Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “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 be
tter 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.