The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her. "I haven't slept all night—I don't see howyoucould—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 whatIthink 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!Dogive 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 asIdo. 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 ifyouare at all—ifyoucare for her?"
"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world!Whydo you ask?"
"BecauseIdo!" 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 likethis. 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 togiveup. 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 theBoston 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 decidedsowisely, 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 imagineyourdoing 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."
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, Ibegyou 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 Ididsay 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'tyoulet Suzette know I spoke to you.I'lltell 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 heisone.Anyman 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 hasnoright to that property, moralorlegal. 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.
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 anolle 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 doyouthink 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.
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."
"IknewSuzette 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 beentirelyworldly, 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. "Isshea 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 thatwerealize 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."
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 shewilldo. 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 thereisno 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.
"Iknowso," 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.
"Iknowyou 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 theAbstract. 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 shouldliketo."
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. "ButIknow. 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 theywon'tlet themselves be helped—any more than—than—youwill!"
"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'tliketo 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 thetrueartistic point of view."
"Is he a literary man?"
"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in theEvents—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 heisa 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.
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 saythat, 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. TheEventsis 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 thatAbstractarticle 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 getathim, but we have got togethim; 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 theEvents. 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."
Maxwell explained to Matt, as he had explained to Louise, that Pinney was the reporter who had written up the Northwick case forThe 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 theEventsoffice; 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.Hewouldn't spareyou."
"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 wearefriendly! 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, "Youmustknow 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.