Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “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.