“Yes; I think so too, in the abstract,” said the father. “If the business were mine, or were business in the ordinary sense of the term—”
“Why, why did you say it was business at all, then?” The girl put her arms round her father’s neck and let her head-scarf fall on the rug a little way from her cloak and her arctics. “If you hadn’t said it was business, I should have been in bed long ago.” Then, as if feeling her father’s eagerness to have her gone, she said, “Good night,” and gave him a kiss, and a hug or two more, and said “Good night, Matt,” and got herself away, letting a long glove trail somewhere out of her dress, and stretch its weak length upon the floor after her, as if it were trying to follow her.
VIII.
Louise’s father, in turning to look from her toward his son, felt himself slightly pricked in the cheek by the pin that had transferred itself from her neck-gear to his coat collar, and Matt went about picking up the cloak, the arctics, the scarf and the glove. He laid the cloak smoothly on the leathern lounge, and arranged the scarf and glove on it, and set the arctics on the floor in a sort of normal relation to it, and then came forward in time to relieve his father of the pin that was pricking him, and that he was rolling his eyes out of his head to get sight of.
“What in the devil is that?” he roared.
“Louise’s pin,” said Matt, as placidly as if that were quite the place for it, and its function were to prick her father in the cheek. He went and pinned it into her scarf, and then he said, “It’s about Northwick, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said his father, still furious from the pinprick. “I’m afraid the miserable scoundrel is going to run away.”
“Did you expect there was a chance of that?” asked Matt, quietly.
“Expect!” his father blustered. “I don’t know what I expected. I might have expected anything of him but common honesty. The position I took at the meeting was that our only hope was to give him a chance. He made all sorts of professions of ability to meet the loss. I didn’t believe him, but I thought that he might partially meet it, and that nothing was to be gained by proceeding against him. You can’t get blood out of a turnip, even by crushing the turnip.”
“That seems sound,” said the son, with his reasonable smile.
“I didn’t spare him, but I got the others to spare him. I told him he was a thief.”
“Oh!” said Matt.
“Why, wasn’t he?” returned his father, angrily.
“Yes, yes. I suppose he might be called so.” Matt admitted it with an air of having his reservations, which vexed his father still more.
“Very well, sir!” he roared. “Then I called him so; and I think that it will do him good to know it.” Hilary did not repeat all of the violent things he had said to Northwick, though he had meant to do so, being rather proud of them; the tone of his son’s voice somehow stopped him for the moment. “I brought them round to my position, and we gave him the chance he asked for.”
“It was really the only thing you could do.”
“Of course it was! It was the only business-like thing, though it won’t seem so when it comes out that he’s gone to Canada. I told him I thought the best thing for him would be a good, thorough, railroad accident on his way home; and that if it were not for his family, for his daughter who’s been in and out here so much with Louise, I would like to see him handcuffed, and going down the street with a couple of constables.”
Matt made no comment upon this, perhaps because he saw no use in criticising his father, and perhaps because his mind was more upon the point he mentioned. “It will be hard for that pretty creature.”
“It will be hard for a number of creatures, pretty and plain,” said his father. “It won’t break any of us; but it will shake some of us up abominably. I don’t know but it may send one or two people to the wall, for the time being.”
“Ah, but that isn’t the same thing at all. That’s suffering; it isn’t shame. It isn’t the misery that the sin of your father has brought on you.”
“Well, of course not!” said Hilary, impatiently granting it. “But Miss Northwick always seemed to me a tolerably tough kind of young person. I never quite saw what Louise found to like in her.”
“They were at school together,” said the son. “She’s a sufficiently offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl like Louise.”
Hilary asked, with a divergence more apparent than real, “How is that affair of hers with Jack Wilmington?”
“I don’t know. It seems to have that quality of mystery that belongs to all affairs of the kind when they hang fire. We expect people to get married, and be done with it, though that may not really be the way to be done with it.”
“Wasn’t there some scandal about him, of some kind?”
“Yes; but I never believed in it.”
“He always struck me as something of a cub, but somehow he doesn’t seem the sort of a fellow to give the girl up because—”
“Because her father is a fraud?” Matt suggested. “No, I don’t think he is, quite. But there are always a great many things that enter into the matter besides a man’s feelings, or his principles, even. I can’t say what I think Wilmington would do. What steps do you propose to take next in the matter?”
“I promised him he shouldn’t be followed up, while he was trying to right himself. If we find he’s gone, we must give the case into the hands of the detectives, I suppose.” The disgust showed itself in Hilary’s face, which was an index to all his emotions, and his son said, with a smile of sympathy:
“The apparatus of justice isn’t exactly attractive, even when one isn’t a criminal. But I don’t know that it’s any more repulsive than the apparatus of commerce, or business, as we call it. Some dirt seems to get on everybody’s bread by the time he’s earned it, or on his money even when he’s made it in large sums as our class do.”
The last words gave the father a chance to vent his vexation with himself upon his son. “I wish you wouldn’t talk that walking-delegate’s rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may fitly take it as a sign that I wish to be let alone myself.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the young man. “I didn’t wish to annoy you.”
“Don’t do it, then.” After a moment, Hilary added with a return to his own sense of deficiency, “The whole thing’s as thoroughly distasteful to me as it can be. But I can’t see how I could have acted otherwise than I’ve done. I know I’ve made myself responsible, in a way, for Northwick’s getting off; but there was really nothing to do but to give him the chance he asked for. His having abused it won’t change that fact at all; but I can’t conceal from myself that I half-expected him to abuse it.”
He put this tentatively, and his son responded, “I suppose that naturally inclines you to suppose he’ll run away.”
“Yes.”
“But your supposition doesn’t establish the fact.”
“No. But the question is whether it doesn’t oblige me to act as if it had; whether I oughtn’t, if I’ve got this suspicion, to take some steps at once to find out whether Northwick’s really gone or not, and to mix myself actively up in the catchpole business of his pursuit, after I promised him he shouldn’t be shadowed in any way till his three days were over.”
“It’s a nice question,” said Matt, “or rather, it’s a nasty one. Still, you’ve only got your fears for evidence, and you must all have had your fears before. I don’t think that even a bad conscience ought to hurry one into the catchpole business.” Matt laughed again with that fondness he had for his father. “Though as for any peculiar disgrace in catchpoles as catchpoles, I don’t see it. They’re a necessary part of the administration of justice, as we understand it, and have it; and I don’t see how a detective who arrests, say, a murderer, is not as respectably employed as the judge who sentence
s him, or the hangman who puts the rope round his neck. The distinction we make between them is one of those tricks for shirking responsibility which are practised in every part of the system. Not that I want you to turn catchpole. It’s all so sorrowful and sickening that I wish you hadn’t any duty at all in the matter. I suppose you feel at least that you ought to let the Board know that you have your misgivings?”
“Yes,” said Hilary, ruefully, with his double chin on his breast, “I felt like doing it at once; but there was my word to him! And I wanted to talk with you.”
“It was just as well to let them have their night’s rest. There isn’t really anything to be done.” Matt rose from the low chair where he had been sprawling, and stretched his stalwart arms abroad. “If the man was going he’s gone past recall by this time; and if he isn’t gone, there’s no immediate cause for anxiety.”
“Then you wouldn’t do anything at present?”
“I certainly shouldn’t. What could you do?”
“Yes, it might as well all go till morning, I suppose.”
“Good night,” the son said, suggestively, “I suppose there isn’t really anything more?”
“No, what could there be? You had better go to bed.”
“And you, too, I hope, father.”
“Oh, I shall go to bed — as a matter of form.”
The son laughed. “I wish you could carry your formality so far as to go to sleep, too. I shall.”
“I sha’n’t sleep,” said the father, bitterly. “When things like this happen, someone has to lie awake and think about them.”
“Well, I dare say Northwick’s doing that.”
“I doubt it,” said Hilary. “I suspect Northwick is enjoying a refreshing slumber on the Montreal express somewhere near St. Albans about this time.”
“I doubt if his dreams are pleasant. After all, he’s only going to a larger prison if he’s going into exile. He may be on the Montreal express, but I guess he isn’t sleeping,” said Matt.
“Yes,” his father admitted. “Poor devil! He’d much better be dead.”
IX.
The groom who drove Miss Sue Northwick down to the station at noon that day, came back without her an hour later. He brought word to her sister that she had not found the friend she expected to meet at the station, but had got a telegram from her there, and had gone into town to lunch with her. The man was to return and fetch her from the six o’clock train.
She briefly explained at dinner that her friend had been up at four balls during the week, and wished to beg off from the visit she had promised until after the fifth, which was to be that night.
“I don’t see how she lives through it,” said Adeline. “And at her age, it seems very odd to be just as fond of dancing as if she were a bud.”
“Louise is only twenty-three,” said Suzette. “If she were married, she would be just in the heart of her gayeties at that age, or even older.”
“But she isn’t married, and that makes all the difference.”
“Her brother is spending the month at home, and she makes the most of his being with them.”
“Has he given up his farming? It’s about time.”
“No; not at all, I believe. She says he’s in Boston merely as a matter of duty, to chaperon her at parties, and save her mother from having to go with her.”
“Well,” said Adeline, “I should think he would want to be of some use in the world; and if he won’t help his father in business, he had better help his mother in society.”
Suzette sat fallen back in her chair for the moment, and she said as if she had not heeded, “I think I will give a little dance here, next week. Louise can come up for a couple of days, and we can have it Thursday. We made out the list — just a few people. She went out with me after lunch, and we saw most of the girls, and I ordered the supper. Mrs. Lambert will matronize them; it’ll be an old dance, rather, as far as the girls are concerned, but I’ve asked two or three buds; and some of the young married people. It will be very pleasant, don’t you think?”
“Very. Do you think Mr. Wade would like to come?”
Suzette smiled. “I dare say he would. I wasn’t thinking of him in making it, but I don’t see why he shouldn’t look in.”
“He might come to the supper,” Adeline mused aloud, “if it isn’t one of his church days. I never can keep the run of them.”
“We were talking about that and we decided that Thursday would be perfectly safe. Louise and I looked it up together; but we knew we could make everything sure by asking Mrs. Lambert first of all; she would have been certain to object if we had made any mistake.”
“I’m very glad,” said Adeline. “I know father will be glad to have Mr. Wade here. He’s taken a great fancy to him.”
“Mr. Wade’s very nice,” said Suzette, coolly. “I shouldn’t have liked to have it without him.”
They left the table and went into the library, to talk the dance over at larger leisure. Suzette was somewhat sleepy from the fatigues of her escapade to Boston, and an afternoon spent mostly in the cold air, and from time to time she yawned, and said she must really go to bed, and then went on talking.
“Shall you have any of the South Hatboro’ people?” her sister asked.
“Mrs. Munger and her tribe?” said Suzette, with a contemptuous little smile. “I don’t think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; or the Putneys, at once?” She added abruptly, “I think I shall ask Jack Wilmington.” Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she went on quite imperviously. “The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he were quite friends at one time. Besides,” she said, as if choosing now to recognize the quality of Adeline’s gaze, “I don’t care to have Louise suppose there’s the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a quarrel.”
Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. “I’m glad that’s it. I’m always afraid you’ll get—”
“To thinking about him again? You needn’t be. All that’s as thoroughly dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No,” she continued, in the tone that is more than half for one’s self in such dealings, “whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don’t believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the point.”
“I’m glad it seems so to you now, Sue,” said her sister, “but you needn’t tell me that you weren’t very much taken with him at one time; and if it’s going to begin again, I’d much rather you wouldn’t have him here.”
Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. “Do you think you shall see me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his explanations.”
“I don’t believe he’s ever been bad!” cried Adeline. “He’s just weak.”
“Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and didn’t think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be explained.”
“Ah, you’re in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the world, after the way he’s treated you!”
“Don’t be silly, Adeline! Don’t be romantic! If you had ever been in love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other things. Let’s see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?”
She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the chimney. “You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second husbands.” The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a rapid aside: “Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James,” and returned to her sister. “No, Adeline! The only really enduring and undying thing is a slight. That lasts — with me!”
Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from the inborn New England love of justice, “I don’t believe he ever meant it, Sue. I don’t believe but what
he was influenced—”
Suzette laughed, not at all bitterly. “Oh, you’re in love with him! Well, you may have him if ever he offers himself to me. Let’s look at the drawing-room.” She caught Adeline round her bony waist, where each rib defined itself to her hand, and danced her out of the library, across the hall into the white and gold saloon beyond. “Yes,” she said, with a critical look at the room, “it will do splendidly. We shall have to put down linen, of course; but then the dancing will be superb — as good as a bare floor. Yes, it will be a grand success. Ugh! Come out, come out, come out! How deathly cold it is!”
She ran back into the warm library, and her sister followed more slowly. “You shouldn’t think,” she said, as if something in Sue’s words had reminded her of it, “that coming so soon after Mrs. Newton’s little boy—”
“Well, that’s like you, Adeline! To bring that up! No, indeed! It’ll be a whole week, nearly; and besides he isn’t quite one of the family. What an idea!”
“Of course,” her sister assented, abashed by Sue’s scornful surprise.
“It’s too bad it should have happened just at this time,” said the girl, with some relenting. “When is it to be?”
“To-morrow, at eleven,” said Adeline. She perceived that Sue’s selfishness was more a selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts or feelings. “You needn’t have anything to do with it. I can tell them you were not very well, and didn’t feel exactly like coming. They will understand.” She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly fib like this seemed no harm to her.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 468