pushed +it under out of sight. Then he tumbled himself on the bed, and pulled +the bearskin robe that he found on it up over him, and fell into a thin +sleep, that was not so different from his dim waking that he was sure it +had been sleep when Bird came back with a lamp. + +"Been 'aving a little nap?" he asked, looking gayly down on Northwick's +bewildered face. "Well, that is all right! We have supper, now, pretty +soon. You hungry? Well, in a 'alf-hour." + +He went out again, and Northwick, after some efforts, made out to rise. +His skull felt sore, and his arms as if they had been beaten with hard +blows. But after he had bathed his face and hands in the warm water Bird +had brought with the lamp, he found himself better, though he was still +wrapped in that cloudy uncertainty of himself and of his sleeping or +waking. He saw some pictures about on the coarse, white walls: the Seven +Stations of the Cross, in colored prints; a lithograph of Indians +burning a Jesuit priest. Over the bed's head hung a chromo of Our Lady, +with seven swords piercing her heart; beside the bed was a Parian +crucifix, with the figure of Christ writhing on it. + +These things made Northwick feel very far and strange. His simple and +unimaginative nature could in nowise relate itself to this alien faith, +this alien language. He heard soft voices of women in the next room, the +first that he had heard since he last heard his daughters'. A girl's +voice singing was severed by a door that closed and then opened to let +it be heard a few notes more, and again closed. + +But he found Bird still alone in the next room when he returned to it. +"Well, now, we go to supper as soon as Father Etienne comes. He is our +curate--our minister--here. And he eats with me when he heat anywhere. I +tell 'im 'e hought to have my appetite, if he wants to keep up his +spiritual strength. The body is the foundation of the soul, no? Well, +you let that foundation tumble hin, and then where you got you' soul, +heigh? But Father Etienne speaks very good English. Heducate at Rome. I +am the only other educated man at Haha Bay. You don't 'appen to have +some papers in you' bag? French? English? It is the same!" + +"Papers? No!" said Northwick, with horror and suspicion. "What is in the +papers?" + +"That is what I like to find hout," said Bird, spreading his hands with +a shrug. + +The outer door opened, and a young man in a priest's long robe came in. +Bird introduced his guest, and Northwick shook hands with the priest, +who had a smooth, regular face, with beautiful, innocent eyes, like a +girl's. He might have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine; he had the spare +figure of a man under thirty who leads an active life; his features were +refined by study and the thought of others. When he smiled the innocence +of his face was more than girlish, it was childlike. Points of light +danced in his large, soft, dark eyes; an effect of trusting, alluring +kindness came from his whole radiant visage. + +Northwick felt its charm with a kind of fear. He shrank away from the +priest, and at the table he left the talk to him and his host. They +supped in a room opening into a sort of wing; beyond it was a small +kitchen, from which an elderly woman brought the dishes, and where that +girl whom he heard singing kept trilling away as if she were excited, +like a canary, by the sound of the frying meat. + +Bird said, by way of introduction, that the woman was his niece; but he +did not waste time on her. He began to talk up his conjecture as to +Northwick's business with the priest, as if it were an ascertained fact. +Northwick fancied his advantage in leaving him to it. They discussed the +question of gold in the hills, which the young father treated as an old +story of faded interest, and Bird entered into with the fervor of fresh +excitement. The priest spoke of the poor return from the mines at +Chaudiere, but Bird claimed that it was different here. Northwick did +not say anything: he listened and watched them, as if they were a pair +of confidence-men trying to work him. The priest seemed to be anxious to +get the question off the personal ground into the region of the +abstract, and Northwick believed that this was part of his game, a ruse +to throw him from his guard, and commit him to something. He made up his +mind to get away as early as he could in the morning; he did not think +it was a safe place. + +"Very well!" the priest cried, at one point. "Suppose you had the +capital you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is +there, and you were rich. What would you do?" + +"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay +to-morrow morning!" + +"And where would you go?" + +"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!" + +The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned +with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men +in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In +what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?" + +"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into +himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed. + +"Where do they live?" + +Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as +if to restrain a burst of information from him. + +"I suppose most of them live in New York." + +"All the time?" + +"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar +Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and +they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their +yachts." + +"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea. +My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the +advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again +in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him +lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen +it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a +moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those +rich people in Europe, by inheritance?" + +"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used +to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They +made it." + +"How? Excuse me!" + +"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the +rise in land-values." + +"What causes the land to rise in value?" + +"The demand for it. The necessity." + +"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man +loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are +the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are +miserable. Is it so?" + +Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these +questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion +of Bird than as an expression of his own opinions; but in his dazed +intelligence he could not find the answers. + +Bird roared out, "Haw! Do not regard him! He is a man of the other +world--an angel--a mere imbecile--about business!" The priest threw +himself back in his chair and laughed tolerantly, showing his beautiful +teeth. "All those rich men they give work to the poor. If I had a few +thousand dollars to hopen up that place in the 'ill, I would furnish +work to every man in Haha Bay--to hundreds. Are the miners more +miserable than those _habitans_, eh?" + +"The good God seems to think so," returned the priest, seriously. "At +least, he has put the gold in the rocks so that you cannot get it out. +What would you give the devil to help you?" he asked, with a smile. + +"When I want to make a bargain with the devil, I don't come to you, Pere +Etienne; I go to a notary. You ever hear, sir," said Bird, turning to +Northwick, "about that notary at Montreal--" + +"I think I will go to bed," said Northwick, abruptly. "I am not feeling +very well--I am very tired, that is." He had suddenly lost account of +what and where he was. It seemed to him that he was both there and at +Hatboro'; that there were really two Northwicks, and that there was a +third self somewhere in space, conscious of them both. + +It was this third Northwick whom Bird and the priest would have helped +to bed if he had suffered them, but who repulsed their offers. He made +shift to undress himself, while he heard them talking in French with +lowered voices in the next room. Their debate seemed at an end. After a +little while he heard the door shut, as if the priest had gone away. +Afterwards he appeared to have come back. + + + + +VI. + + +The talk went on all night in Northwick's head between those two +Frenchmen, who pretended to be of contrary opinions, but were really +leagued to get the better of him, and lure him on to put his money into +that mine. In the morning his fever was gone; but he was weak, and he +could not command his mind, could not make it stay by him long enough to +decide whether any harm would come from remaining over a day before he +pushed on to Chicoutimi. He tried to put in order or sequence the +reasons he had for coming so deep into the winter and the wilderness; +but when he passed from one to the next, the former escaped him. + +Bird looked in with his blue woollen bonnet on his head, and his pipe in +his mouth, and he removed each to ask how Northwick was, and whether he +would like to have some breakfast; perhaps he would like a cup of tea +and some toast. + +Northwick caught eagerly at the suggestion, and in a few minutes the tea +was brought him by a young girl, whom Bird called Virginie; he said she +was his grand-niece, and he hoped that her singing had not disturbed the +gentleman: she always sang; one could hardly stop her; but she meant no +harm. He stayed to serve Northwick himself, and Northwick tried to put +away the suspicion Bird's kindness roused in him. He was in such need of +kindness that he did not wish to suspect it. Nevertheless, he watched +Bird narrowly, as he put the milk and sugar in his tea, and he listened +warily when he began to talk of the priest and to praise him. It was a +pleasure, Bird said, for one educated man to converse with another; and +Father Etienne and he often maintained opposite sides of a question +merely for the sake of the discussion; it was like a game of cards where +there were no stakes; you exercised your mind. + +Northwick understood this too little to believe it; when he talked, he +talked business; even the jokes among the men he was used to meant +business. + +"Then you haven't really found any gold in the hills?" he asked, slyly. + +"My faith, yes!" said Bird. "But," he added sadly, "perhaps it would not +pay to mine it. I will show you when you get up. Better not go to +Chicoutimi to-day! It is snowing." + +"Snowing?" Northwick repeated. "Then I can't go!" + +"Stop in bed till dinner. That is the best," Bird suggested. "Try to get +some sleep. Sleep is youth. When we wake we are old again, but some of +the youth stick to our fingers. No?" He smiled gayly, and went out, +closing the door softly after him, and Northwick drowsed. In a dream +Bird came back to him with some specimens from his gold mine. Northwick +could see that the yellow metal speckling the quartz was nothing but +copper pyrites, but he thought it best to pretend that he believed it +gold; for Bird, while he stood over him with a lamp in one hand, was +feeling with the other for the buckle of Northwick's belt, as he sat up +in bed. He woke in fright, and the fear did not afterwards leave him in +the fever which now began. He had his lucid intervals, when he was aware +that he was wisely treated and tenderly cared for, and that his host and +all his household were his devoted watchers and nurses; when he knew the +doctor and the young priest, in their visits. But all this he perceived +cloudily, and as with a thickness of some sort of stuff between him and +the fact, while the illusion of his delirium, always the same, was +always poignantly real. Then the morning came when he woke from it, when +the delirium was past, and he knew what and where he was. The truth did +not dawn gradually upon him, but possessed him at once. His first motion +was to feel for his belt; and he found it gone. He gave a deep groan. + +The blue woollen bonnet of the old hunter appeared through the open +doorway, with the pipe under the branching gray moustache. The eyes of +the men met. + +"Well," said Bird, "you are in you' senses at last!" Northwick did not +speak, but his look conveyed a question which the other could not +misinterpret. He smiled. "You want you' belt?" He disappeared, and then +reappeared, this time full length, and brought the belt to Northwick. +"You think you are among some Yankee defal_ca_tor?" he asked, for sole +resentment of the suspicion which Northwick's anguished look must have +imparted. "Count it. I think you find it hall right." But as the sick +man lay still, and made no motion to take up the belt where it lay +across his breast, Bird asked, "You want me to count it for you?" + +Northwick faintly nodded, and Bird stood over him, and told the +thousand-dollar bills over, one by one, and then put them back in the +pouch of the belt. + +"Now, I think you are going to get well. The doctor 'e say to let you +see you' money the first thing. Shall I put it hon you?" + +Northwick looked at the belt; it seemed to him that the bunch the bills +made would hurt him, and he said, weakly, "You keep it for me." + +"Hall right," said Bird, and he took it away. He went out with a proud +air, as if he felt honored by the trust Northwick had explicitly +confirmed, and sat down in the next room, so as to be within call. + +Northwick made the slow recovery of an elderly man; and by the time he +could go out of doors without fear of relapse, there were signs in the +air and in the earth of the spring, which when it comes to that northern +land possesses it like a passion. The grass showed green on the low bare +hills as the snow uncovered them; the leaves seemed to break like an +illumination from the trees; the south wind blew back the birds with its +first breath. The jays screamed in the woods; the Canadian nightingales +sang in the evening and the early morning when he woke and thought of +his place at Hatboro', where the robins' broods must be half-grown by +that time. It was then the time of the apple-blossoms there; with his +homesick inward vision he saw the billowed tops of his orchard, all +pink-white. He thought how the apples smelt when they first began to +drop in August on the clean straw that bedded the orchard aisles. It +seemed to him that if he could only be there again for a moment he would +be willing to spend the rest of his life in prison. As it was, he was in +prison; it did not matter how wide the bounds were that kept him from +his home. He hated the vastness of the half world where he could come +and go unmolested, this bondage that masked itself as such ample +freedom. To be shut out was the same as to be shut in. + +In the first days of his convalescence, while he was yet too weak to +leave his room, he planned and executed many returns to his home. He +went back by stealth, and disguised by the beard which had grown in his +sickness, and tried to see what change had come upon it; but he could +never see it different from what it was that clear winter night when he +escaped from it. This baffled and distressed him, and strengthened the +longing at the bottom of his heart actually to return. He thought that +if he could once look on the misery he had brought upon his children he +could bear it better; he complexly flattered himself that it would not +be so bad in reality as it was in fancy. Sometimes when this wish +harassed him, he said to himself, to still it, that as soon as the first +boat came up the river from Quebec, he would go down with it, and +arrange to surrender himself to the authorities, and abandon the +struggle. + +But as he regained his health, he began to feel that this was a rash and +foolish promise: he thought he saw a better way out of his unhappiness. +It appeared a misfortune once more, and not so much a fault of his. He +was restored to this feeling in part by the respect, the distinction +which he enjoyed in the little village, and which pleasantly recalled +his consequence among the mill-people at Ponkwasset. When he was +declared out of danger he began to receive visits of polite sympathy +from the heads of families, who smoked round him in the evening, and +predicted a renewal of his youth by the fever he had come through +safely. Their prophecies were interpreted by Bird and Pere Etienne, as +with one or other of these he went to repay their visits. Everywhere, +the inmates of the simple, clean little houses, had begun early to +furbish them up for the use of their summer boarders, while they got +ready the shanties behind them for their own occupancy; but everywhere +Northwick was received with that pathetic deference which the poor +render to those capable of bettering their condition. The secret of the +treasure he had brought with him remained safe with the doctor and the +priest, and with Bird who had discovered it with them; but Bird was not +the man to conceal from his neighbors the fact that his guest was a +great American capitalist, who had come to develop the mineral, +agricultural, and manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American +scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished +to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was +impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was +too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he +bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's +reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all +respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought +in Quebec that his name was Warwick, and he knew from Northwick himself +that he was from Chicago; beyond this, if he conjectured that he was the +victim of financial errors, he smoothly kept his guesses to himself and +would not mar the chances of good that Northwick might do with his money +by hinting any question of its origin. The American defaulter was a sort +of hero in Bird's fancy; he had heard much of that character; he would +have experienced no shock at realizing him in Northwick; he would have +accounted for Northwick, and excused him to himself, if need be. The +doctor observed a professional reticence; his affair was with +Northwick's body, which he had treated skilfully. He left his soul to +Pere Etienne, who may have had his diffidence, his delicacy, in dealing +with it, as the soul of a Protestant and a foreigner. + + + + +VII. + + +It took the young priest somewhat longer than it would have taken a man +of Northwick's own language and nation to perceive that his gentlemanly +decorum and grave repose of manner masked a complete ignorance of the +things that interest cultivated people, and that he was merely and +purely a business man, a figment of commercial civilization, with only +the crudest tastes and ambitions outside of the narrow circle of +money-making. He found that he had a pleasure in horses and cattle, and +from hints which Northwick let fall, regarding his life at home, that he +was fond of having a farm and a conservatory with rare plants. But the +flowers were possessions, not passions; he did not speak of them as if +they afforded him any artistic or scientific delight. The young priest +learned that he had put a good deal of money in pictures; but then the +pictures seemed to have become investments, and of the nature of stocks +and bonds. He found that this curious American did not care to read the +English books which Bird offered to lend him out of the little store of +gifts and accidents accumulated in the course of years from bountiful or +forgetful tourists; the books in French Pere Etienne proposed to him, +Northwick said he did not know how to read. He showed no liking for +music, except a little for the singing of Bird's niece, Virginie, but +when the priest thought he might care to understand that she sang the +ballads which the first voyagers had brought from France into the +wilderness, or which had sprung out of the joy and sorrow of its hard +life, he saw that the fact said nothing to Northwick, and that it rather +embarrassed him. The American could not take part in any of those +discussions of abstract questions which the priest and the old woodsman +delighted in, and which they sometimes tried to make him share. He +apparently did not know what they meant. It was only when Pere Etienne +gave him up as the creature of a civilization too ugly and arid to be +borne, that he began to love him as a brother; when he could make +nothing of Northwick's mind, he conceived the hope of saving his soul. + +Pere Etienne felt sure that Northwick had a soul, and he had his +misgivings that it was a troubled one. He, too, had heard of the +American defaulter, who has a celebrity of his own in Canada penetrating +to different men with different suggestion, and touching here and there +a pure and unworldly heart, such as Pere Etienne bore in his breast, +with commiseration. The young priest did not conceive very clearly of +the make and manner of the crime he suspected the elusive and mysterious +stranger of committing; but he imagined that the great sum of money he +knew him possessed of, was spoil of some sort; and he believed that +Northwick's hesitation to employ it in any way was proof of an uneasy +conscience in its possession. Why had he come to that lonely place in +midwinter with a treasure such as that; and why did he keep the money by +him, instead of putting it in a bank? Pere Etienne talked these +questions over with Bird and the doctor, and he could find only one +answer to them. He wondered if he ought not to speak to Northwick, and +delicately offer him the chance to unburden his mind to such a friend as +only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any +approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the +church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and +reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy +necessary to the good which Pere Etienne wished to do the lonely and +silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a piece of +writing, which he always locked carefully into his bag when he left his +room, and which he copied in part or in whole again and again, burning +the rejected drafts in the hearth-fire that had now superseded the +stove, and stirring the carbonized paper into ashes, so that no word was +left distinguishable on it. + +One day there came up the river a bateau from Tadoussac, bringing the +news that the ice was all out of the St. Lawrence. "It will not be long +time, now," said Bird, "before we begin to see you' countrymen. The +steamboats come to Haha Bay in the last of June." + +Northwick responded to the words with no visible sensation. His +sphinx-like reticence vexed Bird more and more, and intolerably deepened +the mystification of his failure to do any of the things with his +capital which Bird had promised himself and his fellow-citizens. He no +longer talked of going to Chicoutimi, that was true, and there was not +the danger of his putting his money into Markham's enterprise there; but +neither did he show any interest or any curiosity concerning Bird's +discovery of the precious metal at Haha Bay. Bird had his delicacy as +well as Pere Etienne, and he could not thrust himself upon his guest, +even with the intention of making their joint fortune. + +A few days later there came to Pere Etienne a letter, which, when he +read it, superseded the interest in Northwick, which Bird felt gnawing +him like a perpetual hunger. It was from the cure at Rimouski, where +Pere Etienne's family lived, and it brought word that his mother, who +had been in failing health all winter, could not long survive, and so +greatly desired to see him, that his correspondent had asked their +superior to allow him to replace Pere Etienne at Haha Bay, while he came +to visit her. Leave had been given, and Pere Etienne might expect his +friend very soon after his letter reached him. + +"Where is Rimouski?" Northwick asked, when he found himself alone with +the priest that evening. + +"It is on the St. Lawrence. It is the last and first point where the +steamers touch in going and coming between Quebec and Liverpool." Pere +Etienne had been weeping, and his heart was softened and emboldened by +the anxiety he felt. "It is my native village--where I lived till I went +to make my studies in the Laval University. It is going home for me. +Perhaps they will let me remain there." He added, by an irresistible +impulse of pity and love, "I wish you were going home, too, Mr. +Warwick!" + +"I wish I were!" said Northwick, with a heavy sigh. "But I can't--yet." + +"This is a desert for you," Pere Etienne pressed on. "I can see that. I +have seen how solitary you are." + +"Yes. It's lonesome," Northwick admitted. + +"My son," said the young priest to the man who was old enough to be his +father, and he put his hand on Northwick's, where it lay on his knee, as +they sat side by side before the fire, "is there something you could +wish to say to me? Something I might do to help you?" + +In a moment all was open between them, and they knew each other's +meaning. "Yes," said Northwick, and he felt the wish to trust in the +priest and to be ruled by him well up like a tide of hot blood from his +heart. It sank back again. This pure soul was too innocent, too unversed +in the world and its ways to know his offence in its right proportion; +to know it as Northwick himself knew it; to be able to account for it +and condone it. The affair, if he could understand it at all, would +shock him; he must blame it as relentlessly as Northwick's own child +would if her love did not save him. With the next word he closed that +which was open between them, a rift in his clouds that heaven itself had +seemed to look through. "I have a letter--a letter that I wish you would +take and mail for me in Rimouski." + +"I will take it with great pleasure," said the priest, but he had the +sadness of a deep disappointment in his tone. + +Northwick was disappointed, too; almost injured. He had something like a +perception that if Pere Etienne had been a coarser, commoner soul, he +could have told him everything, and saved his own soul by the +confession. + +About a month after the priest's departure the first steamboat came up +the Saguenay from Quebec. By this time Bird was a desperate man. +Northwick was still there in his house, with all that money which he +would not employ in any way; at once a temptation and a danger if it +should in any manner become known. The wandering poor, who are known to +the piety of the _habitans_ as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to +Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity +which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye +on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps +both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps +prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave +out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his +wild-beast traps, and suffered his affairs to fall into neglect; but it +was not his failing appetite, or his broken sleep alone that wore upon +him. The disappointment with his guest that was spreading through the +community, involved Bird, and he thought his neighbors looked askance at +him: as if they believed he could have moved Northwick to action, if he +would. Northwick could not have moved himself. He was like one benumbed. +He let the days go by, and made no attempt to realize the schemes for +the retrieval of his fortunes that had brought him to that region. + +The sound of the steamboat's whistle was a joyful sound to Bird. He rose +and went into Northwick's room. Northwick was awake; he had heard the +whistle, too. + +"Now, Mr. Warwick, or what you' name," said Bird, with trembling +eagerness, "that is the boat. I want you take you' money and go hout my +'ouse. Yes, sir. Now! Pack you' things. Don't wait for breakfast. You +get breakfast on board. Go!" + + + + +VIII. + + +The letter which Pere Etienne posted for Northwick at Rimouski was +addressed to the editor of the _Boston Events_, and was published with +every advantage which scare-heading could invent. A young journalist +newly promoted to the management was trying to give the counting-room +proofs of his efficiency in the line of the _Events_' greatest +successes, and he wasted no thrill that the sensation in his hands was +capable of imparting to his readers. Yet the effect was disappointing, +not only in the figure of the immediate sales, but in the cumulative +value of the recognition of the fact that the _Events_ had been selected +by Northwick as the best avenue for approaching the public. The +_Abstract_, in copying and commenting upon the letter, skilfully stabbed +its esteemed contemporary with an acknowledgment of its prime importance +as the organ of the American defaulters in Canada; other papers, after +questioning the document as a fake, made common cause in treating it as +a matter of little or no moment. In fact, there had been many +defalcations since Northwick's; the average of one a day in the +despatches of the Associated Press had been fully kept up, and several +of these had easily surpassed his in the losses involved, and in the +picturesqueness of the circumstances. People generally recalled with an +effort the supremely tragic claim of his case through the rumor of his +death in the railroad accident; those who distinctly remembered it +experienced a certain disgust at the man's willingness to shelter +himself so long in the doubt to which it had left not only the public, +but his own family, concerning his fate. + +The evening after the letter appeared, Hilary was dining one of those +belated Englishmen who sometimes arrive in Boston after most houses are +closed for the summer on the Hill and the Back Bay. Mrs. Hilary and +Louise were already with Matt at his farm for a brief season before +opening their own house at the shore, and Hilary was living _en garcon_. +There were only men at the dinner, and the talk at first ran chiefly to +question of a sufficient incentive for Northwick's peculations; its +absence was the fact which all concurred in owning. In deference to his +guest's ignorance of the matter, Hilary went rapidly over it from the +beginning, and as he did so the perfectly typical character of the man +and of the situation appeared in clear relief. He ended by saying: "It +isn't at all a remarkable instance. There is nothing peculiar about it. +Northwick was well off and he wished to be better off. He had plenty of +other people's money in his hands which he controlled so entirely that +he felt as if it were his own. He used it and he lost it. Then he was +found out, and ran away. That's all." + +"Then, as I understand," said the Englishman, with a strong impression +that he was making a joke, "this Mr. Northwick was _not_ one of your +most remarkable men." + +Everybody laughed obligingly, and Hilary said, "He was one of our +_least_ remarkable men." Then, spurred on by that perverse impulse which +we Americans often have to make the worst of ourselves to an Englishman, +he added, "The defaulter seems to be taking the place of the self-made +man among us. Northwick's a type, a little differentiated from thousands +of others by the rumor of his death in the first place, and now by this +unconsciously hypocritical and nauseous letter. He's what the +commonplace American egotist must come to more and more in finance, now +that he is abandoning the career of politics, and wants to be rich +instead of great." + +"Really?" said the Englishman. + +Among Hilary's guests was Charles Bellingham, a bachelor of pronounced +baldness, who said he would come to meet Hilary's belated Englishman, in +quality of bear-leader to his cousin-in-law, old Bromfield Corey, a +society veteran of that period when even the swell in Boston must be an +intellectual man. He was not only old, but an invalid, and he seldom +left town in summer, and liked to go out to dinner whenever he was +asked. Bellingham came to the rescue of the national repute in his own +fashion. "I can't account for your not locking up your spoons, Hilary, +when you invited me, unless you knew where you could steal some more." + +"Ah, it isn't quite like a gentleman's stealing a few spoons," old Corey +began, in the gentle way he had, and with a certain involuntary +sibilation through the gaps between his front teeth. "It's a much more +heroic thing than an ordinary theft; and I can't let you belittle it as +something commonplace because it happens every day. So does death; so +does birth; but they're not commonplace." + +"They're not so frequent as defalcation with us, quite--especially +birth," suggested Bellingham. + +"No," Corey went on, "every fact of this sort is preceded by the slow +and long decay of a moral nature, and that is of the most eternal and +tragical interest; and"--here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, +whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him--"if it's very common with +us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we +excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed +moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that +it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our +bad teeth have given us the best dentists in the world; our habit of +defalcation hasn't resulted yet in any ethical compensation. Sewell, +here, used to preach about such things, but I'll venture to say we shall +have no homily on Northwick from him next Sunday." + +The Rev. Mr. Sewell suffered the thrust in patience. "What is the use?" +he asked, with a certain sadness. "The preacher's voice is lost in his +sounding-board nowadays, when all the Sunday newspapers are crying aloud +from twenty-eight pages illustrated." + +"Perhaps _they_ are our moralists," Corey suggested. + +"Perhaps," Sewell assented. + +"By the way, Hilary," said Bellingham, "did you ever know who wrote that +article in the _Abstract_, when Northwick's crookedness first appeared?" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It was a young fellow of twenty-four or five." + +"Come off!" said Bellingham, in a slang phrase then making its way into +merited favor. "What's become of him? I haven't seen anything else like +it in the _Abstract_." + +"No, and I'm afraid you're not likely to. The fellow was a reporter on +the paper at the time; but he happened to have looked up the literature +of defalcation, and they let him say his say." + +"It was a very good say." + +"Better than any other he had in him. They let him try again on +different things, but he wasn't up to the work. So the managing editor +said--and he was a friend of the fellow's. He was too literary, I +believe." + +"And what's become of him?" asked Corey. + +"You might get _him_ to read to you," said Bellingham to the old man. He +added to the company, "Corey uses up a fresh reader every three months. +He takes them into his intimacy, and then he finds their society +oppressive." + +"Why," Hilary answered with a little hesitation, "he was out of health, +and Matt had him up to his farm." + +"Is he Matt's only beneficiary?" Corey asked, with a certain tone of +tolerant liking for Matt. "I thought he usually had a larger colony at +Vardley." + +"Well, he has," said Hilary. "But when his mother and sister are +visiting him, he has to reduce their numbers. He can't very well turn +his family away." + +"He might board them out," said Bellingham. + +"Do you suppose," asked Sewell, as if he had not noticed the turn the +talk had taken, "that Northwick has gone to Europe?" + +"I've no doubt he wishes me to suppose so," said Hilary, "and of course +we've had to cable the authorities to look out for him at Moville and +Liverpool, but I feel perfectly sure he's still in Canada, and expects +to make terms for getting home again. He must be horribly homesick." + +"Yes?" Sewell suggested. + +"Yes. Not because he's a man of any delicacy of feeling, or much real +affection for his family. I've no doubt he's fond of them, in a way, but +he's fonder of himself. You can see, all through his letter, that he's +trying to make interest for himself, and that he's quite willing to use +his children if it will tell on the public sympathies. He knows very +well that they're provided for. They own the place at Hatboro'; he +deeded it to them long before his crookedness is known to have begun; +and his creditors couldn't touch it if they wished to. If he had really +that fatherly affection for them, which he appeals to in others, he +wouldn't have left them in doubt whether he was alive or dead for four +or five months, and then dragged them into an open letter asking +forbearance in their name, and promising, for their sake, to right those +he had wronged. The thing is thoroughly indecent." + +Since the fact of Northwick's survival had been established beyond +question by the publication of his letter, Hilary's mind in regard to +him had undergone a great revulsion. It relieved itself with a sharp +rebound from the oppressive sense of responsibility for his death, which +he seemed to have incurred in telling Northwick that the best thing for +him would be a railroad accident. Now that the man was not killed, +Hilary could freely declare, "He made a great mistake in not getting out +of the world, as many of us believed he had; I confess I had rather got +to believe it myself. But he ought at least to have had the grace to +remain dead to the poor creatures he had dishonored till he could repay +the people he had defrauded." + +"Ah! I don't know about that," said Sewell. + +"No? Why not?" + +"Because it would be a kind of romantic deceit that he'd better not keep +up." + +"He seems to have kept it up for the last four or five months," said +Hilary. + +"That's no reason he should continue to keep it up," Sewell persisted. +"Perhaps he never knew of the rumor of his death." + +"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the +newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays." + +"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village +down the St. Lawrence--" + +"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey. + +"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite +different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the +wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to +leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save +their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; +a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false." + +"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they +all laughed. + +"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. +You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to +principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless +creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he +can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, +but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would +come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in +greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!" + +"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey. + +"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that +Northwick is cracked." + +"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every +wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the +last state of the wicked." + +"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to +have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?" + +"What a question!" said Hilary. "You're _as_ bad as my daughter. She +asked me the same thing." + +"I wish I were no worse," said the old man. + +"You speak of his children," said the Englishman. "Hasn't he a wife?" + +"No. Two daughters. One an old maid, and the other a young girl, whom my +daughter knew at school," Hilary answered. + +"I saw the young lady at your house once," said Bellingham, in a certain +way. + +"Yes. She's been here a good deal, first and last." + +"Rather a high-stepping young person, I thought," said Bellingham. + +"She is a proud girl," Hilary admitted. "Rather imperious, in fact." + +"Ah, what's the pride of a young girl?" said Corey. "Something that +comes from her love and goes to it; no separable quality; nothing that's +for herself." + +"Well, I'm not sure of that," said Hilary. "In this case it seems to +have served her own turn. It's enabled her simply and honestly to deny +the fact that her father ever did anything wrong." + +"That's rather fine," Corey remarked, as if tasting it. + +"And what will it enable her to do, now that he's come out and confessed +the frauds himself?" the Englishman asked. + +Hilary shrugged, for answer. He said to Bellingham, "Charles, I want you +to try some of these crabs. I got them for you." + +"Why, this is touching, Hilary," said Bellingham, getting his fat head +round with difficulty to look at them in the dish the man was bringing +to his side. "But I don't know that I should have refused them, even if +they had been got for Corey." + + + + +IX. + + +They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in +Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the +stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a +part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the +provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death. +He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such +a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their +doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that +they had _never_ believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who +acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to +cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his +faith restored him to the esteem of many. + +Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said +Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of +his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an +early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public +opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public +confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good +intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no +question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions--if you will +excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for +repentance--when he makes the first payment to his creditors--I will +believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not _till_ then." + +"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to +say to all this. Can he feel that _his_ skirts are quite clean, acting +that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to +say against him?" + +Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on +the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr. +Putney on any subject." + +In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not +discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their +father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through +Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's +character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack +Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not +obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it." + +"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used +to say against Mr. Northwick?" + +"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington. + +"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger +appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery +of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in +it. + +"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?" + +"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?" + +"Oh, _I_ don't know. What do _you_ think, Jack?" + +"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who +avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a +look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too. + +"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on. +"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved +in Hatboro'--not among the ladies at least." + +Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's +the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men +in my family to say a word against her." + +Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did. +Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul +of a man." + +"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that +they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman," +Mrs. Wilmington teased. + +"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs. +Munger alone to his aunt. + +"_Do_ you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked, +with cosey confidentiality. + +"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very +poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to +her?" + +"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do _like_ a manly man!" + +She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a +further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one +she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of +the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road +so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it. + +"Doctor," she called out, "what _do_ you think of this extraordinary +letter of Mr. Northwick's?" + +Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the +_Events_? Do you think Northwick wrote it?" + +"Why, don't _you_, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal +grievance in her voice. + +"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he _did_ +write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood +you thought he was burned in that accident last winter." + +"Now, _doctor_!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said +always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I +know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. _She_ +will tell me what you think." + +"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all +well." + +"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though, +with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr. +Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself +to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it +be romantic?" + +"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to +see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger. +He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by." + +She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South +Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue, +where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely +drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs. +Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and +in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own +emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South +Hatboro'. + +Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat +crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door +that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her +hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter +in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be +crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, +who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he +had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us, +and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead, +long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's +just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell +us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything +we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do +it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't +complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette, +what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that +he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he +didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you +think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and +tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one +where he was? That _shows_ he's out of his mind. I always thought that +if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied +about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that +was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that +we trusted so much, had broken his word to _us_. That is what kills me." + +The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at +dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world, +as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief +responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if +her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs. + +Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it +of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said. +"We must give it up!" + +"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back. + +"The house--and the farm--and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours." + +"Not ours?" + +"No. That letter makes it theirs--the people's whose money he took. We +must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know +how." + +Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but +Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!" + +"That was _before_. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we +should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give +it to us when he did?" + +"Suzette!" + +"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to +go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because +he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it +up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my +father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to +me, _now_!" + +The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such +natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about +father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his +mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away +because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him +that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to +blame himself. That's the way I look at it." + +"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You +_know_ you don't believe that!" + +Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist +in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's +confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at +last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it, +Suzette; and I have a right." + +"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't +belong to us till father comes back to prove it." + +"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!" + +"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he +isn't--" + +"Suzette! Don't you dare!" + +"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong +to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be +seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole +world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if +we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look _you_ in the +face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either +of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room. + +"Wait! I can't let you--yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline. + +"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat +in her rocking-chair. + +"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering +strength of resistance in her heart. "Because _you've_ been thinking of +it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was +mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for +both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did +use their money--and I don't believe he did--I don't see why I should +give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said, +"And I won't." + +"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette. + +"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so." + +"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr. +Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves +on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so +terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send +Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any +squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the +property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you +don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I +will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to +you. Do you promise?" + +"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of +tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give +it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall +never say that I wanted you should do it." + +"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you +say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft +throat. "_I_ do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I +care as much for them as you do." + +In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive +whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession +of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it," +she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep +it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up." + +Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had +been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained, +"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they +have on my house and lot?" + +"I don't know. I don't care for the law." + +"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father +is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions +made in the letter he has published." + +"I understand that," said the girl. + +"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the +bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing +to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property." + +He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and +Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the +property, they'd let father come back?" + +Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have +got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been +indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There +can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial." + +"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would +make them easier with him?" + +"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't +like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless +you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property." + +"And do you think it has a moral claim?" + +Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked +his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some +peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing +company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a +sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it +makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who +buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns +its bread by the sweat of its capital--neither better nor worse." +Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from +the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative +economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the +Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral +obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a +clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold +on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a +body that hadn't a soul for that purpose." + +Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then +recollected himself, and put it back. + +"There, Suzette!" said Adeline. + +Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with +her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that. +I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the +company, and if you would do it for me at once." + +"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow +morning and see their attorney." + +"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary." + +"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, +if you wish." + +"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the +company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr. +Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my +sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks +you. Will you?" + +"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, +I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole +place must be sold?" + +Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place +sold?" + +"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?" + +"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm." + +Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps--" + +"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the +world. I--" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on +piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But +I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, +need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?" + +"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw +up the writings." + +"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked. + +"Oh, yes; if you wish." + +"I do." + +"It won't be necessary." + +"I wish it." + +Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt +justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl +freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of +course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of +conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought +to make any one else obey one's conscience?" + +"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why +should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the +frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just +as it does?" + +"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood." + +"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of +pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the +right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world. +She would do anything for that. She's as _hard_!" + +"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted. + + + + +X. + + +The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. +"I haven't slept all night--I don't see how _you_ could--and I want you +shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I +want to think it over, first." + +"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first +word. + +Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing +to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr. +Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the +writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand. +I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like." + +"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated. + +"_No_, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's +right; and I want to do what _I_ think is right. I'm almost sick. I want +Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She +broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! _Do_ give me a little +more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do--" + +They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and +they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, +as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast. +Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on +her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him +hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't +agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr. +Putney from writing till you think as _I_ do. But be still, now!" + +"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with +you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me! +And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down +sick." + +She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, +dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, +now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney." + +Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up +and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not +slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened +her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a +bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in +it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the +day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very +difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to +compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world +where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from +thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till +now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for +the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser +wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly +within herself before she spoke with Adeline again. + +That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found +as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over +Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; +heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most +pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely. +But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to +excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade +asked. + +"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is +something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this +letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you +once about Jack Wilmington--" + +Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm +sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have +shown it long ago!" + +"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if +it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a +time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried +tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her +so much more than I; and I didn't know--Is it possible--Perhaps I ought +to ask if _you_ are at all--if _you_ care for her?" + +"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! _Why_ do +you ask?" + +"Because _I_ do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that +when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a +wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength +between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind +made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a +hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him +from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I +thought--I thought that if you, old fellow--But now, it's all right--all +right--" + +Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A +great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their +way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a +cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and +which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow +when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was +scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he +could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no +more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by +his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick +was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants +often find themselves in, but his final perception of his +impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's +hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the +purpose when another wishes to do the talking. + +"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got +anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my +way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and +can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere +bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he +walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of +anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for +the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted +sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I +don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; +summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, +anything like _this_. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad +to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good +sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization." +He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor +father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him." + +Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the +thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he +must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all +rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile +for the purpose of this question. + +"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it +must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise +and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever +been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it, +though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time," +Matt ended, philosophically. + +Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your +family, do they know of your--feeling?" + +"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like +a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added, +despondently. + +Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the +aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to +share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said, +presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation +to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it +very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think +there are very few men like my father?" + +"There are none, Matt!" said Wade. + +"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of +them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered +man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever +loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can." + +"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!" + +"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said +Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I +couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that +she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her +of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I +think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up +altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have +her to _give_ up. Then it's an easy sacrifice." + +"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's +self-satire. + +Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and +looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk. +"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once--to leave her to suffer +it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No +real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might +gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to +think she had given herself through that need--No, it wouldn't do! My +father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and +Louise can be her friend--What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle +it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather +cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I +suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all +the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't +bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I +think I ought to wait." + +"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's +a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and +Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation. + +"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid +it might look calculating and self-interested--" + +"You self-interested, Matt!" + +"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little? +If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and +mother, brother and sister, before all the world?" + +"If you are sure she loves you, yes." + +Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little +condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now. +I've just run over from the farm to see you--" + +"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the +rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly +improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were +immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of +yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as +yourself, to take time before speaking." + +"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade +of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I +should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in +adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much +obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and +helping me to see it in the right light." + +"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation. + +"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think +you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article +on the defalcation in the _Boston Abstract_?" + +"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it, +very humanely--too humanely, perhaps?" + +"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of +that article--a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds +with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no +health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily +newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the +time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who +recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell--that's the fellow's name--and +since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But +he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's +out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative +friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of +the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type--the artistic type +cynicised by the hard conditions of life--newspaper conditions, and then +economic conditions." + +Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful +formulation of Maxwell. + +Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any +use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon +Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he +said, "I think you've decided _so_ wisely, Matt; and justly and +unselfishly." + +"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said +Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of +his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think +it would seem unfeeling--or out of taste, at all--if I went to see her +at such a time?" + +"Why, I can't imagine _your_ doing anything out of taste, Matt." + +"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some +messages by me to her. Will you take them, or--" + +"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's +messages yourself." + +"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid." + + + + +XI. + + +Matt took the lower road that wound away from Wade's church toward the +Northwick place; but as he went, he kept thinking that he must not +really try to see Suzette. It would be monstrous, at such a time; out of +all propriety, of all decency; it would be taking advantage of her +helplessness to intrude upon her the offer of help and of kindness which +every instinct of her nature must revolt from. There was only one thing +that could justify his coming, and that was impossible. Unless he came +to tell her that he loved her, and to ask her to let him take her burden +upon him, to share her shame and her sorrow for his love's sake, he had +no right to see her. At moments it seemed as if that were right and he +could do it, no matter how impossible, and then he almost ran forward; +but only to check himself, to stop short, and doubt whether not to turn +back altogether. By such faltering progresses, he found himself in the +Northwick avenue at last, and keeping doggedly on from the mansion, +which the farm road had brought him to, until he reached the cottage at +the avenue gate. On the threshold drooped a figure that the sight of set +his heart beating with a stifling pulse in his throat, and he floundered +on till he made out that this languid figure was Adeline. He could have +laughed at the irony, the mockery of the anti-climax, if it had not been +for the face that the old maid turned upon him at the approach of his +footfalls, and the pleasure that lighted up its pathos when she +recognized him. + +"_Oh_, Mr. Hilary!" she said; and then she could not speak, for the +twitching of her lips and the trembling of her chin. + +He took her hand in silence, and it seemed natural for him to do that +reverent and tender thing which is no longer a part of our custom; he +bent over it and kissed the chill, bony knuckles. + +She drew her hand away to find her handkerchief and wipe her tears. "I +suppose you've come to see Suzette; but she's gone up to the village to +talk with Mr. Putney; he's our lawyer." + +"Yes," said Matt. + +"I presume I don't need to talk to you about that--letter. I think,--and +I believe Suzette will think so too in the end,--that his mind is +affected, and he just accuses himself of all these things because +they've been burnt into it so. How are your father and mother? And your +sister?" + +She broke off with these questions, he could see, to stay herself in +what she wished to say. "They are all well. Father is still in Boston; +but mother and Louise are at the farm with me. They sent their love, and +they are anxious to know if there is anything--" + +"Thank you. Will you sit down here? It's so close indoors." She made +room for him on the threshold, but he took the step below. + +"I hope Miss Suzette is well?" + +"Why, thank you, not very well. There isn't anything really the matter; +but we didn't either of us sleep very well last night; we were excited. +I don't know as I ought to tell you," she began. "I don't suppose it's a +thing you would know about, any way; but I've got to talk to somebody--" + +"Miss Northwick," said Matt, "if there is anything in the world that I +can do for you, or that you even hope I can do, I _beg_ you to let me +hear it. I should be glad beyond all words to help you." + +"Oh, I don't know as anything can be done," she began, after the fresh +gush of tears which were her thanks, "but Suzette and I have been +talking it over a good deal, and we thought we would like to see your +father about it. You see, Suzette can't feel right about our keeping the +place here, if father's really done what he says he's done. We don't +believe he has; but if he has, he has got to be found somewhere, and +made to give up the money he says he has got. Suzette thinks we ought to +give up the money we have got in the bank--fifteen hundred or two +thousand dollars--and she wanted I should let her give up her half of +the place, here; and at first I _did_ say she might. But come to find +out from Mr. Putney, the whole place would have to be sold before it +could be divided, and I couldn't seem to let it. That was what +we--disputed about. Yes! We had a dispute; but it's all right now, or it +will be, when we get the company to say they will stop the lawsuit +against father, if he will give up the money he's got, and we will give +up the place. Mr. Putney seemed to think the company couldn't stop it; +but I don't see why a rich corporation like that couldn't do almost +anything it wanted to with its money." + +Her innocent corruption did not shock Matt, nor her scheme for defeating +justice; but he smiled forlornly at the hopelessness of it. "I'm afraid +Mr. Putney is right." He was silent, and then at the despair that came +into her face, he hurried on to say, "but I will see my father, Miss +Northwick; I will go down to see him at once; and if anything can be +honorably and fairly done to save your father, I am sure he will try to +do it for your sake. But don't expect anything," he said, getting to his +feet and putting out his hand to her. + +"No, no; I won't," she said, with gratitude that wrung his heart. +"And--won't you wait and see Suzette?" + +Matt reddened. "No; I think not now. But, perhaps, I will come back; +and--and--I will come soon again. Good-by!" + +"Mr. Hilary!" she called after him. He ran back to her. "If--if your +father don't think anything can be done, I don't want he should say +anything about it." + +"Oh, no; certainly not." + +"And, Mr. Hilary! Don't _you_ let Suzette know I spoke to you. _I'll_ +tell her." + +"Why, of course." + +On his way to Boston the affair seemed to grow less and less impossible +to Matt; but he really knew nothing of the legal complications; and when +he proposed it to his father, old Hilary shook his head. "I don't +believe it could be done. The man's regularly indicted, and he's in +contempt of court as long as he doesn't present himself for trial. +That's the way I understand it. But I'll see our counsel. Whose scheme +is this?" + +"I don't know. Miss Northwick told me of it; but I fancied Miss +Suzette--" + +"Yes," said Hilary. "It must have cost her almost her life to give up +her faith in that pitiful rascal." + +"But after she had done that, it would cost her nothing to give up the +property, and as I understood Miss Northwick, that was her sister's +first impulse. She wished to give up her half of the estate +unconditionally; but Miss Northwick wouldn't consent, and they +compromised on the conditions she told me of." + +"Well," said Hilary, "I think Miss Northwick showed the most sense. But +of course, Sue's a noble girl. She almost transfigures that old +scoundrel of a father of hers. That fellow--Jack Wilmington--ought to +come forward now and show himself a man, if he _is_ one. _Any_ man might +be proud of such a girl's love--and they say she was in love with him. +But he seems to have preferred to dangle after his uncle's wife. He +isn't good enough for her, and probably he always knew it." + +Matt profited by the musing fit that came upon his father, to go and +look at the picture over the mantel. It was not a new picture; but he +did not feel that he was using his father quite frankly; and he kept +looking at it for that reason. + +"If those poor creatures gave up their property, what would they do? +They've absolutely nothing else in the world!" + +"I fancy," said Matt, "that isn't a consideration that would weigh with +Suzette Northwick." + +"No. If there's anything in heredity, the father of such a girl must +have some good in him. Of course, they wouldn't be allowed to suffer." + +"Do you mean that the company would regard the fact that it had no legal +claim on the property, and would recognize it in their behalf?" + +"The company!" Hilary roared. "The company has _no_ right to that +property, moral _or_ legal. But we should act as if we had. If it were +unconditionally offered to us, we ought to acknowledge it as an act of +charity to us, and not of restitution. But every man Jack of us would +hold out for a right to it that didn't exist, and we should take it as +part of our due; and I should be such a coward that I couldn't tell the +Board what I thought of our pusillanimity." + +"It seems rather hard for men to act magnanimously in a corporate +capacity, or even humanely," said Matt. "But I don't know but there +would be an obscure and negative justice in such action. It would be +right for the company to accept the property, if it was right for +Northwick's daughter to offer it, and I think it is most unquestionably +right for her to do that." + +"Do you, Matt? Well, well," said Hilary, willing to be comforted, +"perhaps you're right. You must send Louise and your mother over to see +her." + +"Well, perhaps not just now. She's proud and sensitive, and perhaps it +might seem intrusive, at this juncture?" + +"Intrusive? Nonsense! She'll be glad to see them. Send them right over!" + +Matt knew this was his father's way of yielding the point, and he went +away with his promise to say nothing of the matter they had talked of +till he heard from Putney. After that would be time enough to ascertain +the whereabouts of Northwick, which no one knew yet, not even his own +children. + +What his father had said in praise of Suzette gave his love for her +unconscious approval; but at the same time it created a sort of comedy +situation, and Matt was as far from the comic as he hoped he was from +the romantic, in his mood. When he thought of going direct to her, he +hated to be going, like the hero of a novel, to offer himself to the +heroine at the moment her fortunes were darkest; but he knew that he was +only like that outwardly, and inwardly was simply and humbly her lover, +who wished in any way or any measure he might, to be her friend and +helper. He thought he might put his offer in some such form as would +leave her free to avail herself a little if not much of his longing to +comfort and support her in her trial. But at last he saw that he could +do nothing for the present, and that it would be cruel and useless to +give her more than the tried help of a faithful friend. He did not go +back to Hatboro', as he longed to do. He went back to his farm, and +possessed his soul in such patience as he could. + + + + +XII. + + +Suzette came back from Putney's office with such a disheartened look +that Adeline had not the courage to tell her of Matt's visit and the +errand he had undertaken for her. The lawyer had said no more than that +he did not believe anything could be done. He was glad they had decided +not to transfer their property to the company, without first trying to +make interest for their father with it; that was their right, and their +duty; and he would try what could be done; but he warned Suzette that he +should probably fail. + +"And then what did he think we ought to do?" Adeline asked. + +"He didn't say," Suzette answered. + +"I presume," Adeline went on, after a little pause, "that you would like +to give up the property, anyway. Well, you can do it, Suzette." The joy +she might have expected did not show itself in her sister's face, and +she added, "I've thought it all over, and I see it as you do, now. +Only," she quavered, "I do want to do all I can for poor father, first." + +"Yes," said Suzette, spiritlessly, "Mr. Putney said we ought." + +"Sue," said Adeline, after another little pause, "I don't know what +you'll think of me, for what I've done. Mr. Hilary has been here--" + +"Mr. Hilary!" + +"Yes. He came over from his farm--" + +"Oh! I thought you meant his father." The color began to mount into the +girl's cheeks. + +"Louise and Mrs. Hilary sent their love, and they all want to do +anything they can; and--and I told Mr. Hilary what we were going to try; +and--he said he would speak to his father about it; and--Oh, Suzette, +I'm afraid I've done more than I ought!" + +Suzette was silent, and then, "No," she said, "I can't see what harm +there could be in it." + +"He said," Adeline pursued with joyful relief, "he wouldn't let his +father speak to the rest about it, till we were ready; and I know he'll +do all he can for us. Don't you?" + +Sue answered, "I don't see what harm it can do for him to speak to his +father. I hope, Adeline," she added, with the severity Adeline had +dreaded, "you didn't ask it as a favor from him?" + +"No, no! I didn't indeed, Sue! It came naturally. He offered to do it." + +"Well," said Suzette, with a sort of relaxation, and she fell back in +the chair where she had been sitting. + +"I don't see," said Adeline, with an anxious look at the girl's worn +face, "but what we'd both better have the doctor." + +"Ah, the doctor!" cried Suzette. "What can the doctor do for troubles +like ours?" She put up her hands to her face, and bowed herself on them, +and sobbed, with the first tears she had shed since the worst had come +upon them. + +The company's counsel submitted Putney's overtures, as he expected, to +the State's attorney, in the hypothetical form, and the State's +attorney, as Putney expected, dealt with the actuality. He said that +when Northwick's friends communicated with him and ascertained his +readiness to surrender the money he had with him, and to make +restitution in every possible way, it would be time to talk of a _nolle +prosequi_. In the meantime, by the fact of absconding he was in contempt +of court. He must return and submit himself for trial, and take the +chance of a merciful sentence. + +There could be no other answer, he said, and he could give none for +Putney to carry back to the defaulter's daughters. + +Suzette received it in silence, as if she had nerved herself up to bear +it so. Adeline had faltered between her hopes and fears, but she had +apparently decided how she should receive the worst, if the worst came. + +"Well, then," she said, "we must give up the place. You can get the +papers ready, Mr. Putney." + +"I will do whatever you say, Miss Northwick." + +"Yes, and I don't want you to think that I don't want to do it. It's my +doing now; and if my sister was all against it, I should wish to do it +all the same." + +Matt Hilary learned from his father the result of the conference with +the State's attorney, and he came up to Hatboro' the next day, to see +Putney on his father's behalf, and to express the wish of his family +that Mr. Putney would let them do anything he could think of for his +clients. He got his message out bunglingly, with embarrassed +circumlocution and repetition; but this was what it came to in the end. + +Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his +mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes +burn on Matt's kindly face. + +"Well, sir," he said, "what do _you_ think can be done for two women, +brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?" + +"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked. + +"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make +their whole estate over to the Ponkwasset Mills Company--" + +"But I thought--I thought they might have something +besides--something--" + +"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to +their credit when he went away; but I've had their instructions to pay +that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?" + +"It isn't my company," said Matt. "I've nothing whatever to do with +it--or any company. But I've no doubt they'll accept it." + +"They can't do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the +predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just +nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he +proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to +death, or living on charity. And I don't believe," said Putney, breaking +down with a laugh, "they've the slightest notion of doing either." + +Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before +him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, +and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her +father's shame. + +"Of course," he said, "they mustn't be allowed to suffer. We shall count +upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive +somehow not to let them know that they are destitute." + +"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its +seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer +in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, +who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I +mean by every step I take? You're acquainted with Miss Suzette, I +suppose?" + +"Yes," said Matt, consciously. + +"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her +mind to starve, wouldn't know what you were up to if you pretended to +have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?" + +"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no +claim on the property, none whatever!" + +"Now you're shouting." Putney put a comfortable mass of tobacco in his +mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it. + +"They mustn't take it--they won't take it!" cried Matt. + +Putney laughed scornfully. + + + + +XIII. + + +Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous +railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape +the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not +go to see them, and find out some way to help them. + +Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the noble +action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette. + +"Yes, it is noble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn't do +it." + +"Why, mamma?" + +"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well +as they were; and the company doesn't need it; but now where will they +go? What will become of them?" + +Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking. + +"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they +are, for the present, and that they won't be actually houseless. But +they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their +support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself +that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live +on." + +"I _knew_ Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came +out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But +that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no +peace till she had given up everything--everything!" + +"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they--has Suzette--any +plans?" + +"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the +bank," said Matt, forlornly. + +"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, +"they've all managed as badly as they could." + +"Well, mother, they hadn't a very hopeful case, to begin with," said +Matt, and Louise smiled. + +"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs. +Hilary pursued. + +"He was annoyed, but I couldn't see that he had lost his appetite. I +don't think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, +though." + +"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don't know +just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and +see them. They don't seem to have any one else. It is very strange that +they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated +upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try +what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment's pause. + +They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the +end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I +shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the +shore." + +"Oh!" said Louise. + +"Yes; I don't like his being in town so late." + +"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don't you get +him to come up here?" + +"He's been asked," said Matt. + +"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise assented. She rose and went +to the glass door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was +filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think +what we can do for Suzette." + +Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and +listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two +voices retreated together, and Louise's laugh made itself heard farther +off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary. + +"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light +nature himself at that moment. "But I don't know that there is anything +wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily." + +"Oh, I don't mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she +is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I'm +afraid she doesn't feel things deeply. Matt, I don't believe I like this +protege of yours." + +"Maxwell?" + +"Yes. He's too intense." + +"Aren't you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don't like +Louise's lightness, and you don't like Maxwell's intensity. I think +he'll get over that. He's sick, poor fellow; he won't be so intense when +he gets better." + +"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, +abruptly, "I hope Louise's sympathies will be concentrated on Sue +Northwick for awhile, now."' + +"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I'm sure Louise has +shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I +hadn't supposed she was so attached to her--so constant--" + +"She's romantic; but she's worldly; she likes the world and its ways. +There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of +the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out +of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe. +Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, +because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize. +But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away +she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!" +Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be _entirely_ worldly, it +wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes +in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask +her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly +not a simple character--like Sue Northwick, for instance." + +Matt now roused himself. "Is _she_ a simple character?" he asked, with a +show of indifference. + +"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains +everything she does." + +"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in +openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived +himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with +something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine +her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a +wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her +with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now." + +"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than +could have been expected of her father's daughter." + +Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to +answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of +the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick +with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me +that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall +find it difficult to discharge with delicacy." + +"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?" + +"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property +which she is going to give up." + +"We are not the company." + +"Father is the president." + +"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused +it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why +should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do +what is right and proper--even what is delicate--with Miss Northwick." + +"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that." + +"You said something like it, my dear." + +"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her +alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that _we_ +realize all that she is doing." + +"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite +frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and +I wished she wouldn't do it." + + + + +XIV. + + +The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June +day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in +his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, +and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, +with a cushion clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was +pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his +thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted +herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent +gaze. + +"Have you got through?" + +"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to +the camp." + +"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the +importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick +man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her. + +"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But +I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?" + +"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor +and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his +shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly +across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about +the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun +struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their +needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and +through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of +a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place +was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just +beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it. + +Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and +high boots, and his cork helmet topping all. + +"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, +Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?" + +Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up +from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell--" + +"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the +camp." + +"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you +think he is, this morning?" + +"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast." + +"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere +out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a +girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at +such a time as this?" + +"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely. +"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't +know what she _will_ do. If Jack Wilmington--but he never really cared +for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be." + +"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now." + +Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she +still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know +that he cared for her." + +"But her pride--wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal +terms--" + +"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a +person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a +thing as that there _is_ no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are +just alike--like cats in the dark." + +"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting +to them before, came into his eyes. + +"I _know_ so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington +still--" + +"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston +to-morrow, and see father--Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow +evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it." + +Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine +before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters. + +"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm +at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that +I thought perhaps you might want to see at once." + +He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. +"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse +me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when +he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; +but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to +feel like work, for the first time since I came up here." + +"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the +board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the +hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. +You must stay the whole summer." + +"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his +side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like." + +"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they +will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly +well?" + +"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one +thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the +light and shade flecks on her face and figure. + +"I _know_ you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted. + +"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor +people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a +caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility." + +"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse +than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will +let you help them." + +"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if +you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're +surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if +you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor +folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to +do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of +riches." + +"You would make me hateful." + +"I would make you charming." + +"Well, do me, then!" + +"Ah, you wouldn't like it." + +"Why?" + +"Because--I found it out in my newspaper work, when I had to interview +people and write them up--people don't like to have the good points they +have, recognized; they want you to celebrate the good points they +haven't got. If a man is amiable and kind and has something about him +that wins everybody's heart, he wants to be portrayed as a very +dignified and commanding character, full of inflexible purpose and +indomitable will." + +"I don't see," said Louise, "why you think I'm weak, and low-minded, and +undignified." + +Maxwell laughed. "Did I say something of that kind?" + +"You meant it." + +"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of +apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound +knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the +most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you +like that?" + +"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be +interviewed." + +"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if +I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I +shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the +_Abstract_. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be +read for me." + +"What do you mean?" + +"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up +newspaper work altogether." + +"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal +sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much +would you get for your play?" + +"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six +thousand dollars a year." + +"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness. + +He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and +asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this +time?" + +"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I +should _like_ to." + +Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't +humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your +imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough." + +"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked. +"But _I_ know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give +up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he +had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at +all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her +sister will have nothing to live on. And they _won't_ let themselves be +helped--any more than--than--_you_ will!" + +"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them. +Don't they know where their father is?" + +"No. But of course they must, now, before long." + +Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like +to have a peep into that man's soul." + +"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise. + +"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children--" + +"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he +always made me feel creepy." + +"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and +to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you +could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on +them, and forced them to beggar themselves--it would be a tremendous +situation." + +"But I shouldn't _like_ to see him at such a time. It seems to me, +that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell." + +There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt. +It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the +artistic point of view." + +"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be +about any such thing as that--" + +"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic +motive." + +"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not +know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, +but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the +letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you +want this?" + +"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, +"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want +the _true_ artistic point of view." + +"Is he a literary man?" + +"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the +_Events_--when it first came out? All illustrations?" + +"_That?_ I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps +he's your friend--" + +"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. +"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood +frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss +Hilary, though he _is_ a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good +material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has +only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his +generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five +minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't +keep still." + +"I should think she would detest him." + +"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's +affecting to witness their devotion--or it would be if it were not such +a bore." + +"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter. + + + + +XV. + + +Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found +himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the +back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had +the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he +pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea, +though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were +never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they +liked Matt. + +Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions. +"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked. + +"Yes. Where is Maxwell?" + +"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the +ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees. + +Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the +hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall. + +"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of +the good comradeship he felt for all living things. + +"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of +the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard." + +"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is." + +"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it." + +"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that +probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he +wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but +somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against +odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the +chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But +I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself." + +"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he +doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even +as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that." + +"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt, +smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young; +he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now." + +"He's older than I am!" said Louise. + +"He hasn't seen so much of the world." + +"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice +as we supposed. I should call him dangerous." + +"Oh, I shouldn't say _that_, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly +hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner." + +"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long +tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her +lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you +suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn. + +Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem +which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl +lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not +know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe +Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging +over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still +opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion +of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've +the time." + +"Well, after dinner," said Matt. + +Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long +slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully +folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the +language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he +usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper. + +"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The +_Events_ is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which +meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and +have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the +change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social +science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing +that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of +belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up +in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got +a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That +letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and +I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy. +Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe--of course he +didn't!--but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't +believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business +with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his +investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with +him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am +not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a +detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over +the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends +of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but +I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel, +and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec, +while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I +shall need active help. + +"Now, I liked some things in that _Abstract_ article of yours; it was +snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject. +It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that +could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So +I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into +the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My +idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we +have not only got to get _at_ him, but we have got to _get_ him; and get +him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral +suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect +will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you +believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and +spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously +work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a +great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have +our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all, +whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the +fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in +all eternity. + +"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my +wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. _I want you, +old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you._ If this thing goes through, I +shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the _Events_. I +expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall +secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E. +Maxwell, and don't you forget it. + +"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got +to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let +the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a +lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work +him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a +bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and +show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward +virtue." + + + + +XVI. + + +Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney +was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case for _The Events_. +He said, after Matt had finished reading the letter, "I thought you +would like to know about this. I don't regard Pinney's claim on my +silence where you're concerned; in fact, I don't feel bound to him, +anyway." + +"Thank you," said Matt. "Then I suppose his proposal doesn't tempt you?" + +"Why, yes it does. But not as he imagines. I should like such an +adventure well enough, because it would give me a glimpse of life and +character that I should like to know something about. But the reporter +business and the detective business wouldn't attract me." + +"No, I should suppose not," said Matt. "What sort of fellow, personally, +is this--Pinney?" + +"Oh, he isn't bad. He is a regular type," said Maxwell, with tacit +enjoyment of the typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in +the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They +don't know much in the _Events_ office; but they do know Pinney. He's a +great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities +of private life than--Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn +his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very +domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby +now, and I've no doubt Pinney is a pattern to parents. He's always +advising you to get married; but he's a born Bohemian. He's the most +harmless creature in the world, so far as intentions go, and quite +soft-hearted, but he wouldn't spare his dearest friend if he could make +copy of him; it would be impossible. I should say he was first a +newspaper man, and then a man. He's an awfully common nature, and hasn't +the first literary instinct. If I had any mystery, or mere privacy that +I wanted to guard; and I thought Pinney was on the scent of it, I +shouldn't have any more scruple in setting my foot on him than I would +on that snake." + +A little reptile, allured by their immobility, had crept out of the +stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes +at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous +scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and +ground it into the earth. + +Matt winced at the anguish of the twisting and writhing thing. "Ah, I +don't think I should have killed it!" + +"I should," said Maxwell. + +"Then you think one couldn't trust him?" + +"Yes. If you put your foot on him in some sort of agreement, and kept it +there. Why, of course! Any man can be held. But don't let Pinney have +room to wriggle." + +They turned, and walked away, Matt keeping the image of the tormented +snake in his mind; it somehow mixed there with the idea of Pinney, and +unconsciously softened him toward the reporter. + +"Would there be any harm," he asked, after a while, "in my acting on a +knowledge of this letter in behalf of Mr. Northwick's family?" + +"Not a bit," said Maxwell. "I make you perfectly free of it, as far as +I'm concerned; and it can't hurt Pinney, even if he ought to be spared. +_He_ wouldn't spare _you_." + +"I don't know," said Matt, "that I could justify myself in hurting him +on that ground. I shall be careful about him. I don't at all know that I +shall want to use it; but it has just struck me that perhaps--But I +don't know! I should have to talk with their attorney--I will see about +it! And I thank you very much, Mr. Maxwell." + +"Look here, Mr. Hilary!" said Maxwell. "Use Pinney all you please, and +all you can; but I warn you he is a dangerous tool. He doesn't mean any +harm till he's tempted, and when it's done he doesn't think it's any +harm. He isn't to be trusted an instant beyond his self-interest; and +yet he has flashes of unselfishness that would deceive the very elect. +Good heavens!" cried Maxwell, "if I could get such a character as +Pinney's into a story or a play, I wouldn't take odds from any man +living!" + +His notion, whatever it was, grew upon Matt, so that he waited more and +more impatiently for his mother's return, in order to act upon it. When +she did get back to the farm she could only report from the Northwicks +that she had said pretty much what she thought she would like to say to +Suzette concerning her wilfulness and obstinacy in wishing to give up +her property; but Matt inferred that she had at the same time been able +to infuse so much motherly comfort into her scolding that it had left +the girl consoled and encouraged. She had found out from Adeline that +their great distress was not knowing yet where their father was. +Apparently he thought that his published letter was sufficient +reassurance for the time being. Perhaps he did not wish them to get at +him in any way, or to have his purposes affected by any appeal from +them. Perhaps, as Adeline firmly believed, his mind had been warped by +his suffering--he must have suffered greatly--and he was not able to +reason quite sanely about the situation. Mrs. Hilary spoke of the +dignity and strength which both the sisters showed in their trial and +present stress. She praised Suzette, especially; she said her trouble +seemed to have softened and chastened her; she was really a noble girl, +and she had sent her love to Louise; they had both wished to be +remembered to every one. "Adeline, especially, wished to be remembered +to you, Matt; she said they should never forget your kindness." + +Matt got over to Hatboro' the next day, and went to see Putney, who +received him with some ironical politeness, when Matt said he had come +hoping to be useful to his clients, the Miss Northwicks. + +"Well, we all hope something of that kind, Mr. Hilary. You were here on +a mission of that kind before. But may I ask why you think I should +believe you wish to be useful to them?" + +"Why?" + +"Yes. Your father is the president of the company Mr. Northwick had his +little embarrassment with, and the natural presumption would be that you +could not really be friendly toward his family." + +"But we _are_ friendly! All of us! My father would do them any service +in his power, consistent with his duty to--to--his business associates." + +"Ah, that's just the point. And you would all do anything you could for +them, consistent with your duty to him. That's perfectly +right--perfectly natural. But you must see that it doesn't form a ground +of common interest for us. I talked with you about the Miss Northwicks' +affairs the other day--too much, I think. But I can't to-day. I shall be +glad to converse with you on any other topic--discuss the ways of God to +man, or any little interest of that kind. But unless I can see my way +clearer to confidence between us in regard to my clients' affairs than I +do at present, I must avoid them." + +It was absurd; but in his high good-will toward Adeline, and in his +latent tenderness for Suzette, Matt was hurt by the lawyer's distrust, +somewhat as you are hurt when the cashier of a strange bank turns over +your check and says you must bring some one to recognize you. It cost +Matt a pang; it took him a moment to own that Putney was right. Then he +said, "Of course, I must offer you proof somehow that I've come to you +in good faith. I don't know exactly how I shall be able to do it. Would +the assurance of my friend, Mr. Wade, the rector of St. Michael's--" + +The name seemed to affect Putney pleasantly; he smiled, and then he +said, "Brother Wade is a good man, and his words usually carry +conviction, but this is a serious subject, Mr. Hilary." He laughed, and +concluded earnestly, "You _must_ know that I can't talk with you on any +such authority. I couldn't talk with Mr. Wade himself." + +"No, no; of course not," Matt assented; and he took himself off +crestfallen, ashamed of his own short-sightedness. + +There was only one way out of the trouble, and now he blamed himself for +not having tried to take that way at the outset. He had justified +himself in shrinking from it by many plausible excuses, but he could +justify himself no longer. He rejoiced in feeling compelled, as it were, +to take it. At least, now, he should not be acting from any selfish +impulse, and if there were anything unseemly in what he was going to do, +he should have no regrets on that score, even in the shame of failure. + + + + +XVII. + + +Matt Hilary gave himself time, on his way to the Northwick place, or at +least as much time as would pass between walking and driving, but that +was because he was impatient, and his own going seemed faster to his +nerves than that of the swiftest horse could have seemed. At the crest +of the upland which divides Hatboro' from South Hatboro', and just +beyond the avenue leading to Dr. Morrell's house, he met Sue Northwick; +she was walking quickly, too. She was in mourning, but she had put aside +her long, crape veil, and she came towards him with her proud face +framed in the black, and looking the paler for it; a little of her +yellow hair showed under her bonnet. She moved imperiously, and Matt was +afraid to think what he was thinking at sight of her. She seemed not to +know him at first, or rather not to realize that it was he; when she +did, a joyful light, which she did not try to hide from him, flashed +over her visage; and "Mr. Hilary!" she said as simply and hospitably as +if their last parting had not been on terms of enmity that nothing could +clear up or explain away. + +He ran forward and caught her hand. "Oh, I am so glad," he said. "I was +going out to see you about something--very important; and I might have +missed you." + +"No. I was just coming to the doctor's, and then I was going back. My +sister isn't at all well, and I thought she'd better see the doctor." + +"It's nothing serious, I hope?" + +"Oh, no. I think she's a little worn out."' + +"I know!" said Matt, with intelligence, and nothing more was said +between them as to the cause or nature of Adeline's sickness. Matt asked +if he might go up the doctor's avenue with her, and they walked along +together under the mingling elm and maple tops, but he deferred the +matter he wished to speak of. They found a little girl playing in the +road near the house, and Sue asked, "Is your father at home, Idella?" + +"Mamma is at home," said the child. She ran forward, calling toward the +open doors and windows, "Mamma! Mamma! Here's a lady!" + +"It isn't their child," Sue explained. "It's the daughter of the +minister who was killed on the railroad, here, a year or two ago--a very +strange man, Mr. Peck." + +"I have heard Wade speak of him," said Matt. + +A handsome and very happy looking woman came to the door, and stilled +the little one's boisterous proclamation to the hoarse whisper of, "A +lady! A lady!" as she took her hand; but she did not rebuke or correct +her. + +"How do you do, Mrs. Morrell," said Suzette, with rather a haughty +distance; but Matt felt that she kept aloof with the pride of a person +who comes from an infected house, and will not put herself at the risk +of avoidance. "I wished to see Dr. Morrell about my sister. She isn't +well. Will you kindly ask him to call?" + +"I will send him as soon as he comes," said Mrs. Morrell, giving Matt +that glance of liking which no good woman could withhold. "Unless," she +added, "you would like to come in and wait for him." + +"Thank you, no," said Suzette. "I must go back to her. Good-by." + +"Good-by!" said Mrs. Morrell. + +Matt raised his hat and silently bowed; but as they turned away, he said +to Suzette, "What a happy face! What a lovely face! What a _good_ face!" + +"She is a very good woman," said the girl. "She has been very kind to +us. But so has everybody. I couldn't have believed it." In fact, it was +only the kindness of their neighbors that had come near the defaulter's +daughters; the harshness and the hate had kept away. + +"Why shouldn't they be kind?" Matt demanded, with his heart instantly in +his throat. "I can't imagine--at such a time--Don't you know that I love +you?" he entreated, as if that exactly followed; there was, perhaps, a +subtle spiritual sequence, transcending all order of logic in the +expression of his passion. + +She looked at him over her shoulder as he walked by her side, and said, +with neither surprise nor joy, "How can you say such a thing to me?" + +"Because it is true! Because I can't help it! Because I wish to be +everything to you, and I have to begin by saying that. But don't answer +me now; you need never answer me. I only wish you to use me as you would +use some one who loved you beyond anything on earth,--as freely as that, +and yet not be bound or hampered by me in the least. Can you do that? I +mean, can you feel, 'This is my best friend, the truest friend that any +one can have, and I will let him do anything and everything he wishes +for me.' Can you do that,--say that?" + +"But how could I do that? I don't understand you!" she said, faintly. + +"Don't you? I am so glad you don't drive me from you--" + +"I? _You!_" + +"I was afraid--But now we can speak reasonably about it; I don't see why +people shouldn't. I know it's shocking to speak to you of such a thing +at such a time. It's dreadful; and yet I can't feel wrong to have done +it! No! If it's as sacred as it seems to me when I think of it, then it +couldn't be wrong in the presence of death itself. I do love you; and I +want you some day for my wife. Yes! But don't answer that now! If you +never answer me, or if you deny me at last, still I want you to let me +be your true lover, while I can, and to do everything that your accepted +lover could, whether you ever look at me again or not. Couldn't you do +that?" + +"You know I couldn't," she answered, simply. + +"Couldn't you?" he asked, and he fell into a forlorn silence, as if he +could not say anything more. He forced her to take the word by asking, +"Then you are offended with me?" + +"How could I be?" + +"Oh--" + +"It's what any girl might be glad of--" + +"Oh, my--" + +"And I am not so silly as to think there can be a wrong time for it. If +there were, you would make it right, if you chose it. You couldn't do +anything I should think wrong. And I--I--love you, too--" + +"Suzette! Suzette!" he called wildly, as if she were a great way off. It +seemed to him his heart would burst. He got awkwardly before her, and +tried to seize her hand. + +She slipped by him, with a pathetic "Don't! But you know I never could +be your wife. You _know_ that." + +"I don't know it. Why shouldn't you?" + +"Because I couldn't bring my father's shame on my husband." + +"It wouldn't touch me, any more than it touches you!" + +"It would touch your father and mother--and Louise." + +"They all admire you and honor you. They think you're everything that's +true and grand." + +"Yes, while I keep to myself. And I shall keep to myself. I know how; +and I shall not give way. Don't think it!" + +"You will do what is right. I shall think that." + +"Don't praise me! I can't bear it." + +"But I love you, and how can I help praising you? And if you love me--" + +"I do. I do, with all my heart." She turned and gave him an impassioned +look from the height of her inapproachability. + +"Then I won't ask you to be my wife, Suzette! I know how you feel; I +won't be such a liar as to pretend I don't. And I will respect your +feeling, as the holiest thing on earth. And if you wish, we will be +engaged as no other lovers ever were. You shall promise nothing but to +let me help you all I can, for our love's sake, and I will promise never +to speak to you of our love again. That shall be our secret--our +engagement. Will you promise?" + +"It will be hard for you," she said, with a pitying look, which perhaps +tried him as sorely as anything could. + +"Not if I can believe I am making it easy for you." + +They walked along, and she said with averted eyes, that he knew had +tears in them, "I promise." + +"And I promise, too," he said. + +She impulsively put out her left hand toward him, and he held its slim +fingers in his right a moment, and then let it drop. They both honestly +thought they had got the better of that which laughs from its +innumerable disguises at all stratagems and all devices to escape it. + +"And now," he said, "I want to talk to you about what brought me over +here to-day. I thought at first that I was only going to see your +lawyer." + + + + +XVIII. + + +Matt felt that he need now no longer practise those reserves in speaking +to Sue of her father, which he had observed so painfully hitherto. +Neither did she shrink from the fact they had to deal with. In the trust +established between them, they spoke of it all openly, and if there was +any difference in them concerning it, the difference was in his greater +forbearance toward the unhappy man. They both spoke of his wrong-doing +as if it were his infirmity; they could not do otherwise; and they both +insensibly assumed his irresponsibility in a measure; they dwelt in the +fiction or the persuasion of a mental obliquity which would account for +otherwise unaccountable things. + +"It is what my sister has always said," Sue eagerly assented to his +suggestion of this theory. "I suppose it's what I've always believed, +too, somehow, or I couldn't have lived." + +"Yes; yes, it _must_ be so," Matt insisted. "But now the question is how +to reach him, and make some beginning of the end with him. I suppose +it's the suspense and the uncertainty that is breaking your sister +down?" + +"Yes--that and what we ought to do about giving up the property. +We--quarrelled about that at first; we couldn't see it alike; but now +I've yielded; we've both yielded; and we don't know what to do." + +"We must talk all that over with your lawyer, in connection with +something I've just heard of." He told her of Pinney's scheme, and he +said, "We must see if we can't turn it to account." + +They agreed not to talk of her father with Adeline, but she began it +herself. She looked very old and frail, as she sat nervously rocking +herself in a corner of the cottage parlor, and her voice had a sharp, +anxious note. "What I think is, that now we know father is alive, we +oughtn't to do anything about the property without hearing from him. It +stands to reason, don't you think it does, Mr. Hilary, that he would +know better than anybody else, what we ought to do. Any rate, I think we +ought to wait and consult with him about it, and see what he says. The +property belonged to mother in the first place, and he mightn't like to +have us part with it." + +"I don't think you need trouble about that, now, Miss Northwick," said +Matt. "Nothing need be done about the property at present." + +"But I keep thinking about it. I want to do what Sue thinks is right, +and to see it just in the light she does; and I've told her I would do +exactly as she said about it; but now she won't say; and so I think +we've got to wait and hear from father. Don't you?" + +"Decidedly, I think you ought to do nothing now, till you hear from +him," said Matt. + +"I knew you would," said the old maid, "and if Sue will be ruled by me, +she'll see that it will all turn out right. I know father, and I know +he'll want to do what is sensible, and at the same time honorable. He is +a person who could never bear to wrong any one out of a cent." + +"Well," said Sue, "we will do what Mr. Hilary says; and now, try not to +worry about it any more," she coaxed. + +"Oh, yes! It's well enough to say not to worry _now_, when my mind's got +going on it," said the old maid, querulously; she flung her weak frame +against the chair-back, and she began to wipe the gathering tears. "But +if you'd agreed with me in the first place, it wouldn't have come to +this. Now I'm all broken down, and I don't know _when_ I shall be well +again." + +It was a painful moment; Sue patiently adjusted the cushion to her +sister's shoulders, while Adeline's tongue ran helplessly on. "You were +so headstrong and stubborn, I thought you would kill me. You were just +like a rock, and I could beat myself to pieces against you, and you +wouldn't move." + +"I was wrong," said the proud girl, meekly. + +"I'm sure," Adeline whimpered, "I hate to make an exhibition before Mr. +Hilary, as much as any one, but I can't help it; no, I can't. My nerves +are _all_ gone." + +The doctor came, and Sue followed Matt out of doors, to leave her, for +the first few confidential moments, sacred to the flow of symptoms, +alone with the physician. There was a little sequestered space among the +avenue firs beside the lodge, with a bench, toward which he led the way, +but the girl would not sit down. She stood with her arms fallen at her +side, and looked him steadily in the face. + +"It's all true that she said of me. I set myself like a rock against +her. I have made her sick, and if she died, I should be her murderer!" + +He put his arms round her, and folded her to his heart. "Oh, my love, my +love, my love!" he lamented and exulted over her. + +She did not try to resist; she let her arms hang at her side; she said, +"Is _this_ the way we keep our word?--Already!" + +"Our word was made to be broken; we must have meant it so. I'm glad we +could break it so soon. Now I can truly help you; now that you are to be +my wife." + +She did not gainsay him, but she asked, "What will you think when you +know--you must have known that I used to care for some else; but he +never cared for me? It ought to make you despise me; it made me despise +myself! But it is true. I did care all the world for him, once. _Now_ +will you say--" + +"Now, more than ever," said the young man, silencing her lips with his +own, and in their trance of love the world seemed to reel away from +under their feet, with all its sorrows and shames, and leave them in +mid-heaven. + +"Suzette!" Adeline's voice called from within. "Suzette! Where are you?" + +Sue released herself, and ran into the cottage. She came out again in a +little while, and said that the doctor thought Adeline had better go to +bed for a day or two and have a thorough rest, and relief from all +excitement. "We mustn't talk before her any more, and you mustn't stay +any longer." + +He accepted the authority she instinctively assumed over him, and found +his dismissal already of the order of things. He said, "Yes, I'll go at +once. But about--" + +She put a card into his hand. "You can see Mr. Putney, and whatever you +and he think best, will _be_ best. Haven't you been our good angel ever +since--Oh, I'm not half good enough for you, and I shouldn't be, even if +there were no stain--" + +"Stop!" he said; he caught her hand, and pulled her toward him. + +The doctor came out, and said in a low voice, "There's nothing to be +anxious about, but she really must have quiet. I'll send Mrs. Morrell +down to see you, after tea. She's quiet itself." + +Suzette submitted, and let Matt take her hand again in parting. + +"Will you give me a lift, doctor, if you're going toward town?" + +"Get in," said the doctor. + +Sue went indoors, and the two men drove off together. + +Matt looked at the card in his hand, and read: "Mr. Putney: Please talk +to Mr. Hilary as you would to my sister or me." Suzette's printed name +served for signature. Matt put the card in his pocket-book, and then he +said, "What sort of man is Mr. Putney, doctor?" + +"Mr. Putney," said the doctor, with a twinkle of his blue eyes, "is one +of those uncommon people who have enemies. He has a good many because +he's a man that thinks, and then says what he thinks. But he's his own +worst enemy, because from time to time he gets drunk." + +"A character," said Matt. "Do you think he's a safe one? Doesn't his +getting drunk from time to time interfere with his usefulness?" + +"Well, of course," said the doctor. "It's bad for him; but I think it's +slowly getting better. Yes, decidedly. It's very extraordinary, but ever +since he's been in charge of the Miss Northwicks' interests--" + +"Yes; _that's_ what I was thinking of." + +"He's kept perfectly straight. It's as if the responsibilities had +steadied him." + +"But if he goes on sprees, he may be on the verge of one that's +gathering violence from its postponement," Matt suggested. + +"I think not," said the doctor after a moment. "But of course I can't +tell." + +"They trust him so implicitly," said Matt. + +"I know," said the doctor. "And I know that he's entirely devoted to +them. The fact is, Putney's a very dear friend of mine." + +"Oh, excuse me--" + +"No, no!" The doctor stayed Matt's apologies. "I understand just what +you mean. He disliked their father very much. He was principled against +him as a merely rich man, with mischievous influence on the imaginations +of all the poor people about him who wanted to be like him--" + +"Oh, that's rather good," said Matt. + +"Do you think so?" asked the doctor, looking round at him. "Well! I +supposed you would be all the other way. Well! What I was saying was +that Putney looks upon these poor girls as their father's chief victims. +I think he was touched by their coming to him, and has pitied them. The +impression is that he's managed their affairs very well; I don't know +about such things; but I know he's managed them honorably; I would stake +my life on it; and I believe he'll hold out straight to the last. I +suppose," the doctor conjectured, at the end, "that they will try to get +at Northwick now, and arrange with his creditors for his return." + +"I don't mind telling you," said Matt, "that it's been tried and failed. +The State's attorney insists that he shall come back and stand his +trial, first of all." + +"Oh!" said the doctor. + +"Of course, that's right from the legal point of view. But in the +meantime, nobody knows where Mr. Northwick is." + +"I suppose," said the doctor, "it would have been better for him not to +have written that letter." + +"It's hard to say," Matt answered. "I thought so, too, at first. I +thought it was cowardly and selfish of him to take away his children's +superstition about his honesty. You knew that they held to that through +all?" + +"Most touching thing in the world," said the doctor, leaning forward to +push a fly off his horse with the limp point of his whip. "That poor old +maid has talked it into me till I almost believed it myself." + +"I don't know that I should hold him severely accountable. And I'm not +sure now that I should condemn him for writing that letter. It must have +been a great relief to him. In a way, you may say he _had_ to do it. +It's conceivable that if he had kept it on his mind any longer, his mind +would have given way. As it is, they have now the comfort of another +superstition--if it is a superstition. What do you think, doctor? Do you +believe that there was a mental twist in him?" + +"There seems to be in nearly all these defaulters. What they do is so +senseless--so insane. I suppose that's the true theory of all crime. But +it won't do to act upon it, yet awhile." + +"No." + +The doctor went on after a pause, with a laugh of enjoyment at the +notion. "Above all, it won't do to let the defaulters act upon that +theory, and apply for admission to the insane asylums instead of taking +the express for Canada, when they're found out." + +"Oh, no," said Matt. He wondered at himself for being able to analyze +the offence of Suzette's father so cold-bloodedly. But in fact he could +not relate the thought of her to the thought of him in his sin, at all; +he could only realize their kindred in her share of his suffering. + + + + +XIX. + + +Putney accepted Suzette's authorization of Matt with apparent +unconsciousness of anything but its immediate meaning, and they talked +Pinney's scheme intimately over together. In the end, it still remained +a question whether the energies of such an investigator could be +confined to the discovery of Northwick's whereabouts; whether his +newspaper instincts would not be too strong for any sense of personal +advantage that could be appealed to in him. They both believed that it +would not be long before Northwick followed up the publication of his +letter by some communication with his family. + +But time began to go by again, and Northwick made no further sign; the +flurry of activity which his letter had called out in the detectives +came to nothing. Their search was not very strenuous; Northwick's +creditors were of various minds as to the amount of money he had carried +away with him. Every one knew that if he chose to stay in Canada, he +could not be molested there; and it seemed very improbable that he could +be persuaded to put himself within reach of the law. The law had no +terms to offer him, and there was really nothing to be done. + +Putney forecast all this in his talk with Matt, when he held that they +must wait Northwick's motion. He professed himself willing to wait as +long as Northwick chose, though he thought they would not have to wait +long, and he contended for a theory of the man's whole performance which +he said he should like to have tested before a jury. + +Matt could not make out how much he really meant by saying that +Northwick could be defended very fairly on the ground of insanity; and +that he would enjoy managing such a defence. It was a common thing to +show that a murderer was insane; why not a defaulter? Tilted back in his +chair, with one leg over the corner of his table, and changing the +tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other as he talked, the +lawyer outlined the argument which he said could be made very effective. +There was the fact to begin with, that Northwick was a very wealthy man, +and had no need of more money when he began to speculate; Putney held +that this want of motive could be made a strong point; and that the +reckless, almost open, way in which Northwick used the company's money, +when he began to borrow, was proof in itself of unsound mind: apparently +he had no sense whatever of _meum_ and _tuum_, especially _tuum_. Then, +the total collapse of the man when he was found out; his flight without +an effort to retrieve himself, although his shortage was by no means +hopelessly vast, and could have been almost made up by skilful use of +the credit that Northwick could command, was another evidence of shaken +reason. But besides all this, there was his behavior since he left home. +He had been absent nearly five months, and in that time he had made no +attempt whatever to communicate with his family, although he must have +known that it was perfectly safe for him to do so. He was a father who +was almost dotingly fond of his children, and singularly attached to his +home; yet he had remained all that time in voluntary exile, and he had +left them in entire uncertainty as to his fate except so far as they +could accept the probability of his death by a horrible casualty. This +inversion of the natural character of a man was one of the most striking +phenomena of insanity, and Putney, for the purpose of argument, +maintained that it could be made to tell tremendously with a jury. + +Matt was unable to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with +Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. +Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every +wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would take cognizance of the +fact. + +"I don't suppose the time is quite ripe yet, though I think I could make +out a strong case for Brother Northwick," said Putney. He seemed to +enter into it more fully, as if he had a mischievous perception of +Matt's uneasiness, and chose to torment him; but then apparently he +changed his mind, and dealt with other aspects of their common interest +so seriously and sympathetically, that Matt parted from him with a +regret that he could not remove the last barrier between them, and tell +the lawyer that he concerned himself so anxiously in the affairs of that +wretched defaulter because his dearest hope was that the daughter of the +criminal would some day be his wife. + +But Matt felt that this fact must first be confided to those who were +nearest him; and how to shape it in terms that would convey the fact and +yet hide the repulsiveness he knew in it, was the question that teased +him all the way back to Vardley, like some tiresome riddle. He +understood why his love for Suzette Northwick must be grievous to his +father and mother; how embarrassing, how disappointing, how really in +some sort disastrous; and yet he felt that if there was anything more +sacred than another in the world for him, it was that love, he must be +true to it at whatever cost, and in every event, and he must begin by +being perfectly frank with those whom it would afflict, and confessing +to himself all its difficulties and drawbacks. He was not much afraid of +dealing with his father; they were both men, and they could look at it +from the man's point of view. Besides, his father really cared little +what people would say; after the first fever of disgust, if he did not +change wholly and favor it vehemently, he would see so much good in it +that he would be promptly and finally reconciled. + +But Matt knew that his mother was of another make, and that the blow +would be much harder for her to bear; his problem was how to lighten it. +Sometimes he thought he had better not try to lighten it, but let it +fall at once, and trust to her affection and good sense for the rest. +But when he found himself alone with her that night, he began by making +play and keeping her beyond reach. He was so lost in this perverse +effort that he was not aware of some such effort on her part, till she +suddenly dropped it, and said, "Matt, there is something I wish to speak +to you about--very seriously." + +His heart jumped into his throat, but he said "Well?" and she went on. + +"Louise tells me that you think of bringing this young man down to the +shore with you when you come to see us next week." + +"Maxwell? I thought the change might do him good; yes," said Matt, with +a cowardly joy in his escape from the worst he feared. He thought she +was going to speak to him of Suzette. + +She said, "I don't wish you to bring him. I don't wish Louise to see him +again after she leaves this place--ever again. She is fascinated with +him." + +"Fascinated?" + +"I can't call it anything else. I don't say that she's in love; but +there's no question but she's allowed her curiosity to run wild, and her +fancy to be taken; the two strongest things in her--in most girls. I +want to break it all up." + +"But do you think--" + +"I _know_. It isn't that she's with him at every moment, but that her +thoughts are with him when they're apart. He puzzles her; he piques her; +she's always talking and asking about him. It's their difference in +everything that does it. I don't mean to say that her heart is touched, +and I don't intend it shall be. So, you mustn't ask him to the shore +with you, and if you've asked him already, you must get out of it. If +you think he needs sea air, you can get him board at some of the +resorts. But not near us." She asked, in default of any response from +her son, "You _don't_ think, Matt, it would be well for the acquaintance +to go on?" + +"No, I don't mother; you're quite right as to that," said Matt, "if +you're not mistaken in supposing--" + +"I'm not; you may depend upon it. And I'm glad you can see the matter +from my point of view. It is all very well for you to have your queer +opinions, and even to live them. I think it's all ridiculous; but your +father and I both respect you for your sincerity, though your course has +been a great disappointment to us." + +"I know that, mother," said Matt, groaning in spirit to think how much +worse the disappointment he was meditating must be, and feeling himself +dishonest and cowardly, through and through. + +"But I feel sure," Mrs. Hilary went on, "that when it's a question of +your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, +and in the surroundings she had always been used to." + +"I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise's ideas," +said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface. + +"Ideas!" cried his mother. "She _has_ no ideas. She merely has impulses, +and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and +breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she +would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each +other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, +and all that; and I shouldn't at all mind his being poor. I never minded +Cyril Wade's being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because +he was one of ourselves; and this young man--Matt, you _can't_ pretend, +that with all his intellectual qualities, he's what one calls a +gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all +his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn't be; and +Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have +all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don't deny that he +has--" + +"He has some very serious faults," Matt interrupted. + +"We all have," said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. "But he might be a perfect +saint--a hero--a martyr, and if he wasn't what one calls a gentleman, +don't you see? We can't be frank about such things, here, because we +live in a republic; but--" + +"We get there, just the same," said Matt, with unwonted slang. + +"Yes," said his mother. "That is what I mean." + +"And you're quite right, as to the facts, mother." He got up, and began +to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were +sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting +to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber +where Maxwell was probably writing. "The self-made man can never be the +society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more +money, more virtue, but he's a kind of inferior, and he betrays his +inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he's successful, he's so +because he's been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of +life. That's one reason why I say that there oughtn't to _be_ any battle +of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages--I see that. He's +often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his +bread. He isn't Louise's social equal; I quite agree with you there, +mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in +danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. +I'm sorry for Maxwell, but I don't pity him, especially. He bears the +penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him +stand it! But there are others--weaker, unhappier--Mother! You haven't +asked me yet about--the Northwicks." Matt stopped in front of her chair, +and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his +acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her +perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She +was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more +and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure +to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an +expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts +and theories. + +"No," she said, "I expected to do that. You know I've seen them so very +lately, and with this about Louise on my mind--How are they? That poor +Adeline--I'm afraid it's killing her. Were you able to do anything for +them?" + +"Ah, I don't know," the young man sighed. "They have to suffer for their +misfortunes, too." + +"It seems to be the order of Providence," said Mrs. Hilary, with the +resignation of the philosophical spectator. + +"No!" Matt protested. "It's the disorder of improvidence. There's +nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. +Those women are perfectly innocent; they've only wished to do right, and +tried to do it; but they're under a ban the same as if they had shared +their father's guilt. They have no friends--" + +"Well, Matt," said his mother, with dignity, "I think you can hardly say +that. I'm sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to +reproach ourselves with. I think we've gone to the extreme to show our +good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don't like +your saying this!" + +"I beg your pardon. I certainly don't blame you, or Louise, or father. I +blame myself--for cowardice--for--for unworthiness in being afraid to +say--to tell you--Mother," he burst out suddenly, after a halt, "I've +asked Suzette Northwick to marry me." + +Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the +effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing +presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and +now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and +Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, +so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed +wholly incredible. + + + + +XX. + + +The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary +heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in +making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the +affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, +and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a +personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she +liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and +similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest +kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them +to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had +them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was +more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her +husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she +had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun +to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial +slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer +him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal +tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts +as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of +doctrine. + +"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?" + +"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his +mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know +that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected +her to refuse me." + +"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I +can't imagine it." + +"Can't imagine it? _I_ can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother +did not seem to notice his resentment. + +"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?" + +"I wish you to say everything, mother--all that you feel and +think--about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think--I +can't _let_ you think--that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed +me to suppose that my offer would be welcome." + +"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for +that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he +allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no +doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride." + +"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself. +But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I +know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it +can't be helped." + +"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always +imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur +of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people +who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons." + +"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted. + +"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family +connections that every one else has--" + +"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a +smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was +making. + +"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to +see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the +princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent +creature." + +Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly +reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to +overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled: + +"She is--she _is_--angelically!" + +"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a +good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more +to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about +their property, than for wishing to give it up." + +"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully. + +"But there, _there_ is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the +highest position. But her father! What will people say?" + +"Need we mind that, mother?" + +"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were--if he had +never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do +next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!" + +"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately. + +"Matt!" + +"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength +for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I +should be glad to stand by him!" + +"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel +about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer +anything more on that wretch's account?" + +"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my +engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass +him--compromise him, even--" + +"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know +best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or +mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable--" + +"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I +feel--" + +"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe +he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to +make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into +State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your +marriage." + +Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not +perceive so keenly. + +"I don't intend that, exactly." + +"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing +is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone." + +"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it +up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the +matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to +face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette +see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is +guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But +he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to +be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, +his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether +he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty--" + +"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious +than a self-confessed defaulter's." + +"No, I don't say--" + +"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty +with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, +though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very +differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, +nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father +was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him." + +Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world +enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She +will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of +what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way." + +"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose +it _is_ here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you +hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point +Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail +for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you +here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you +marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father +into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home." + +"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her +to run from it." + +"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, +if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he +dies. Good-night." + +Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had +sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved +one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not +rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in +dazzling illusions. + +The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; +he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew +how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his +father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt +instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more +unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother. + +But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all +his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of +meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had +done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said +it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he +said, "I shall have to take some action about it." + +"How, action?" + +"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes +known--and you wish it to be known, of course--" + +"Of course!" + +"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to +Northwick." + +"Northwick?" + +"As president of the Board, I'm _ex officio_ his enemy and persecutor. +It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that +after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It +wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board +altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a +cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty." + +"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt. + +"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise." + +"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position +so much." + +Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we +discovered Northwick's obliquities--excuse me!" + +Matt blushed. "Oh, I know he's oblique, as such things go." + +"In fact," his father resumed, "I shall be glad to be out of it, and I +don't think there'll be much opposition to my going out; I know that +there's a growing feeling against me in the Board. I _have_ tried to +carry water on both shoulders. I've made the effort honestly; but the +effect hasn't been good. I couldn't keep my heart out of it; from the +very first I pitied that poor devil's children so that I got him and +gave him all the chance I could." + +"That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like--" + +"It wasn't business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he +might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I'm +afraid this is what I've hoped, in spite of myself," said Hilary. + +This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. +He could only say, "I don't believe you've ever allowed that hope to +interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment." + +"No; but I've had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I've +had it. I've felt that; and I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm not +ashamed of your choice, Matt; I'm proud of it. The thing gave me a shock +at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she's all +kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why +she hasn't done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don't believe +people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. +But if they do, they may do it, and be damned." + +Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, +upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure +that he exchanged with his son. + +"We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by +that--We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion +where he is than we have." + +"No; not the least," said Matt. "I think it's the uncertainty that's +preying upon Miss Northwick." + +"The man's behaving like a confounded lunatic," said Hilary. + +The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, "That's their lawyer's +theory of him--" + +"Oh, you've _seen_ him, have you? Odd chap." + +"Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after--after--at the request of +Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell's heard +of from a brother reporter," and Matt now unfolded Pinney's plan to his +father, and showed his letter. + +Hilary looked from it at his son. "You don't mean that this is the +blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the _Events_?" + +"Yes; the same fellow. But as to blackguard--" + +"Well, then, Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it +would be a kind of insult to those poor girls." + +"I had thought of that. I felt that. But after all, I don't think he +knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself. Maxwell says he +wouldn't know. And besides, we can't help ourselves. If he doesn't go +for us, he will go for himself. We _must_ employ him. He's a species of +_condottiere_; we can buy his allegiance with his service: and we must +forego the sentimental objection. I've gone all over it, and that's the +only conclusion." + +Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help +themselves, that they could not do better. He asked, "And what did their +lawyer think of it?" + +"He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better +wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his +family." + +"I'm not so sure of that," said Hilary. "If this fellow is such a fellow +as you say, I don't see why we shouldn't make use of him at once." + +"Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?" said Matt. "I think it +would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily--" + +"Come back?" said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than +this. "Nonsense! And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts? I +mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out +just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in +order to make up his shortage." + +Matt now perceived the extent of his father's purpose, and on its plane +he honored it. + +"Father, you're splendid!" + +"Stuff! I'm in a corner. What else is there to do? What less could we +do? What's the money for, if it isn't to--" Hilary choked with the +emotion that filled him at the sight of his son's face. + +Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is +the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a +daughter's faith in him; for a son _knows_ whether his father is good or +not. At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son's opinion +than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary +valued his judgment as something ideal. + +After a moment he asked, "Can this fellow be got at?" + +"Oh, I imagine very readily." + +"What did Maxwell say about him, generally?" + +"Generally, that he's not at all a bad kind of fellow. He's a reporter +by nature, and he's a detective upon instinct. He's done some amateur +detective work, as many reporters do--according to Maxwell's account. +The two things run together--and he's very shrewd and capable in his +way. He's going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to +be worth his while. Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion +is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of +control. He's a mixture, like everybody else. He's devotedly fond of his +wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air--" + +"My idea," Hilary interrupted, "would be not to wait for the Social +Science Convention, but to send this--" + +"Pinney." + +"Pinney at once. Will you see him?" + +"If you have made up your mind." + +"I've made up my mind. But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven's +sake bind him by all that's sacred--if there's anything sacred to +him--not to give the matter away. Let him fix his price, and offer him a +pension for his widow afterwards." + + + + +XXI. + + +Mrs. Hilary was a large woman, of portly frame, the prophecy in +amplitude of what her son might come to be if he did not carry the +activities of youth into his later life. She, for her part, was long +past such activities; and yet she was not a woman to let the grass grow +upon any path she had taken. She appointed the afternoon of the day +following her talk with Matt for leaving the farm and going to the +shore; Louise was to go with her, and upon the whole she judged it best +to tell her why, when the girl came to say good-night, and to announce +that her packing was finished. + +"But what in the world are we in such a hurry for, mamma, all of a +sudden?" + +"We are in a hurry because--don't you really know, Louise?--because in +the crazy atmosphere of this house, one loses the sense of--of +proportion--of differences." + +"Aren't you rather--Emersonian, mamma?" + +"Do you think so, my dear? Matt's queer notions infect everybody; I +don't blame _you_, particularly; and the simple life he makes people +lead--by leading it himself, more than anything else--makes you think +that you could keep on living just as simply if you wished, everywhere." + +"It's very sweet--it's so restful," sighed the girl. "It makes you sick +of dinners and ashamed of dances." + +"But you must go back to them; you must go back to the world you belong +to; and you'd better not carry any queer habits back with you." + +"You _are_ rather sphinx-like, mamma! Such habits, for instance, as?" + +"As Mr. Maxwell." The girl's face changed; her mother had touched the +quick. She went on, looking steadily at her daughter, "You know he +wouldn't do, there." + +"No; he wouldn't," said Louise, promptly; so mournfully, though, that +her mother's heart relented. + +"I've seen that you've become interested in him, Louise; that your fancy +is excited; he stimulates your curiosity. I don't wonder at it! He _is_ +very interesting. He makes you feel his power more than any other young +man I've met. He charms your imagination even when he shocks your +taste." + +"Yes; all that," said Louise, desolately. + +"But he does shock your taste?" + +"Sometimes--not always." + +"Often enough, though, to make the difference that I'm afraid you'll +lose the sense of. Louise, I should be very sorry if I thought you were +at all--in love with that young man!" + +It seemed a question; Louise let her head droop, and answered with +another. "How should I know? He hasn't asked me." + +This vexed her mother. "Don't be trivial, don't be childish, my dear. +You don't need to be asked, though I'm exceedingly glad he _hasn't_ +asked you, for now you can get away with a good conscience." + +"I'm not sure yet that I want to get away," said the girl, dreamily. + +"Yes, you are, my dear!" her mother retorted. "You know it wouldn't do +at all. It isn't a question of his poverty; your father has money +enough: it's a question of his social quality, and of all those little +nothings that make up the whole of happiness in marriage. He would be +different enough, being merely a man; but being a man born and reared in +as different a world from yours as if it were another planet--I want you +to think over all the girls you know--all the _people_ you know--and see +how many of them have married out of their own set, their own circle--we +might almost say, their own family. There isn't one!" + +"I've not said I wished to marry him, mamma." + +"No. But I wish you to realize just what it would be." + +"It would be something rather distinguished, if his dreams came true," +Louise suggested. + +"Well, of course," Mrs. Hilary admitted. She wished to be very, very +reasonable; very, very just; it was the only thing with a girl like +Louise; perhaps with any girl. "It would be distinguished, in a way. But +it wouldn't be distinguished in the society way; the only way you've +professed to care for. I know that we've always been an intellectual +community, and New-Yorkers, and that kind of people, think, or profess +to think, that we make a great deal of literary men. We do invite them +somewhat, but I pass whole seasons without meeting them; and I don't +know that you could say that they are _of_ society, even when they are +_in_ it. If such a man has society connections, he's in society; but +he's there on account of his connections, not on account of his +achievements. This young man may become very distinguished, but he'll +always be rather queer; and he would put a society girl at odds with +society. His distinction would be public; it wouldn't be social." + +"Matt doesn't think society is worth minding," Louise said, casually. + +"But _you_ do," returned her mother. "And Matt says that a man of this +young man's traditions might mortify you before society people." + +"Did Matt say that?" Louise demanded, angrily. "I will _speak_ to Matt +about that! I should like to know what he means by it. I should like to +hear what he would say." + +"Very likely he would say that the society people were not worth +minding. You know his nonsense. If you agree with Matt, I've nothing +more to say, Louise; not a word. You can marry a mechanic or a +day-laborer, in that case, without loss of self-respect. I've only been +talking to you on the plane where I've always understood you wished to +be taken. But if you don't, then I can't help it. You must understand, +though, and understand distinctly, that you can't live on two levels; +the world won't let you. Either you must be in the world and of it +entirely; or you must discard its criterions, and form your own, and +hover about in a sort of Bohemian limbo on its outskirts; or you must +give it up altogether." Mrs. Hilary rose from the lounge where she had +been sitting, and said, "Now I'm going to bed. And I want you to think +this all carefully over, Louise. I don't blame you for it: and I wish +nothing but your good and happiness--yours and Matt's, both. But I must +say you've been pretty difficult children to provide for. Do you know +what Matt has been doing?" Mrs. Hilary had not meant to speak of it, but +she felt an invincible necessity of doing so, at last. + +"Something new about the Northwicks?" + +"Very decidedly--or about one of them. He's offered himself to Suzette." + +"How grand! How perfectly magnificent! Then she can give up her property +at once, and Matt can take care of her and Adeline both." + +"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a +capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to +live here on the farm with him." + +"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could +she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people +thought?" + +"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it +comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much +what her father had been--that is, society people wouldn't, _as_ society +people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and +she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be +talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived +down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage +of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us +off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some +farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say +'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is +indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must +confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged." + +"Why, _were_ you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along +that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy +would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And +then, Suzette _is_ a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's +just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of _course_ he would be taken with +her. I'm not a _bit_ surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the +world." + +"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has +seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. +Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year." + +Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad." + +"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing. + +"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in +chains, long enough to give away the bride?" + +"Louise!" said her mother. + +Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, +"for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's +money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no +matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society +man--" + +"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. +Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell--" + +"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite +rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, +which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. +She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the +light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated +it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the +moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor. + +After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell +waiting for her on the piazza. + +"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked. + +"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered. + +"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon +train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed +with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go +over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, +for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any +reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with +her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to +speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and +tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, +"Will you?" + +"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing." + +"Well, you ought to like this." + +"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating." + +They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture +and the pines. + +"Before I say it, you must _promise_ to take it in the right way," she +said. + +He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?" + +"Because--because I wish you to so much!" + +"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to +behave myself, under ordinary provocation?" + +"You may think the provocation is extraordinary." + +"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to +scramble after him. + +She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he +would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, +rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care +for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman +could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not +go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as +Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. +She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit +beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock +swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs +over them. + +"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence. + +"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for +you." + +"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when +we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?" + +"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that." + +"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were." + +"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?" + +"Because--because you seemed very worldly." + +"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with +his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I +take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm +going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss +Hilary." + +"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of +life Matt's trying to live is better?" + +"Your brother is the best man I ever knew--" + +"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!" + +"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means +business." + +"And can't you think--can't you wish--for anything better than the life +that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you +ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away +from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't +you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?" + +"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy +godmother?" asked Maxwell. + +"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. +"You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile. + +"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile +that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if +I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen +what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in +the summer." + +"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go +and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell"--she mechanically +gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to +the world again." + +"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going +to make of my patience, my docility--" + +She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. +Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house +with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the +hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength +for the battle of life as fast as you can." + +She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, +felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that +she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, +and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her +capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping +meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell +her his love. + +Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; +but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded. + + + + +PART THIRD. + + + + +I. + + +Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and +possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really +expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper +sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the +interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he +said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and +he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving +that his account of the defalcation in the _Events_ could have been +displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He +referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly +agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object. + +It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to +Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney +was disappointed in the _Events'_ people; they had not seen his proposed +excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an +enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to +invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. +This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another +calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some +minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with +gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who +attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a +partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, +though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for +it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and +which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most +valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she +did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she +believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she +would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were +lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long +run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that +she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to +look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That +would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better +than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much +good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay +quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that +was necessary. + +"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get +him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both +sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as +a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies--" + +"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked +thing! So dishonorable!" + +"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney. + +"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I _won't_. But +if you go as a detective, _go_ as a detective; and if you go as their +friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try +to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with +you; so there!" + +"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you +needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for +practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter +line. You won't object to that?" + +"No; I won't object to that." + +They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they +were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had +seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At +Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick +had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him +in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search +in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not +only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he +could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went +about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not +wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the +_Events_. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie +with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on +his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local +press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of +newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the +leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material +relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a +sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came +to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but +it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very +well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not +in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned +that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because +they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at +home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence +in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by +their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had +fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a +different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who +had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no +domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. +These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too +proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study +in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They +did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed +to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in +tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the +confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent +temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes +in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said +they had no statement to make. + +It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man +he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, +and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, +Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice +of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather +comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the +local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it +was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like +himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest +defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should +be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if +at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he +did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but +he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his +way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the _Events_ was posted. +This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone +unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he +came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such +friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, +that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to +feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them +behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing +what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an +English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down +the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in +compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by +any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the +baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting +into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the +calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through +the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as +soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, +and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, +and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole +enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had +said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means +of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it +the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he +could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish +view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and +nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only +right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the +Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; +good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which +he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and +thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only +to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found +it in lasting prosperity. + + + + +II. + + +These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left +his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number +of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had +already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not +playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale +straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal +speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were +Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was +national as well as what was individual in his talk. + +"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that +fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his +soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip +out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got +tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the +spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to +go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; +but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall +into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. +Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'" + +One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to +invest." + +"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of +thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old +Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and _he_ would +be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, +and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him." + +"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even +go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?" + +"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of +the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might +have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, +and the thousand-dollar bills--there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau +says--were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had +no faith in Oiseau--knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just +putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left +him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. +Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind +of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them +must bring money away with them, and there are business openings +everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here." + +"That _is_ odd," said the Canadian. + +"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't +know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, +except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the +only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was +a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes +to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply +rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a +safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's +business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been +able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and +he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just +_couldn't_. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend +to respect it. I can imagine just how the man _trembled_ to go into some +speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. +But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he +gets away with it, and he can't risk it." + +"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you +could have got at him," said the Canadian. + +"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock +in England." + +Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for +a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the +request as an overture to his acquaintance. + +"Brother Yank?" he suggested. + +"Boston." + +"Going over?" + +"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, +do you?" + +"No; I don't," said Markham. + +"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney. + +Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?" + +"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But +I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little +article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's +Pinney." + +"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, +going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But +don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine." + +"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a +much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the +American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing +soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely +conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, +and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and +address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was +about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half +of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then +he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission +concerning Northwick. + +"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he +asked. + +"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash +off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted +acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt +the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire +in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who +knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish +now--yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me--at Rimouski. You'd better +look him up." + +"Look him up!" said Pinney, in a frenzy. "I'll _live_ with him before +I'm in Rimouski twenty seconds." + +He had no trouble in finding Pere Etienne, but after the first hopeful +encounter with the sunny surface sweetness of the young priest, he found +him disposed to be reserved concerning the Mr. Warwick he had known at +Haha Bay. It became evident that Pere Etienne took Pinney for a +detective; and however willing he might have been to save a soul for +Paradise in the person of the man whose unhappiness he had witnessed, he +was clearly not eager to help hunt a fugitive down for State's prison. + +Even when Pinney declared his true character and mission, the priest's +caution exacted all the proofs he could give, and made him submit his +authorization to an English-speaking notary of the priest's +acquaintance. Then he owned that he had seen Mr. Warwick since their +parting at Haha Bay; Mr. Warwick had followed him to Rimouski, after +several weeks, and Pere Etienne knew where he was then living. But he +was still so anxious to respect the secrecy of a man who had trusted him +as far as Northwick had, that it required all the logic and all the +learning of the notary to convince him that Mr. Warwick, if he were the +largest defaulter ever self-banished, was in no danger of extradition at +Pinney's hands. It was with many injunctions, and upon many promises, +that at last he told Pinney where Mr. Warwick was living, and furnished +him with a letter which was at once warrant and warning to the exile. + +Pinney took the first train back toward Quebec; he left it at St. Andre, +and crossed the St. Lawrence to Malbaie. He had no trouble there, in +finding the little hostelry where Mr. Warwick lodged. But Pinney's +spirit, though not of the greatest delicacy, had become sensitized +toward the defaulter through the scrupulous regard for him shown by Pere +Etienne no loss than by the sense of holding almost a filial relation to +him in virtue of his children's authorization. So his heart smote him at +the ghastly look he got, when he advanced upon Warwick, where he sat at +the inn-door, in the morning sun, and cheerily addressed him, "Mr. +Northwick, I believe." + +It was the first time Northwick had heard his real name spoken since +Putney had threatened him in the station, the dark February morning when +he fled from home. The name he had worn for the last five months was +suddenly no part of him, though till that moment it had seemed as much +so as the white beard which he had suffered to hide his face. + +"I don't expect you to answer me," said Pinney, feeling the need of +taking, as well as giving time, "till you've looked at this letter, and +of course I've no wish to hurry you. If I'm mistaken, and it isn't Mr. +Northwick, you won't open the letter." + +He handed him, not the letter which Pere Etienne had given him, but the +letter Suzette Northwick had written her father; and Pinney saw that he +recognized the hand-writing of the superscription. He saw the letter +tremble in the old man's hand, and heard its crisp rustle as he clutched +it to keep it from falling to the ground. He could not bear the sight of +the longing and the fears that came into his face. "No hurry; no hurry," +he said, kindly, and turned away. + + + + +III. + + +When Pinney came back from the little turn he took, Northwick was still +holding the unopened letter in his hand. He stood looking at it in a +kind of daze, and he was pale, and seemed faint. + +"Why, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, "why don't you read your letter? If +it hadn't been yours, don't I know that you'd have given it back to me +at once?" + +"It isn't that," said the man, who was so much older and frailer than +Pinney had expected to find him. "But--are they well? Is it--bad news?" + +"No!" Pinney exulted. "They're first-rate. You needn't be afraid to read +the letter!" Pinney's exultation came partly from his certainty that it +was really Northwick, and partly from the pleasure he felt in reassuring +him; he sympathized with him as a father. His pleasure was not marred by +the fact that he knew nothing of the state of Northwick's family, and +built his assertion upon the probability that the letter would contain +nothing to alarm or afflict him, "Like a glass of water?" he suggested, +seeing Northwick sit inert and helpless on the steps of the inn-porch, +apparently without the force to break the seal of the letter. "Or a +little brandy?" Pinney handed him the neat leather-covered flask his +wife had reproached him for buying when they came away from home; she +said he could not afford it; but he was glad he had got it, now, and he +unscrewed the stopple with pride in handing it to Northwick. "You look +sick." + +"I haven't been very well," Northwick admitted, and he touched the +bottle with his lips. It revived him, and Pinney now saw that if he +would leave him again, he would open the letter. There was little in it +but the tender assurance Suzette gave him of their love, and the anxiety +of Adeline and herself to know how and where he was. She told him that +he was not to feel troubled about them; that they were well, and unhappy +only for him; but he must not think they blamed him, or had ever done +so. As soon as they were sure they could reach him, she said, they would +write to him again. Adeline wrote a few lines with her name, to say that +for some days past she had not been quite well; but that she was better +and had nothing to wish for but to hear from him. + +When Pinney came back a second time, he found Northwick with the letter +open in his hand. + +"Well, sir," he said, with the easy respectfulness toward Northwick that +had been replacing, ever since he talked with Matt Hilary, the +hail-fellow manner he used with most men, and that had now fully +established itself, "You've got some noble scenery about here." He meant +to compliment Northwick on the beauty of the landscape, as people +ascribe merit to the inhabitants of a flourishing city. + +Northwick, by his silence, neither accepted nor disclaimed the credit of +the local picturesqueness; and Pinney ventured to add, "But you seem to +take it out in nature, Mr. Northwick. The place is pretty quiet, sir." + +Northwick paid no heed to this observation, either; but after sitting +mute so long that Pinney began to doubt whether he was ever going to +speak at all, he began to ask some guarded and chary questions as to how +Pinney had happened to find him. Pinney had no unwillingness to tell, +and now he gave him the letter of Pere Etienne, with a eulogy of the +priest's regard for Northwick's interest and safety. He told him how +Markham's talk had caught his attention, and Northwick tacitly +recognized the speculator. But when Pinney explained that it was the +postmark on his letter to the _Events_ that gave him the notion of going +to Rimouski, he could see that Northwick was curious to know the effect +of that letter with the public. At first he thought he would let him +ask; but he perceived that this would be impossible for Northwick, and +he decided to say, "That letter was a great sensation, Mr. Northwick." +The satisfaction that lighted up Northwick's eyes caused Pinney to add, +"I guess it set a good many people thinking about you in a different +way. It showed that there was something to be said on both sides, and I +believe it made friends for you, sir. Yes, sir." Pinney had never +believed this till the moment he spoke, but then it seemed so probable +he had that he easily affirmed it. "I don't believe, Mr. Northwick," he +went on, "but what this trouble could be patched up, somehow, so that +you could come back, if you wanted to, give 'em time to think it over a +little." + +As soon as he said this, the poison of that ulterior purpose which his +wife had forbidden him, began to work in Pinney's soul. He could not +help feeling what a grand thing it would be if he could go back with +Northwick in his train, and deliver him over, a captive of moral +suasion, to his country's courts. Whatever the result was, whether the +conviction or the acquittal of Northwick, the process would be the +making of Pinney. It would carry him to such a height in the esteem of +those who knew him, that he could choose either career, and whether as a +reporter or a detective, it would give his future the distinction of one +of the most brilliant pieces of work in both sorts. Pinney tried his +best to counteract the influence of these ideas by remembering his +promises to his wife; but it was difficult to recall his promises with +accuracy in his wife's absence; and he probably owed his safety in this +matter more to Northwick's temperament than to any virtue of his own. + +"I think I understand how that would be," said the defaulter coldly; and +he began very cautiously to ask Pinney the precise effect of his letter +as Pinney had gathered it from print and hearsay. It was not in Pinney's +nature to give any but a rose-colored and illusory report of this; but +he felt that Northwick was sizing him up while he listened, and knew +just when and how much he was lying. This heightened Pinney's respect +for him, and apparently his divination of Pinney's character had nothing +to do with Northwick's feeling toward him. So far as Pinney could make +out it was friendly enough, and as their talk went on he imagined a +growing trustfulness in it. Northwick kept his inferences and +conclusions to himself. His natural reticence had been intensified by +the solitude of his exile; it stopped him short of any expression +concerning Pinney's answers; and Pinney had to construct Northwick's +opinions from his questions. His own cunning was restlessly at work +exploring Northwick's motives in each of these, and it was not at fault +in the belief it brought him that Northwick clearly understood the +situation at home. He knew that the sensation of his offence and flight +were past, and that so far as any public impulse to punish him was +concerned, he might safely go back. But he knew that the involuntary +machinery of the law must begin to operate upon him as soon as he came +within its reach; and he could not learn from Pinney that anything had +been done to block its wheels. The letter from his daughters threw no +light upon this point; it was an appeal for some sign of life and love +from him; nothing more. They, or the friends who were advising them, had +not thought it best to tell him more than that they were well, and +anxious to hear from him; and Pinney really knew nothing more about +them. He had not been asked to Hatboro' to see them before he started, +and with all the will he had to invent comfortable and attractive +circumstances for them, he was at a disadvantage for want of material. +The most that he could conjecture was that Mr. Hilary's family had not +broken off their friendly relations with them. He had heard old Hilary +criticised for it, and he told Northwick so. + +"I guess he's been standing by you, Mr. Northwick, as far as he +consistently could," he said; and Northwick ventured to reply that he +expected that. "It was young Hilary who brought me the letter, and +talked the whole thing up with me," Pinney added. + +Northwick had apparently not expected this; but he let no more than the +fact appear. He kept silent for a time; then he said, "And you don't +know anything about the way they're living?" + +"No, I don't," said Pinney, with final candor. "But I should say they +were living along there about as usual. Mr. Hilary didn't say but what +they were. I guess you haven't got any cause to be uneasy on that score. +My idea is, Mr. Northwick, that they wanted to leave you just as free as +they could about themselves. They wanted to find out your whereabouts in +the land of the living, first of all. You know that till that letter of +yours came out, there were a good many that thought you were killed in +that accident at Wellwater, the day you left home." + +Northwick started. "What accident? What do you mean?" he demanded. + +"Why, didn't you know about it? Didn't you see the accounts? They had a +name like yours amongst the missing, and people who thought you were not +in it, said it was a little job you had put up. There was a despatch +engaging a Pullman seat signed, T. W. Northwick--" + +"Ah! I knew it!" said Northwick. "I knew that I must have signed my real +name!" + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly, "a man is apt to do that, +when he first takes another. It's natural." + +"I never heard of the accident. I saw no papers for months. I wouldn't; +and then I was sick--They must have believed I was dead!" + +"Well, sir," said Pinney, "I don't know that that follows. My wife and +myself talked that up a good deal at the time, and we concluded that it +was about an even thing. You see it's pretty hard to believe that a +friend is dead, even when you've seen him die; and I don't understand +how people that lose friends at a distance can ever quite realize that +they're gone. I guess that even if the ladies went upon the theory of +the accident, there was always a kind of a merciful uncertainty about +it, and that was my wife's notion, too. But that's neither here nor +there, now, Mr. Northwick. Here you are, alive and well, in spite of all +theories to the contrary--though _they_ must have been pretty well +exploded by your letter to the _Events_--and the question is what answer +are you going to let me take back to your family? You want to send some +word, don't you? My instructions were not to urge you at all, and I +won't. But if I was in your place, I know what _I_ should do." + +Northwick did not ask him what it was he would do. He fell into a deep +silence which it seemed to Pinney he would never break; and his face +became such a blank that all Pinney's subtlety was at fault. It is +doubtful, indeed, if there was anything definite or directed in the mute +misery of Northwick's soul. It was not a sharp anguish, such as a finer +soul's might have been, but it was a real misery, of a measure and a +quality that he had not felt before. Now he realized how much he must +have made his children suffer. Perhaps it wrung him the more keenly +because it seemed to be an expression of the divine displeasure, which +he flattered himself he had appeased, and was a fatal consequence of his +guilt. It was a terrible suggestion of the possibility that, after all, +Providence might not have been a party to the understanding between +them, and that his good-will toward those he had wronged had gone for +nothing. He had blamed himself for not having tried to retrieve himself +and make their losses good. It was no small part of his misery now to +perceive that anything he might have done would have gone for nothing in +this one-sided understanding. He fetched a long, unconscious sigh. + +"Why, it's all over, now, Mr. Northwick," said Pinney, with a certain +amusement at the simple-heartedness of this sigh, whose cause he did not +misinterpret. "The question is now about your getting back to them." + +"Getting back? You know I can't go back," said Northwick, with bitter +despair, and an openness that he had not shown before. + +Far beneath and within the senses that apprehend the obvious things, +Pinney felt the unhappy man beginning to cling to him. He returned, +joyously, "I don't know about that. Now, see here, Mr. Northwick, you +believe that I'm here as your friend, don't you? That I want to deal in +good faith with you?" Northwick hesitated, and Pinney pursued, "Your +daughter's letter ought to be a guaranty of that!" + +"Yes," Northwick admitted, after another hesitation. + +"Well, then, what I'm going to say is in your interest, and you've got +to believe that I have some authority for saying it. I can't tell you +just how much, for I don't know as I know myself exactly. But _I_ think +you can get back if you work it right. Of course, you can't get back for +nothing. It's going to cost you something. It's going to cost you all +you've brought with you,"--Pinney watched Northwick's impassive face for +the next change that should pass upon it; he caught it, and added--"and +more. But I happen to know that the balance will be forthcoming when +it's needed. I can't say _how_ I know it, for I don't exactly _know_ how +I know it. But I do know it; and you know that _it's_ for you to take +the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and +where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney, +with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred +to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again." + +Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought +upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as +it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high, +bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said, +with a kind of severity. + +"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate +it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped--" + +"Then I _was_ the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly +reflected-- + +"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a +place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you +can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir, +I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four +hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind, +I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for +you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your +distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a +candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's +this?" + +A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly +approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur." + +"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to +join me." + +"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They +had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was +an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why, +what's this?" + +"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't +been here for several years." + +"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in +the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly +established in him. + +"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with +unresentful dignity. + +"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a +little English, after all the French you have around." + +"The landlord speaks a little; and the priest. He is a friend of Father +Etienne." + +"Oh, I see," said Pinney. He noticed that Northwick walked slowly and +weakly; he ventured to put his hand under his elbow, and Northwick did +not resent the help offered him. + +"I had a very severe sickness during the latter part of the winter," he +explained, "and it pulled me down a good deal." + +"At Rimouski, I presume?" said Pinney. + +"No," said Northwick, briefly. + + + + +IV. + + +Over the simple dinner, which Pinney praised for the delicacy of the +local lamb, and Northwick ate of so sparingly, Northwick talked more +freely. He told Pinney all about his flight, and his winter journey up +toward the northern verge of the civilized world. The picturesque +details of this narrative, and their capability of distribution under +attractive catch-heads almost maddened the reporter's soul in Pinney +with longing to make newspaper material of Northwick on the spot. But he +took his honor in both hands, and held fast to it; only he promised him +that if the time ever came when that story could be told, it should be +both fortune and fame to him. + +They sat long over their dinner. At last Pinney pulled out his watch. +"What time did you say the boat for Quebec got along here?" + +Northwick had not said, of course, but he now told Pinney. He knew the +time well in the homesickness which mounted to a paroxysm as that hour +each day came and went. + +"We must get there some time in the night then," said Pinney, still +looking at his watch. "Then let's understand each other about this: Am I +to tell your family where you are? Or what? Look here!" he broke off +suddenly, "why don't you come up to Quebec with me? You'll be just as +safe there as you are here; you know that; and now that your whereabouts +are bound to be known to your friends, you might as well be where they +can get at you by telegraph in case of emergency. Come! What do you +say?" + +Northwick said simply, "Yes, I will go with you." + +"Well, now you're shouting," said Pinney. "Can't I help you to put your +traps together? I want to introduce you to my wife. She takes as much +interest in this thing as I do; and she'll know how to look after you a +great deal better,--get you to Quebec once. She's the greatest little +nurse in _this_ world; and, as you _say_, you don't seem over and above +strong. I hope you don't object to children. We've got a baby, but it's +the _best_ baby! I've heard that child cry just _once_ since it was +born, and that was when it first realized that it was in this vale of +tears; I believe we all do that; but _our_ baby finished up the whole +crying-business on that occasion." + +With Pinney these statements led to others until he had possessed +Northwick of his whole autobiography. He was in high content with +himself, and his joy overflowed in all manner of affectionate services +to Northwick, which Northwick accepted as the mourner entrusts his +helplessness to the ghastly kindness of the undertaker, and finds in it +a sort of human sympathy. If Northwick had been his own father, Pinney +could not have looked after him with tenderer care, in putting his +things together for him, and getting on board the boat, and making +interest with the clerk for the best stateroom. He did not hesitate to +describe him as an American financier; he enjoyed saying that he was in +Canada for his health; and that he must have an extra room. The clerk +gave up the captain's, as all the others were taken, and Pinney occupied +it with Northwick. It was larger and pleasanter than the other rooms, +and after Pinney got Northwick to bed, he sat beside him and talked. +Northwick said that he slept badly, and liked to have Pinney talk; +Pinney could see that he was uneasy when he left the room, and glad when +he got back; he made up his mind that Northwick was somehow a very sick +man. He lay quite motionless in the lower berth, where Pinney made him +comfortable; his hands were folded on his breast, and his eyes were +closed. Sometimes Pinney, as he talked on, thought the man was dead; and +there were times when he invented questions that Northwick had to answer +yes or no, before he felt sure that he was still alive; his breath went +and came so softly Pinney could not hear it. + +Pinney told him all about his courtship and married life, and what a +prize he had drawn in Mrs. Pinney. He said she had been the making of +him, and if he ever did amount to anything, he should owe it to her. +They had their eye on a little place out of town, out Wollaston way, and +Pinney was going to try to get hold of it. He was tired of being mewed +up in a flat, and he wanted the baby to get its feet on the ground, when +it began to walk. He wanted to make his rent pay part of his purchase. +He considered that it was every man's duty to provide a permanent home +for his family, as soon as he began to have a family; and he asked +Northwick if he did not think a permanent home was the thing. + +Northwick said he thought it was, and after he said that, he sighed so +deeply that Pinney said, "Oh, I beg your pardon." He had, in fact, lost +the sense of Northwick's situation, and now he recurred to it with a +fresh impulse of compassion. If his compassion was mixed with interest, +with business, as he would have said, it was none the less a genuine +emotion, and Pinney was sincere enough in saying he wished it could be +fixed so that Northwick could get back to his home; at his time of life +he needed it. + +"And I don't believe but what it _could_ be fixed," he said. "I don't +know much about the points of the case; but I should say that with the +friends you've got, you wouldn't have a great deal of trouble. I presume +there are some legal forms you would have to go through with; but those +things can always be appealed and continued and _nolle prossed_, and all +that, till there isn't anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would +have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. +But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the +whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski +hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. +No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends +stood by you as they ought to,--I don't believe you'd get more than a +mere nominal sentence, if you got that." + +Northwick made no reply, but Pinney fancied that his words were having +weight with him, and he went on: "I don't know whether you've ever kept +the run of these kind of things; but a friend of mine has, and he says +there isn't one case in ten where the law carries straight. You see, +public feeling has got a good deal to do with it, and when the people +get to feeling that a man has suffered enough, the courts are not going +to be hard on him. No, sir. I've seen it time and again, in my newspaper +experience. The public respects a man's sufferings, and if public +opinion can't work the courts, it can work the Governor's council. Fact +is, I looked into that business of yours a little, after you left, Mr. +Northwick, and I couldn't see, exactly, why you didn't stay, and try to +fix it up with the company. I believe you could have done it, and that +was the impression of a good many other newspaper men; and they're +pretty good judges; they've seen a lot of life. It's exciting, and it's +pleasant, newspaper work is," said Pinney, straying back again into the +paths of autobiography, "but I've got about enough of it, myself. The +worst of it is, there ain't any outcome to it. The chances of promotion +are about as good as they are in the U. S. Army when the Reservations +are quiet. So I'm going into something else. I'd like to tell you about +it, if you ain't too sleepy?" + +"I _am_ rather tired," said Northwick, with affecting patience. + +"Oh, well, then, I guess we'll postpone it till to-morrow. It'll keep. +My! It don't seem as I _was_ going back to my wife and baby. It seems +too good to be true. Every time I leave 'em, I just bet myself I sha'n't +get back alive; or if I do that I sha'n't find 'em safe and sound; and +I'm just as sure I'll win every time, as if I'd never lost the bet yet." + +Pinney undressed rapidly, and before he climbed into the berth over +Northwick's, he locked the door, and put the key under his pillow. +Northwick did not seem to notice him, but a feeling of compunction made +him put the key back in the door. "I guess I'd better leave it there, +after all," he said. "It'll stop a key from the outside. Well, sir, +good-night," he added to Northwick, and climbed to his berth with a +light heart. Toward morning he was wakened by a groaning from the lower +berth, and he found Northwick in great pain. He wished to call for help; +but Northwick said the pain would pass, and asked him to get him some +medicine he had in his hand-bag; and when he had taken that he was +easier. But he held fast to Pinney's hand, which he had gripped in one +of his spasms, and he did not loose it till Pinney heard him drawing his +breath in the long respirations of sleep. Then Pinney got back to his +berth, and fell heavily asleep. + +He knew it was late when he woke. The boat was at rest, and must be +lying at her landing in Quebec. He heard the passengers outside hurrying +down the cabin to go ashore. When he had collected himself, and recalled +the events of the night, he was almost afraid to look down at Northwick +lest he should find him lying dead in his berth; when he summoned +courage to look, he found the berth empty. + +He leaped out upon the floor, and began to throw himself into his +clothes. He was reassured, for a moment, by seeing Northwick's +travelling-bag in the corner with his own; but the hand-bag was gone. He +rushed out, as soon as he could make himself decent, and searched every +part of the boat where Northwick might probably be; but he was not to be +seen. + +He asked a steward how long the boat had been in; and the steward said +since six o'clock. It was then eight. + +Northwick was not waiting for Pinney on the wharf, and he climbed +disconsolately to his hotel in the Upper Town. He bet, as a last +resource, that Northwick would not be waiting there for him, to give him +a pleasant surprise, and he won his disastrous wager. + +It did not take his wife so long to understand what had happened, as +Pinney thought it would. She went straight to the heart of the mystery. + +"Did you say anything about his going back?" + +"Why--in a general way," Pinney admitted, ruefully. + +"Then, of course, that made him afraid of you. You broke your word, Ren, +and it's served you right." + +His wife was walking to and fro with the baby in her arms; and she said +it was sick, and she had been up all night with it. She told Pinney he +had better go out and get a doctor. + +It was all as different from the return Pinney had planned as it could +be. + +"I believe the old fool is crazy," he said, and he felt that this was +putting the mildest possible construction upon Northwick's behavior. + +"He seems to have known what he was about, anyway," said Mrs. Pinney, +coldly. The baby began to cry. "Oh, _do_ go for the doctor!" + + + + +V. + + +The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent +avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily +began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and +waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a +wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he +was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety +of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through +and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the +night. + +A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to +him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and +stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at +the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were +open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck +a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this +faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he +had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He +tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring +at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had +stolen out of it. + +One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he +stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the +change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and +he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every +detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, +and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the +desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the +doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and +hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the +stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself +that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic +expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was +nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search +of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might +well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of +risk to himself. + +He had an expectation, born of long custom, and persisting in spite of +the nakedness of the place otherwise, that he should see the pictured +face of his wife, where it had looked so mercifully at him that last +night from the portrait above the mantel. He sighed lightly to find it +gone; her chair was gone from the bay-window, where he had stood to gaze +his last over the possessions he was abandoning. He let his little taper +die out by the hearth, and then crept toward the glimmer of the window, +and looked out again. The conservatories and the dairies and the barns +showed plain in the gray of the moonless, starless night; in the +coachman's quarters a little point of light appeared for a moment +through the window, and then vanished. + +Northwick knew from this that the place was inhabited; unless some +homeless tramp like himself was haunting it, and it went through his +confusion that he must speak to Newton, and caution him about tramps +sleeping in the barns anywhere; they might set them on fire. His mind +reverted to his actual condition, and he wondered how long he could come +and go as a vagrant without being detected. If it were not for the +action against vagrants which he had urged upon the selectmen the summer +before, he might now come and go indefinitely. But he was not to blame; +it was because Mrs. Morrell had encouraged the tramps by her reckless +charity that something had to be done; and now it was working against +him. It was hard: he remembered reading of a man who had left his family +one day, and taken a room across the street, and lived there in sight of +them unknown till he died: and now he could not have passed his own door +without danger of arrest as a vagrant. He struck another match, and +looked at himself in the mirror framed as a window at one side of the +bay; he believed that with the long white beard he wore, and his hair +which he had let grow, his own children would not have known him. + +It was bitter; but his mind suddenly turned from the thought, with a +lightness it had, and he remembered that now he did not know where his +children lived. He must find out, somehow; he had come to see them; and +he could not go back without. He must hurry to find them, and be gone +again before daylight. He crept out to the stairs, and struck a match to +light himself down, and he carried it still burning, toward the window +he had left open behind him in the library. As soon as he stepped out on +the piazza he found himself gripped fast in the arms of a man. + +"I've got you! What you doing in here, I'd like to know? Who are you, +anyway, you thief? Just hold that lantern up to his face, a minute, +'Lectra." + +Northwick had not tried to resist; he had not struggled; he had known +Elbridge Newton's voice at the first word. He saw the figure of a woman +beside him, stooping over the lantern, and he knew that it was Mrs. +Newton; but he made no sort of appeal to either. He did not make the +least sound or movement. The habit of his whole life was reticence, +especially in emergencies; and this habit had been strengthened and +deepened by the solitude in which he had passed the last half-year. If a +knife had been put to his throat, he would not have uttered a cry for +mercy; but his silence was so involuntary that it seemed to him he did +not breathe while Mrs. Newton was turning up the wick of the lantern for +a good look at him. When the light was lifted to his face, Northwick +felt that they both knew him through the disguise of his white beard. +Elbridge's grip fell from him and let him stand free. "Well, I'll be +dumned," said Elbridge. + +His wife remained holding the lantern to Northwick's face. "What are you +going to do with him?" she asked at last, as if Northwick were not +present; he stood so dumb and impassive. + +"I d' know as I know," said Newton, overpowered by the peculiar +complications of the case. He escaped from them for the moment in the +probable inference: "I presume he was lookin' for his daughters. Didn't +you know," he turned to Northwick, with a sort of apologetic reproach, +"lightin' matches that way in the house, here, you might set it on fire, +and you'd be sure to make people think there was somebody there, +anyhow?" + +Northwick made no answer to this question, and Newton looked him +carefully over in the light of the lantern. "I swear, he's in his +stockin' feet. You look round and see if you can find his shoes, +anywhere, 'Lectra. You got the light." Newton seemed to insist upon this +because it relieved him to delegate any step in this difficult matter to +another. + +His wife cast the light of her lantern about, and found the shoes by the +piazza-steps, and as Northwick appeared no more able to move than to +speak, Elbridge stooped down, and put on his shoes for him where he +stood. When he lifted himself, he stared again at Northwick, as if to +make perfectly sure of him, and then he said, with a sigh of perplexity, +"You go ahead, a little ways, 'Lectra, with the lantern. I presume we've +got to take him to 'em," and his wife, usually voluble and wilful, +silently obeyed. + +"Want to see your daughters?" he asked Northwick, and at the silence +which was his only response, Newton said, "Well, I don't know as I +blame him any, for not wantin' to commit himself. You don't want to be +afraid," he added, to Northwick, "that anybody's goin' to keep you +against your will, you know." + +"Well, I _guess_ not," said Mrs. Newton, finding her tongue, at last. +"If they was to double and treble the reward, I'd slap 'em in the face +first. Bring him along, Elbridge." + +As Northwick no more moved than spoke, Newton took him by the arm, and +helped him down the piazza-steps and into the dark of the avenue, +tunnelled about their feet by the light of the lantern, as they led and +pushed their helpless capture toward the lodge at the avenue gate. + +Northwick had heard and understood them; he did not know what secret +purpose their pretence of taking him to his children might not cover; +but he was not capable of offering any resistance, and when he reached +the cottage he sank passively on the steps. He shook in every nerve, +while Elbridge pounded on the door, till a window above was lifted, and +Adeline's frightened voice quavered out, "Who is it? What is it?" + +Mrs. Newton took the words out of her husband's mouth. "It's us, Miss +Northwick. If you're sure you're awake--" + +"Oh, yes. I haven't been asleep!" + +"Then listen!" said Mr. Newton, in a lowered tone. "And don't be scared. +Don't call out--don't speak loud. There's somebody here--Come down, and +let him in." + +Northwick stood up. He heard the fluttered rush of steps on the stairs +inside. The door opened, and Adeline caught him in her arms, with +choking, joyful sobs. "Oh, father! Oh, father! Oh, I knew it! I knew it! +Oh, oh, oh! Where was he? How did you find him?" + +She did not heed their answers. She did not realize that she was +shutting them out when she shut herself in with her father; but they +understood. + + + + +VI. + + +Northwick stared round him in the light of the lamp which Adeline turned +up. He held fast by one of her hands. "What's he going to do? Has he +gone for the officer? Is he going to give me up?" + +"Who? Elbridge Newton? Well, I guess his wife hasn't forgot what you did +for them when their little boy died, if _he_ has, and I _guess_ he +hasn't gone for any officer! Where did you see him?" + +"In the house. I was there." + +"But how did he know it?" + +"I had to have a light to see by." + +"Oh, my goodness! If anybody else had caught you I don't know what I +_should_ have done. I don't see how you could be so venturesome!" + +"I thought you were there. I had to come back. I couldn't stand it any +longer, when that fellow came with your letter." + +"Oh, he _found_ you," she cried, joyfully. "I _knew_ he would find you, +and I said so--Sit down, father; do." She pushed him gently into a +cushioned rocking-chair. "It's mother's chair; don't you remember, it +always stood in the bay-window in your room, where she put it? Louise +Hilary bought it at the sale--I know she bought it--and gave it to me. +It was because the place was mother's that I wouldn't let Suzette give +it up to the company." + +He did not seem to understand what she was saying. He stared at her +piteously, and he said with an effort: "Adeline, I didn't know about +that accident. I didn't know you thought I was dead, or I--" + +"No! Of _course_ you didn't! I always told Suzette you didn't. Don't you +suppose I always believed in you, father? We both believed in you, +through it all; and when that letter of yours came out in the paper I +knew you were just overwrought." + +Northwick rose and looked fearfully round him again, and then came +closer to her, with his hand in his breast. He drew it out with the roll +of bank-notes in it. "Here's that money I took away with me. I always +kept it in my belt: but it hurt me there. I want you should take care of +it for me, and we can make terms with them to let me stay." + +"Oh, they _won't_ let you stay. We've tried it over and over; and the +court won't let you. They say you will have to be tried, and they will +put you in prison." + +Northwick mechanically put the money back. + +"Well, let them," said the broken man. "I can't stand it any longer. I +have got to stay." He sank into the chair, and Adeline broke into tears. + +"Oh, I can't let you! You must go back! Think of your good name, that +there's never been any disgrace on!" + +"What--what's that?" Northwick quavered, at the sound of footsteps +overhead. + +"Why, it's Suzette, of course! And I hadn't called her," said Adeline, +breaking off from her weeping. She ran to the foot of the stairs, and +called, huskily, "Suzette, Suzette! Come down this instant! Come down, +come down, come down!" She bustled back to her father. "You must be +hungry, ain't you, father? I'll get you a cup of tea over my lamp here; +the water heats as quick! And you'll feel stronger after that. Don't you +be afraid of anything; there's nobody here but Suzette; Mrs. Newton +comes to do the work in the morning; they used to stay with us, but we +don't mind it a bit, being alone here. I _did_ want to go into the +farmhouse, when we left our own, but Suzette couldn't bear to live right +in sight of our home, all the time; she said it would be worse than +being afraid; but we haven't _been_ afraid; and the Newtons come all the +time to see if we want anything. And now that you've got back--" She +stopped, and stared at him in a daze, and then turned to her lamp again, +as if unable to cope with the situation. "I haven't been very well, +lately, but I'm getting better; and if only we could get the court to +let you come back I should be as well as ever. I don't believe but what +Mr. Hilary will make it out yet. Father!" She dropped her voice, and +glanced round; "Suzette's engaged to young Mr. Hilary--oh, he's the +_best_ young man!--and I guess they're going to be married just as soon +as we can arrange it about you. I thought I'd tell you before she came +down." + +Northwick did not seem to have taken the fact in, or else he could not +appreciate it rightly. "Do you suppose," he whispered back, "that she'll +speak to me?" + +"_Speak_ to you!" + +"I didn't know. She was always so proud. But now I've brought back the +money, all but the little I've had to use--" + +There was a rustle of skirts on the stairs. Suzette stood a moment in +the doorway, looking at her father, as if not sure he was real; then she +flung herself upon him, and buried her face in his white beard, and +kissed him with a passion of grief and love. She sank into his lap, with +a long sigh, and let her head fall on his shoulder. All that was not +simply father and daughter was for the moment annulled between them. + +Adeline looked on admiring, while she kept about heating the water over +her lamp; and they all took up fitfully the broken threads of their +lives, and tried to piece them again into some sort of unity. + +Adeline did most of the talking. She told her father how friends seemed +to have been raised up for them in their need, when it was greatest. She +praised herself for the inspiration she had in going to Putney for +advice, because she remembered how her father had spoken of him that +last night, and for refusing to give up the property to the company. She +praised Putney for justifying and confirming her at every step, and for +doing everything that could be done about the court. She praised the +Hilarys, all of them, for their constancy to her father throughout, and +she said she believed that if Mr. Hilary could have had his way, there +never would have been any trouble at all about the accounts, and she +wanted her father to understand just how the best people felt about him. +He listened vaguely to it all. A clock in the next room struck four, and +Northwick started to his feet. "I must go!" + +"Go?" Adeline echoed. + +"Why must you go?" said Suzette, clinging about him. + +They were all silent in view of the necessity that stared them in the +face. + +Then Adeline roused herself from the false dream of safety in which her +words had lulled her. She wailed out, "He's _got_ to go! Oh, Suzette, +let him go! He's got to go to prison if he stays!" + +"It's prison _there_" said Northwick. "Let me stay!" + +"No, no! I can't let you stay! Oh, how hard I am to make you go! What +makes you leave it all to me, Suzette? It's for you, as much as +anything, I do it." + +"Then don't do it! If father wants to stay; if he thinks he had better, +or if he will feel easier, he shall stay; and you needn't think of me. I +won't _let_ you think of me!" + +"But what would they say--Mr. Hilary say--if they sent father to +prison?" + +Suzette's eyes glowed. "Let them say what they will. I know I can trust +_him_, but if he wants to give me up for that, he may. If father wishes +to stay, he shall, and nothing that they can do to him will ever make +him different to us. If he tells us that he didn't mean anything wrong, +that will be enough; and people may say what they please, and think what +they please." + +Northwick listened with a confused air. He looked from one to the other, +as if beaten back and forth between them; he started violently, when +Adeline almost screamed out: "Oh, you don't know what you're talking +about! Father, tell her you don't _wish_ to stay!" + +"I must go, Suzette; I had better go--" + +"Here, drink this tea, now, and it will give you a little strength." +Adeline pressed the cup on him that she had been getting ready through +all, and made him drain it. "Now, then, hurry, hurry, hurry, father! Say +good-by! You've got to go, now--yes, you've _got_ to!--but it won't be +for long. You've seen us, and you've found out we're alive and well, and +now we can write--be sure you write, father, when you get back there; +or, you'd better telegraph--and we can arrange--I know we can--for you +to come home, and stay home." + +"Home! Home!" Northwick murmured. + +"It seems as if he wanted to _kill_ me!" Adeline sobbed into her hands. +She took them away. "Well, _stay_, then!" she said. + +"No, no! I'll go," said Northwick. "You're not to blame, Adeline. It's +all right--all for the best. I'll go--" + +"And let us know where you are, when you get there, this time, father!" +said Adeline. + +"Yes, I will." + +"And we will come to you, there," Suzette put in. "We can live together +in Canada, as well as here." + +Northwick shook his head. "It's not the same. I can't get used to it; +their business methods are different. I couldn't put my capital into any +of their enterprises. I've looked the whole ground over. And--and I want +to get back into our place." + +He said these things vaguely, almost dryly, but with an air of final +conviction, as after much sober reflection. He sat down, but Adeline +would not let him be. "Well, then, we'll help you to think out some way +of getting back, after we're all there together. Go; it'll soon begin to +be light, and I'm afraid somebody'll see you, and stop you! But oh, my +goodness! How are you going? You can't walk! And if you try to start +from our depot, they'll know you, some one, and they'll arrest you. What +shall we do?" + +"I came over from East Hatboro' to-night," said Northwick. "I am going +back there to get the morning train." This was the way he had planned, +and he felt the strength of a fixed purpose in returning to his plan in +words. + +"But it's three miles!" Adeline shrieked. "You can never get there in +the world in time for the train. Oh, why didn't I tell Elbridge to come +for you! I must go and tell him to get ready right away." + +"No, I'll go!" said Suzette. "Adeline!" + +Adeline flung the door open, and started back, with a cry, from the +dark, van-like vehicle before the door, which looked like the Black +Maria, or an undertaker's wagon, in the pale light. + +"It's me," said Elbridge's voice from the front of it, and Elbridge's +head dimly showed itself. "I got to thinkin' maybe you'd want the +carryall, and I didn't know but what I'd better go and hitch up, +anyway." + +"Oh, well, we _did_!" cried Adeline, with an hysterical laugh. "Here, +now, father, get right in! Don't lose a second. Kiss Suzette; good-by! +Be sure you get him to East Hatboro' in time for the four-forty, +Elbridge!" She helped her father, shaking and stumbling, into the +shelter of the curtained carryall. "If anybody tries to stop you--" + +"I'd like to see anybody try to stop me," said Elbridge, and he whipped +up his horse. Then he leaned back toward Northwick, and said, "I'm going +to get the black colt's time out of the old mare." + +"Which mare is it?" Northwick asked. + + + + +VII. + + +On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some +anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was +safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for +himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He +had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in +helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put +himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the +stable after the horse was stolen. + +He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as +Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument +before breakfast. + +Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential +voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, +to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be +li'ble?" + +"Why?" asked Putney. + +"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately. + +"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought +his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and +you didn't let me know?" + +"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged. + +"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars +to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about +it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: +"Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place +myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!" + +Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was +besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours +he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had +learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, +though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held +out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat +hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that +those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him +soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she +was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if +he gave way now. + +When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew +that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and +made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he +boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the +Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, +and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards +the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the +mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, +as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were +both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit +reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for +some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to +serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and +since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking +for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not +because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly +to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests +of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked +over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some +virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a +sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of +exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so +strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own +usefulness. + +He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now +dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he +turned to go into the house. + +"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after +him. + +"Say?" + +"You know: about what I done." + +"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you +sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do." + +Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, +already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the +strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast +down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at +breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, +Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow." + + + + +VIII. + + +Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. +She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she +said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old +mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the +sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so +as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they +brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time +she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back +alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected +they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette +tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild +upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her +father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please +the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was +perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had +come over her. + +Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came +back. Then he walked to the lodge to report. + +"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him +before he could get a word out. + +"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on +his way back to Canady, again." + +"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his +home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! _Send_ for him! +Bring him _back_, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him +I said to come back! What are you standing there for?" + +She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her +bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for +the doctor. + +Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he +walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He +found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," +said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. +I shall come again later in the day." + +Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and +knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched +it. + +"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her +almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble +of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to +quiet her, broke in upon their talk. + +"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should +come back, no matter what happens?" + +"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said." + +"And you would not care if they put him in prison?" + +"I should care very much." + +"You would be ashamed of me!" + +"No! Never! What has it to do with you?" + +"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed +all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an +intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have +done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how +inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come +back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if +something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay +because--because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be +ashamed--" + +"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you +let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while +they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. +Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go +down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor +said; and if you try to stop me--" She came clattering down the stairs +in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed +her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. +Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask +him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes +back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can +take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as +long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll +say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. +Will you go?" + +"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" +Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child. + +"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm +perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my +mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what +Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father +back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs +some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon +as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want +Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon +as father is. Will you go?" + +"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to +Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to +save your father any further suffering, or yourself--" + +"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young +and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about." + +She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he +walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with +Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the +case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There +seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick +to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences +together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to +take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places +and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One +might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the +fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a +deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in +the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, +and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever +might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and +enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and +then, who should gainsay him? + +Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question +before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no +one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could +forbid him." + +"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have +a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest +thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that _true_ +love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our +impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone +knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the +higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it +won't satisfy?" + +For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of +arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house +that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them +to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt +explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic +demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be +done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding +any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; +if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, +but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You +know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily +submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the +greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined +life." + +"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and +perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the +divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God +for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could +not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure +the shame of his penalty with him--" + +"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned +to endure?" + +"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, +yourself, Matt; your family--" + +Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no +question of _me_. And if _they_ could not endure their portion,--the +mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar +people,--I should be ashamed of them." + +"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide +you!" added the priest. + +The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at +his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his +gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's +happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face. + +"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered +every point? Isn't there some chance--" + +Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he +began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, +and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his +escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?" + +"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He +supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been +willing to accept something short of it. + +"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have +kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved +off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we +could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." +Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that +he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered +with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel +sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show +it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to +convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be +a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a +retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges +against him." + +Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious +discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added +seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is +the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly +and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation +came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I +know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in +court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit +here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time +he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while +before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at +last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it +will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced +him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. +But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a +full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to +find him in Canada?" + +"He promised to let them know." + +"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. +The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts--the perfectly needless and +motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned--would be a +strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the +thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our +life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no +reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The +conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply +incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the +fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for +money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the +accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?" + +Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, +whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went +back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting +her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the +assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted +if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this +notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he +permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at +last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, +before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She +did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get +home without her; and Suzette must come, too. + + + + +IX. + + +The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at +Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, +he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the +troubled dream he had waked from. + +"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have _you_ been?" he +demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood. + +A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. +"I've been at home--at Hatboro'." + +"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference +he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at +him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could +only have it for a scoop--" + +Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and +fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney +listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest +thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it +leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent +of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and +given the whole thing away, _I_ can't ask anything for my services." + +Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had +worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested. + +"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked +Pinney. + +"Yes. Only--don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence. + +"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He +took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to +Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He +counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he +called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay +it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it." + +Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own +wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby +got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established +with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's +filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; +and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of +his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; +but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters +when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. +Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but +was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy +confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with +the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her +to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She +asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his +answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his +farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; +and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not +thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she +began to sink rapidly. + +In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had +dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come +back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. +The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, +if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about +it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know +there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he +ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside +her mother. + +The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last +words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, +whimpered too. + +"I believe he _could_ be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, +in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his +own room. + +The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in +Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, +but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a +course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his +ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he +suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he +could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. +Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business +view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great +tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both +took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms +round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good +care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his +hand at the last moment. + +Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after +these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his +own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had +with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's +forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she +proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her +undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for +a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved +of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to +Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, +recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and +expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. +If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told +heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, +it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert +might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of +Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct +in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances +which he really was. + +Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of +their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the +parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old +Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile +frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the +admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your +enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have +been more of a Roman father." + +"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper +to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over +to Rome for the winter." + +"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would +take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will +end by killing me." + + + + +X. + + +Northwick, after the Pinneys went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved +only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the +offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who +pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home +again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business +life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had +operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He +felt himself too old to begin life over; his energies were spent. Such +as he had been, he had made himself very slowly and cautiously, in +familiar conditions; he had never been a man of business dash, and he +could not pick himself up and launch himself in a new career, as a man +of different make might have done, even at his age. Perhaps there had +been some lesion of the will in that fever of his at Haha Bay, which +disabled him from forming any distinct purpose, or from trying to carry +out any such purpose as he did form. Perhaps he was, in his +helplessness, merely of that refugee-type which exile moulds men to: a +thing of memories and hopes, without definite aims or plans. + +As the days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams +and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had +seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the +sentence of the law, and then go to live again in the place which, in +spite of his senses, he could only imagine clothed in the comfort and +state that had been stripped from it. Elbridge's talk, on the way to +West Hatboro', about the sale, and what had become of the horses and +cattle, and the plants, went for no more than the evidence of his own +eyes that they were all gone. He did not realize, except in the shocks +that the fact imparted at times, that death as well as disaster had +invaded his home. Adeline was, for the most part, still alive: in his +fond reveries she was present, and part of that home as she had always +been. + +He began to flatter himself that if he went back he could contrive that +compromise with the court which his friends had failed to bring about; +he persuaded himself that if it came to a trial he could offer evidence +that would result in his acquittal. But if he must undergo some +punishment for the offence of being caught in transactions which were +all the time carried on with impunity, he told himself that interest +could be used to make his punishment light. In these hopeful moods it +was a necessity of his drama that his transgression of the law should +seem venial to him. It was only when he feared the worst that he felt +guilty of wrong. + +It could not be said that these moments of a consciousness of guilt were +so frequent as ever to become confluent, and to form a mood. They came +and went; perhaps toward the last they were more frequent. What seems +certain is that in the end there began to mix with his longing for home +a desire, feeble and formless enough, for expiation. There began to be +suggested to him from somewhere, somehow, something like the thought +that if he had really done wrong, there might be rest and help in +accepting the legal penalty, disproportionate and excessive as it might +be. He tried to make this notion appreciable to Pinney when they first +met after he summoned Pinney to Quebec; he offered it as an explanation +of his action. + +In making up his mind to return at all hazards and to take all the +chances, he remembered what Pinney had said to him about his willingness +to bear him company. It was not wholly a generous impulse that prompted +him to send for Pinney, or the self-sacrificing desire to make Pinney's +fortune in his new quality of detective; he simply dreaded the long +journey alone; he wanted the comfort of Pinney's society. He liked +Pinney, and he longed for the vulgar cheerfulness of his buoyant spirit. +He felt that he could rest upon it in the fate he was bringing himself +to face; he instinctively desired the kindly, lying sympathy of a soul +that had so much affinity with his own. He telegraphed Pinney to come +for him, and he was impatient till he came. + +Pinney started the instant he received Northwick's telegram, and met him +with an enthusiasm of congratulation. "Well, Mr. Northwick, this is a +great thing. It's the right thing, and it's the wise thing. It's going +to have a tremendous effect. I suppose," he added, a little tremulously, +"that you've thought it all thoroughly over?" + +"Yes; I'm prepared for the worst," said Northwick. + +"Oh, there won't be any _worst_," Pinney returned gayly. "There'll be +legal means of delaying the trial; your lawyer can manage that; or if he +can't, and you have to face the music at once, we can have you brought +into court without the least publicity, and the judge will go through +with the forms, and it'll be all over before anybody knows anything +about it. I'll see that there's no _interviewing_, and that there are no +reporters present. There'll probably be a brief announcement among the +cases in court; but there won't be anything painful. You needn't be +afraid. But what I'm anxious about now is, not to bring any influence to +bear on you. I promised my wife I wouldn't urge you, and I won't; I know +I'm a little optimistic, and if you don't see this thing exactly +_couleur de rose_, don't you do it from anything _I_ say." Pinney +apparently put great stress upon himself to get this out. + +"I've looked it in the face," said Northwick. + +"And your friends know you're coming back?" + +"They expect me at any time. You can notify them." + +Pinney drew a long, anxious breath. "Well," he said, with a sort of +desperation, "then I don't see why we don't start at once." + +"Have you got your papers all right?" Northwick asked. + +"Yes," said Pinney, with a blush. "But you know," he added, +respectfully, "I can't touch you till we get over the line, Mr. +Northwick." + +"I understand that. Let me see your warrant." + +Pinney reluctantly produced the paper, and Northwick read it carefully +over. He folded it up with a deep sigh, and took a long stiff envelope +from his breast-pocket, and handed it to Pinney, with the warrant. "Here +is the money I brought with me." + +"Mr. Northwick! It isn't necessary yet! Indeed it isn't. I've every +confidence in your honor as a gentleman." Pinney's eyes glowed with joy, +and his fingers closed upon the envelope convulsively. "But if you mean +business--" + +"I mean business," said Northwick. "Count it." + +Pinney took the notes out and ran them over. "Forty-one thousand six +hundred and forty." + +"That is right," said Northwick. "Now, another matter. Have you got +handcuffs?" + +"Why, Mr. Northwick! What are you giving me?" demanded Pinney. "I'd as +soon put them on my own father." + +"I want you to put them on _me_," said Northwick. "I intend to go back +as your prisoner. If I have anything to expiate"--and he seemed to +indulge a question of the fact for the last time--"I want the atonement +to begin as soon as possible. If you haven't brought those things with +you, you'd better go out to the police station and get them, while I +attend to the tickets." + +"Oh, I needn't go," said Pinney, and his face burned. + +He was full of nervous trepidation at the start, and throughout the +journey he was anxious and perturbed, while on Northwick, after the +first excitement, a deep quiet, a stupor, or a spiritual peace, seemed +to have fallen. + +"By George!" said Pinney, when they started, "anybody to see us would +think _you_ were taking _me_ back." He was tenderly watchful of +Northwick's comfort; he left him free to come and go at the stations; +from the restaurants he bought him things to tempt his appetite; but +Northwick said he did not care to eat. + +They had a long night in a day-car, for they found there was no sleeper +on their train. In the morning, when the day broke, Northwick asked +Pinney what the next station was. + +Pinney said he did not know. He looked at Northwick as if the possession +of him gave him very little pleasure, and asked him how he had slept. + +"I haven't slept," said Northwick. "I suppose I'm rather excited. My +nerves seem disordered." + +"Well, of course," said Pinney, soothingly. + +They were silent a moment, and then Northwick asked, "What did you say +the next station was?" + +"I'll ask the brakeman." They could see the brakeman on the platform. +Pinney went out to him, and returned. "It's Wellwater, he says. We get +breakfast there." + +"Then we're over the line, now," said Northwick. + +"Why, yes," Pinney admitted, reluctantly. He added, in a livelier note, +"You get a mighty good breakfast at Wellwater, and I'm ready to meet it +half way." He turned, and looked hard at Northwick. "If I should happen +to get left there, what would you do? Would you keep on, anyway? Is your +mind still made up on that point? I ask, because all kinds of accidents +happen, and--" Pinney stopped, and regarded his captive fixedly. "Or if +you don't feel quite able to travel--" + +"Let me see your warrant again," said Northwick. + +Pinney relaxed his gaze with a shrug, and produced the paper. Northwick +read it all once more. "I'm your prisoner," he said, returning the +paper. "You can put the handcuffs on me now." + +"No, no, Mr. Northwick!" Pinney pleaded. "I don't want to do that. I'm +not afraid of your trying to get away. I assure you it isn't necessary +between gentlemen." + +Northwick held out his wrists. "Put them on, please." + +"Oh, well, if I _must_!" protested Pinney. "But I _swear_ I won't lock +'em." He glanced round to find whether any of the other passengers were +noticing. "You can slip 'em off whenever you get tired of 'em." He +pushed Northwick's sleeves down over them with shame-faced anxiety. +"Don't let people see the damned things, for God's sake!'" + +"That's good!" murmured Northwick, as if the feel of the iron pleased +him. + +The incident turned Pinney rather sick. He went out on the platform of +the car for a little breath of air, and some restorative conversation +with the brakeman. When he came back, Northwick was sitting where he +left him. His head had fallen on his breast. "Poor old fellow, he's +asleep," Pinney thought. He put his hand gently on Northwick's shoulder. +"I'll have to wake you here," he said. "We'll be in, now, in a minute." + +Northwick tumbled forward at his touch, and Pinney caught him round the +neck, and lifted his face. + +"Oh, my God! He's dead!" + +The loosened handcuffs fell on the floor. + + + + +XI. + + +After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and +it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given +up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her +father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had +made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the +sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering +from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she +was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her +own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case +forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his +last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had +committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his +creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself +to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was +dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty +in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather +a joyful relief. + +Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the +narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow +conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they +had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had +everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left +her incalculably rich. + +Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept +himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the +comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far +as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's +estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness +to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the +money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in +the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more +for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow +Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic +theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be +said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that +in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its +pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them. + +The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment +of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they +had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked +at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former +owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view +of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had +remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no +account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the +owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in +surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to +suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she +conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the +commonwealth. + +"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part +of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr. +Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first +duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to +turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It +appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset +dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their +interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's +this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last +that he intended to do; and, of course, the _he_ in question is a _she_. +'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole +affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing, +beginning with my own. _I_ can look back to the time when I meant to +have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years, +waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected +somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to +justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's +counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of +grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I +wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send +him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off +on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a +little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and +against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The +directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign +from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand, +considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living, +and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope +of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the +money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors. +Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William +B. Gerrish,--couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick +himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada, +after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to +fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing +he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let +him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed _her_. +Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first +thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way +with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There +wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's +much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of--incident; and a pretty +common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances--like the rest of +us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue. +Sometimes I think there _was_ nothing to Northwick, except what happened +to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we +fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes, +and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where +it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I +suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few aeons of eternal +punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate." + +"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested. + +"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and +seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll +split the difference with you and call it Mercy." + + + + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS'S NOVELS. + + +THE QUALITY OF MERCY. + +AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. + +A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. + +THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. + +ANNIE KILBURN. + +APRIL HOPES. + + + + +BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. + + +AS WE WERE SAYING. + +With Portrait, and Illustrated by H.W. MCVICKAR and Others. + +So dainty and delightsome a little book may it be everybody's good hap +to possess.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +OUR ITALY. + +In this book are a little history, a little property, a few fascinating +statistics, many interesting facts, much practical suggestion, and +abundant humor and charm--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD. + +A Novel. + +The vigor and vividness of the tale and its sustained interest are not +its only or its chief merits. It is a study of American life of to-day, +possessed with shrewd insight and fidelity.--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. + +A powerful picture of that phase of modern life in which unscrupulously +acquired capital is the chief agent.--_Boston Post._ + +STUDIES IN THE SOUTH AND WEST, with Comments on Canada. + +Perhaps the most accurate and graphic account of these portions of the +country that has appeared, taken all in all.... A book most charming--a +book that no American can fail to enjoy, appreciate, and highly +prize.--_Boston Traveller._ + +THEIR PILGRIMAGE. + +Mr. Warner's pen-pictures of the characters typical of each resort, of +the manner of life followed at each, of the humor and absurdities +peculiar to Saratoga, or Newport, or Bar Harbor, as the case may be, are +as good-natured as they are clever. The satire, when there is any, is of +the mildest, and the general tone is that of one glad to look on the +brightest side of the cheerful, pleasure-seeking world with which he +mingles.--_Christian Union_, N. Y. + + + + +BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON. + + + JUPITER LIGHTS. + EAST ANGELS. + ANNE. + FOR THE MAJOR. + CASTLE NOWHERE. + RODMAN THE KEEPER. + +There is a certain bright cheerfulness in Miss Woolson's writing which +invests all her characters with lovable qualities.--_Jewish Advocate_, +N. Y. + +Miss Woolson is among our few successful writers of interesting magazine +stories, and her skill and power are perceptible in the delineation of +her heroines no less than in the suggestive pictures of local +life.--_Jewish Messenger_, N. Y. + +Constance Fentmore Woolson may easily become the novelist +laureate.--_Boston Globe._ + +Miss Woolson has a graceful fancy, a ready wit, a polished style, and +conspicuous dramatic power; while her skill in the development of a +story is very remarkable.--_London Life._ + +Miss Woolson never once follows the beaten track of the orthodox +novelist, but strikes a new and richly-loaded vein, which so far is all +her own; and thus we feel, on reading one of her works, a fresh +sensation, and we put down the book with a sigh to think our pleasant +task of reading it is finished. The author's lines must have fallen to +her in very pleasant places; or she has, perhaps, within herself the +wealth of womanly love and tenderness she pours so freely into all she +writes. Such books as hers do much to elevate the moral tone of the +day--a quality sadly wanting in novels of the time.--_Whitehall Review_, +London. + + + + +BY MARY E. WILKINS. + + +A NEW ENGLAND NUN, and Other Stories. + +A HUMBLE ROMANCE, and Other Stories. + +Only an artistic hand could have written these stories, and they will +make delightful reading.--_Evangelist_, N. Y. + +The simplicity, purity, and quaintness of those stories set them apart +in a niche of distinction, where they have no rivals.--_Literary World_, +Boston. + +The reader who buys this book and reads it will find treble his money's +worth in every one of the delightful stories.--_Chicago Journal._ + +Miss Wilkins is a writer who has a gift for the rare art of creating the +short story which shall be a character study and a bit of graphic +picturing in one; and all who enjoy the bright and fascinating short +story will welcome this volume.--_Boston Traveller._ + +The author has the unusual gift of writing a short story which is +complete in itself, having a real beginning, a middle, and an end. The +volume is an excellent one.--_Observer_, N. Y. + +A gallery of striking studies in the humblest quarters of American +country life. No one has dealt with this kind of life better than Miss +Wilkins. Nowhere are there to be found such faithful, delicately drawn, +sympathetic, tenderly humorous pictures.--_N. Y. Tribune._ + +The charm of Miss Wilkins's stories is in her intimate acquaintance and +comprehension of humble life, and the sweet human interest she feels and +makes her readers partake of, in the simple, common, homely people she +draws.--_Springfield Republican._ + +There is no attempt at fine writing or structural effect, but the tender +treatment of the sympathies, emotions, and passions of no very +extraordinary people gives to these little stories a pathos and human +feeling quite their own.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._ + +The author has given us studies from real life which must be the result +of a lifetime of patient, sympathetic observation.... No one has done the +same kind of work so lovingly and so well.--_Christian Register_, +Boston. + + + + +By LEW. WALLACE + + +BEN-HUR: + +A TALE OF THE CHRIST. + +Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of +this romance does not often appear in works of notion.... Some of Mr. +Wallace's writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes +described in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of +an accomplished master of style.--_N. Y. Times._ + +Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at +the beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and +brilliant.... We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we +witness a sea-fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman +galley, domestic interiors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the +tribes of the desert; palaces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman +youth, the houses of pious families of Israel. There is plenty of +exciting incident; everything is animated, vivid, and glowing.--_N. Y. +Tribune._ + +It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and +there is sufficient of Oriental customs, geography, nomenclature, etc., +to greatly strengthen the semblance.--_Boston Commonwealth._ + +"Ben-Hur" is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. +Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is +laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to +realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman +life at Antioch at the time of our Saviour's advent.--_Examiner_, N.Y. + +The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with unwonted +interest by many readers who are weary of the conventional novel and +romance.--_Boston Journal._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quality of Mercy, by W. D. 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