Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring to bear upon the girl’s face. “Why, I suppose that some of us — some of the directors — have had doubts—”
“Have you?”
“My dear girl — my poor child! You couldn’t understand. But I can truly say, that when this examination — when the subject came up for discussion at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed that he should have the chance.” Hilary said this for the sake of the girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his part in the affair. He went on: “It is such a very, very common thing for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm is meant, and none is done — unless — unless the venture turns out unfortunately. It’s not an isolated case!” Hilary felt that he was getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. “The whole affair was very well put in the Abstract. Have you seen it? You must see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs. Hilary — we have the paper—”
Suzette rose. “Then some of the directors believe that my father has been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?”
“Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point—”
“Do you?”
“I can’t say — I don’t think he meant —— He expected to restore it, of course. He was given time for that.” Hilary hesitated, and then he thought he had better say: “But he had certainly been employing the company’s funds in his private enterprises.”
“That is all,” said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise coming down the stairs.
“Why, Sue!” she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms around her friend’s neck. “Oh, Sue, Sue!” she said, in that voice a woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and sympathizes utterly with her.
Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. “Let me go, Louise.”
“No, no! You shan’t go. I want you — you must stay with us, now. I know Matt doesn’t believe at all in that dreadful report.”
“That wouldn’t be anything now, even if it were true. There’s another report — don’t you know it? — in the paper this morning.” Louise tried to look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: “And your father has been saying my father is a thief.”
“Oh, papa!” Louise wailed out.
It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone.
XX.
The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to Northwick’s daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to work that touching miracle which is possible in women’s hearts, and to establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could shake.
Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts. But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in business morality, and as Northwick’s daughters, they knew that he would not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed other people’s money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his own, and could not; that was all.
With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life. But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife. She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind.
Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in the solitude to which the compassion, the diffidence, or the contempt of their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that the next time she hoped to see him.
One of the ladies of South Hatboro’, a Mrs. Munger, who spent her winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of Suzette’s character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity which she would have felt for any one else in the girl’s position. Mrs. Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro’, who distinguished himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the directors’ meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief in Northwick’s integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law’s delays in seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro’, those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law. He blamed the Ponkwasset directors for a species of incivism, in failing to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive.
“Why don’t they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to the stockholders he has robbed?” he asked one morning in the chance conclave of loungers in his store. “I understand it is this man Hilary, in Boston, who has shielded and — and protected him from the start, and — and right along. I don’t know why; but if I was one of the Ponkwasset stockholders, I think I should. I should make a point of inquiring why Northwick’s family went on living in my house after he had plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on.”
The lawyer Putney was present, and he shifted the tobacco he had in one cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. “Well, Billy, I’ll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate belong to Northwick’s family and not to Northwick’s creditors.” The listeners laughed, and Putney went on, “That was a point that brother Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of the soldier’s monument.”
“I never wanted his statue put on top of the soldier’s monument!” Mr. Gerrish
retorted angrily.
Putney’s spree was past, and he was in the full enjoyment of the contempt for Gerrish, which was apt to turn to profound respect when he was in his cups. He was himself aware of the anomalous transition by which he then became a leader of conservative feeling on all subjects and one of the staunchest friends of the status; he said it was the worst thing he knew against the existing condition of things. He went on, now: “Didn’t you? Well, I think it would look better than that girl they’ve got there in circus-clothes.” They all laughed; Putney had a different form of derision for the Victory of the soldier’s monument every time he spoke of it. “And it would suggest what those poor fellows really died for: that we could have more and more Northwicks, and a whole Northwick system of things. Heigh? You see, Billy, I don’t have to be so hard on the Northwicks, personally, because I regard them as a necessary part of the system. What would become of the laws and the courts if there were no rogues? We must have Northwicks. It’s a pity that the Northwicks should have families; but I don’t blame the Northwicks for providing against the evil day that Northwickism is sure to end in. I’m glad the roof can’t be taken from over those women’s heads; I respect the paternal love and foresight of J. Milton in deeding the property to them.”
“It’s downright robbery of his creditors for them to keep it!” Gerrish shouted.
“Oh, no, it isn’t, Billy. It’s law. You must respect the law and the rights of property. You’ll be wanting the strikers to burn down the shoe-shops the next time we have trouble here. You’re getting awfully incendiary, Billy.”
Putney carried the laugh against Gerrish, but there were some of the group, and there were many people in Hatboro’, including most of the women, who felt the want of exemplary measures in dealing with Northwick’s case. These ladies did not see the sense of letting those girls live on just as if nothing had happened, in a house that their father’s crimes had forfeited to his victims, while plenty of honest people did not know where they were going to sleep that night, or where the next mouthful of victuals was to come from. It was not really the houseless and the hungry who complained of this injustice; it was not even those who toiled for their daily bread in the Hatboro’ shops who said such things. They were too busy, and then too tired, to think much about them, and the noise of Northwick’s misdeeds died first amid the din of machinery. It was in the close, stove-heated parlors of the respectable citizens, behind the windows that had so long commanded envious views of the Northwicks going by in their carriages and sledges, and among women of leisure and conscience, that his infamy endured, and that the injuries of his creditors cried out for vengeance on those daughters of his; they had always thought themselves too good to speak to other folks. Such women could not understand what the Ponkwasset Mills Company meant by not turning those girls right out of doors, and perhaps they could not have been taught why the company had no power to do this, or why the president, at least, had no wish to do it. When they learned that his family still kept up friendly relations with the Northwick girls, they were not without their suspicions, which were not long in becoming their express belief, that the Hilarys were sharing in the booty. They were not cruel, and would not really have liked to see the Northwick girls suffer, if it had come to that; but they were greedy of the vengeance promised upon the wicked, and they had no fear of judging or of meting with the fullest measure.
In the freer air of the streets and stores and offices, their husbands were not so eager. In fact, it might be said that no man was eager but Gerrish. After the first excitement, and the successive shocks of sensation imparted by the newspapers had passed, there came over the men of Hatboro’ a sort of resignation which might or might not be regarded as proof of a general demoralization. The defalcation had startled them, but it could not be said to have surprised any one; it was to be expected of a man in Northwick’s position; it happened every day somewhere, and the day had come when it should happen there. They did not say God was good and that Mahomet was His prophet, but they were fatalists all the same. They accepted the accomplished fact, and, reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro’ bank had been wrecked, and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely believed that any member of the Ponkwasset Company would have done the same thing as Northwick if he had got the chance. Beyond that they were mostly interested in the question whether Northwick had perished in the railroad accident, or had put up a job on the public, and was possessing his soul in peace somewhere in Rogue’s Rest, as Putney called the Dominion of Canada. Putney represented the party in favor of Northwick’s survival; and Gates, the provision man, led the opposite faction. When Putney dropped in to order his marketing, he usually said something like, “Well, Joel, how’s cremation, this morning?”
“Just booming, Squire. That stock’s coming up, right along. Bound to be worth a hundred cents on the dollar before hayin’, yet.” This, or something like it, was what Gates usually answered, but one morning he asked, “Heard how it stands with the Ponkwasset folks, I suppose? They say — paper does — that the reason the president hung off from making a complaint was that he didn’t rightly see how he could have the ashes indicted. He believes in it, any way.”
“Well,” said Putney, “the fathers of New England all died in the blessed hope of infant damnation. But that didn’t prove it.”
“That’s something so, Squire. Guess you got me there,” said Gates.
“I can understand old Hilary’s not wanting to push the thing, under the circumstances, and I don’t blame him. But the law must have its course. Hilary’s got his duty to do. I don’t want to do it for him.”
XXI.
Hilary could not help himself, though when he took the legal steps he was obliged to, it seemed to him that he was wilfully urging on the persecution of that poor young girl and that poor old maid. It was really ghastly to go through the form of indicting a man who, so far as any one could prove to the contrary, had passed with his sins before the tribunal that searches hearts and judges motives rather than acts. But still the processes had to go on, and Hilary had to prompt them. It was all talked over in Hilary’s family, where he was pitied and forgiven in that affection which keeps us simple and sincere in spite of the masks we wear to the world. His wife and his children knew how kind he was, and how much he suffered in this business which, from the first, he had tried to be so lenient in. When he wished to talk of it, they all agreed that Matt must not vex him with his theories and his opinions; and when he did not talk of it, no one must mention it.
Hilary felt the peculiar hardships of his position, all the more keenly because he had a conscience that would not permit him to shirk his duty. He had used his influence, the weight of his character and business repute, to control the action of the Board towards Northwick, when the defalcation became known, and now he was doubly bound to respond to the wishes of the directors in proceeding against him. Most of them believed that Northwick was still alive; those who were not sure regarded it as a public duty to have him indicted at any rate, and they all voted that Hilary should make the necessary complaint. Then Hilary had no choice but to obey. Another man in his place might have resigned, but he could not, for he knew that he was finally responsible for Northwick’s escape.
He made it no less his duty to find out just how much hardship it would work Northwick’s daughters, and he tried to lend them money. But Suzette answered for both that her father had left them some money when he went away; and Hilary could only send Louise to explain how he must formally appear in the legal proceedings; he allowed Louise to put whatever warmth of color she wished into his regrets and into his advice that they should consult a lawyer. It was not business-like; if it were generally known it might be criticised; but i
n the last resort, with a thing like that, Hilary felt that he could always tell his critics to go to the deuce, and fall back upon a good conscience.
It seemed to Louise, at first, that Suzette was unwilling to separate her father from his office, or fully to appreciate his forbearance. She treated her own father’s course as something above suspicion, as something which he was driven to by enemies, whom he would soon have returned to put to confusion, if he had lived. It made no difference to her and Adeline what was done; their father was safe, now, and some day his name would be cleared. Adeline added that they were in the home where he had left them; it was their house, and no one could take it from them.
Louise compassionately assented to everything. She thought Suzette might have been a little more cordial in the way she received her father’s regrets. But she remembered that Suzette was always undemonstrative, and she did not blame her, after her first disappointment. She could see the sort of neglect that was already falling upon the house, the expression in housekeeping terms of the despair that was in their minds. The sisters did not cry, but Louise cried a good deal in pity for their forlornness, and at last her tears softened them into something like compassion for themselves. They had her stay to lunch rather against her will, but she thought she had better stay. The lunch was so badly cooked and so meagre that Louise fancied they were beginning to starve themselves, and wanted to cry into her tea-cup. The woman who waited wore such dismal black, and went about with her eyes staring and her mouth tightly pursed, and smelt faintly of horses. It was Mrs. Newton; she had let Louise in when she came, and she was the only servant whom the girl saw.
Suzette said nothing about their plans for the future, and Louise did not like to ask her. She felt as if she was received under a flag of truce, and that there could be no confidence between them. Both of the sisters seemed to stand on the defensive with her; but when she started to come away, Suzette put on her hat and jacket, and said she would go to the avenue gate with her, and meet Simpson, who was coming to take Louise back to the station.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 477