Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “But I feel sure,” Mrs. Hilary went on, “that when it’s a question of your sister, you would wish her life to be continued on the same plane, and in the surroundings she had always been used to.”

  “I should think that best, certainly, for a girl of Louise’s ideas,” said Matt, trying to get his own to the surface.

  “Ideas!” cried his mother. “She has no ideas. She merely has impulses, and her impulses are to do what people wish. But her education and breeding have been different from those of such a young man, and she would be very unhappy with him. They never could quite understand each other, no matter how much they were in love. I know he is very talented, and all that; and I shouldn’t at all mind his being poor. I never minded Cyril Wade’s being poor, when I thought he had taken her fancy, because he was one of ourselves; and this young man — Matt, you can’t pretend, that with all his intellectual qualities, he’s what one calls a gentleman. With his origin and bringing up; his coarse experiences; all his trials and struggles; even with his successes, he couldn’t be; and Louise could not be happy with him for that very reason. He might have all the gifts, all the virtues, under the sun; I don’t deny that he has—”

  “He has some very serious faults,” Matt interrupted.

  “We all have,” said Mrs. Hilary, tolerantly. “But he might be a perfect saint — a hero — a martyr, and if he wasn’t what one calls a gentleman, don’t you see? We can’t be frank about such things, here, because we live in a republic; but—”

  “We get there, just the same,” said Matt, with unwonted slang.

  “Yes,” said his mother. “That is what I mean.”

  “And you’re quite right, as to the facts, mother.” He got up, and began to walk about the long, low living-room of the farmhouse where they were sitting. Louise had gone to direct her maid in packing for her flitting to the seaside in the morning; Matt could see a light in the ell-chamber where Maxwell was probably writing. “The self-made man can never be the society equal of the society-made man. He may have more brains, more money, more virtue, but he’s a kind of inferior, and he betrays his inferiority in every worldly exigency. And if he’s successful, he’s so because he’s been stronger, fiercer, harder than others in the battle of life. That’s one reason why I say that there oughtn’t to be any battle of life. Maxwell has the defects of his disadvantages — I see that. He’s often bitter, and cynical, and cruel because he has had to fight for his bread. He isn’t Louise’s social equal; I quite agree with you there, mother; and if she wants to live for society, he would be always in danger of wounding her by his inferiority to other people of her sort. I’m sorry for Maxwell, but I don’t pity him, especially. He bears the penalty of his misfortunes; but he is strong enough to bear it. Let him stand it! But there are others — weaker, unhappier — Mother! You haven’t asked me yet about — the Northwicks.” Matt stopped in front of her chair, and looked down into her lifted face, where the satisfaction his acquiescence in her views concerning Louise was scarcely marred by her perception that he had not changed his mind at all on other points. She was used to his way of thinking, and she gratefully resolved to be more and more patient with it, and give him time for the change that was sure to come. She interpreted the look of stormy wistfulness he wore as an expression of his perplexity in the presence of the contradictory facts and theories.

  “No,” she said, “I expected to do that. You know I’ve seen them so very lately, and with this about Louise on my mind — How are they? That poor Adeline — I’m afraid it’s killing her. Were you able to do anything for them?”

  “Ah, I don’t know,” the young man sighed. “They have to suffer for their misfortunes, too.”

  “It seems to be the order of Providence,” said Mrs. Hilary, with the resignation of the philosophical spectator.

  “No!” Matt protested. “It’s the disorder of improvidence. There’s nothing of the Divine will in consequences so unjust and oppressive. Those women are perfectly innocent; they’ve only wished to do right, and tried to do it; but they’re under a ban the same as if they had shared their father’s guilt. They have no friends—”

  “Well, Matt,” said his mother, with dignity, “I think you can hardly say that. I’m sure that as far as we are concerned, we have nothing to reproach ourselves with. I think we’ve gone to the extreme to show our good-will. How much further do you want us to go? Come; I don’t like your saying this!”

  “I beg your pardon. I certainly don’t blame you, or Louise, or father. I blame myself — for cowardice — for — for unworthiness in being afraid to say — to tell you — Mother,” he burst out suddenly, after a halt, “I’ve asked Suzette Northwick to marry me.”

  Matt had tried to imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette’s absorbing presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, so that when he found the words spoken in his own voice, it seemed wholly incredible.

  XX.

  The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary heard Matt’s confession without apparently anything of his tumult in making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of doctrine.

  “Then you mean, Matt,” she asked, “that you are going to marry her?”

  “Yes,” said Matt, “that is what I mean,” and then, something in his mother’s way of taking it nettled him on Sue’s behalf. “But I don’t know that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected her to refuse me.”

  “Men always do; I don’t know why,” said Mrs. Hilary. “But in this case I can’t imagine it.”

  “Can’t imagine it? I can imagine it!” Matt retorted; but his mother did not seem to notice his resentment.

  “Then, if it’s quite settled, you don’t wish me to say anything?”

  “I wish you to say everything, mother — all that you feel and think — about her, and the whole affair. But I don’t wish you to think — I can’t let you think — that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed me to suppose that my offer would be welcome.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Mrs. Hilary. “She would be too proud for that. But I’ve no doubt it was welcome.” Matt fretted in silence, but he allowed his mother to go on. “She is a very proud girl, and I’ve no doubt that what she’s been through has intensified her pride.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s perfect,” said Matt. “I’m not perfect, myself. But I don’t conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I know she’s proud. I don’t admire pride; but I suppose that with her it can’t be helped.”

  “I don’t know that I object to it,” said Mrs. Hilary. “It doesn’t always imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur of hers is very effective. I’ve seen it carry her through with people who might have been disposed to look down on her for
some reasons.”

  “I shouldn’t value it, for that,” Matt interrupted.

  “No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family connections that every one else has—”

  “She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!” Matt broke in, with a smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was making.

  “And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn’t have. I’m sure that to see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the princes of the blood, were her cousins. She’s certainly a magnificent creature.”

  Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled:

  “She is — she is — angelically!”

  “Well, not just that type, perhaps,” said Mrs. Hilary. “But she is a good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she’s even more to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about their property, than for wishing to give it up.”

  “Yes,” Matt breathed gratefully.

  “But there, there is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the highest position. But her father! What will people say?”

  “Need we mind that, mother?”

  “Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were — if he had never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!”

  “I would respect him for that!” cried Matt passionately.

  “Matt!”

  “It isn’t a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I should be glad to stand by him!”

  “And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel about your mother and sister, you can’t wish your poor father to suffer anything more on that wretch’s account?”

  “Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my engagement may have on father. I’m afraid it will embarrass him — compromise him, even—”

  “As to that, I can’t say,” said Mrs. Hilary. “You and he ought to know best. One thing is certain. There won’t be any opposition on his part or mine, my son, that you won’t see yourself is reasonable—”

  “Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can’t tell you how deeply I feel—”

  “Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don’t believe he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into State’s prison, you may be very sure your father won’t approve of your marriage.”

  Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not perceive so keenly.

  “I don’t intend that, exactly.”

  “And I’m satisfied, as it is, he won’t be easy about it till the thing is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it’s let alone.”

  “But father can’t let it alone!” said Matt. “It’s his duty to follow it up at every opportunity. I don’t want you to deceive yourself about the matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette see it as I do, and I’m sure she will. I don’t think her father is guiltier than a great many other people who haven’t been found out. But he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope, his salvation, his duty. Father’s duty is to make him bear it whether he’s willing or not. It’s a much more odious duty—”

  “I don’t understand you, Matt, saying your father’s part is more odious than a self-confessed defaulter’s.”

  “No, I don’t say—”

  “Then I think you’d better go to your father, and reconcile your duty with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me, though, that you’ve quite lost your head. The world will look very differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father was sent to State’s prison for taking money that didn’t belong to him.”

  Matt flung up his arms; “Oh, the world, the world! I won’t let the world enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way.”

  “And don’t you think the world will follow you here? Don’t you suppose it is here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home.”

  “I’ve made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her to run from it.”

  “Then for pity’s sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he dies. Good-night.”

  Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in dazzling illusions.

  The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.

  But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he said, “I shall have to take some action about it.”

  “How, action?”

  “Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes known — and you wish it to be known, of course—”

  “Of course!”

  “It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to Northwick.”

  “Northwick?”

  “As president of the Board, I’m ex officio his enemy and persecutor. It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be decent, for me to continue that after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It wouldn’t be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board altogether. I haven’t the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a cost; so I’d better give up my office, and get rid of my duty.”

  “That will be a great sacrifice for you, father,” said Matt.

  “It won’t bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise.”

  “I didn’t mean money-wise. But I know you’ve always enjoyed the position so much.”

  Hilary laughed uneasily. “Well, it hasn’t been a bed of roses since we discovered Northwick’s obliquities — excuse me!”

  Matt blushed. “Oh, I know he’s oblique, as such things go.”

  “In fact,” his father resumed, “I shall be glad to be out of it, and I don’t think there’ll be much opposition to my going out; I know that there’s a growing feeling against me in the Board. I have tried to carry water on both shoulders. I’ve made the effort honestly; but the effect hasn’t been good. I couldn’t keep my heart out of it; from the very first I pitied that poor devil’s children so that I got him and gave him all the chance I could.”

  “That was perfectly right. It was the only business-like
—”

  “It wasn’t business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I’m afraid this is what I’ve hoped, in spite of myself,” said Hilary.

  This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it. He could only say, “I don’t believe you’ve ever allowed that hope to interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment.”

  “No; but I’ve had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I’ve had it. I’ve felt that; and I’m glad that it’s coming to an end. I’m not ashamed of your choice, Matt; I’m proud of it. The thing gave me a shock at first, because I had to face the part I must take. But she’s all kinds of a splendid girl. The Board knows what she wished to do, and why she hasn’t done it. No one can help honoring her. And I don’t believe people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her. But if they do, they may do it, and be damned.”

  Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, upon this conclusion: but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure that he exchanged with his son.

  “We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by that — We must get at him somehow. Of course, they have no more notion where he is than we have.”

  “No; not the least,” said Matt. “I think it’s the uncertainty that’s preying upon Miss Northwick.”

  “The man’s behaving like a confounded lunatic,” said Hilary.

  The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, “That’s their lawyer’s theory of him—”

  “Oh, you’ve seen him, have you? Odd chap.”

  “Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after — after — at the request of Suzette. I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell’s heard of from a brother reporter,” and Matt now unfolded Pinney’s plan to his father, and showed his letter.

  Hilary looked from it at his son. “You don’t mean that this is the blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the Events?”