Northwick was fond of both his daughters; if he was more demonstrative
in meeting the younger, it was because she had the more modern and more
urban habit of caressing her father; the elder, who was very much the
elder, followed an earlier country fashion of self-possession, and
remained silent and seated when he came into the room, though she
watched with a pleased interest the exchange of endearments between him
and her sister. Her name was Adeline, which was her mother's name, too;
and she had the effect of being the aunt of the young girl. She was thin
and tall, and she had a New England indigestion which kept her looking
frailer than she really was. She conformed to the change of
circumstances which she had grown into almost as consciously as her
parents, and dressed richly in sufficiently fashionable gowns, which she
preferred to have of silk, cinnamon or brown in color; on her slight,
bony fingers she wore a good many rings.
Suzette was the name of the other daughter; her mother had fancied that
name; but the single monosyllable it had been shortened into somehow
suited the proud-looking girl better than the whole name, with its
suggestion of coquettishness.
She asked, "Why didn't you come down, papa? Mr. Wade was calling, and he
stayed to dinner." She smiled, and it gave him a pang to see that she
seemed unusually happy; he could have borne better, he perceived, to
leave her miserable; at least, then, he would not have wholly made her
so.
"I had some matters to look after," he said. "I thought I might get down
before he went." A deep leathern arm-chair stood before the hearth where
the young rector had been sitting, with the ladies at either corner of
the mantel; Northwick let himself sink into it, and with a glance at the
face of the faintly ticking clock on the black marble shelf before him,
he added casually, "I must get an early train for Ponkwasset in the
morning, and I still have some things to put in shape."
"Is there any trouble there?" the girl asked from the place she had
resumed. She held by one hand from the corner of the mantel, and let her
head droop over on her arm. Her father had a sense of her extraordinary
beauty, as a stranger might have had.
"Trouble?" he echoed.
"With the hands."
"Oh, no; nothing of that sort. What made you think so?" asked Northwick,
rapidly exploring the perspective opened up in his mind by her question,
to see if it contained any suggestion of advantage to him. He found an
instant's relief in figuring himself called to the mills by a labor
trouble.
"That tiresome little wretch of a Putney is going about circulating all
sorts of reports."
"There is no reason as yet, to suppose the strike will affect us," said
Northwick. "But I think I had better be on the ground."
"I should think you could leave it to the Superintendent," said the
girl, "without wearing your own life out about it."
"I suppose I might," said Northwick, with an effect of refusing to
acquire merit by his behavior, "but the older hands all know me so well,
that--"
He stopped as if it were unnecessary to go on, and the elder daughter
said: "He is on one of his sprees again. I should think something ought
to be done about him, for his family's sake, if nothing else. Elbridge
told James that you almost drove over him, coming up."
"Yes," said Northwick. "I didn't see him until he started up under the
horses' feet."
"He will get killed, some of these days," said Adeline, with the sort of
awful satisfaction in realizing a catastrophe, which delicate women
often feel.
"It would be the best thing for him," said her sister, "and for his
family, too. When a man is nothing but a burden and a disgrace to
himself and everybody belonging to him, he had better die as soon as
possible."
Northwick sat looking into his daughter's beautiful face, but he saw the
inflamed and heated visage of the president of the board, and he heard
him saying, "The best thing that could happen to you on your way home
would be a good railroad accident."
He sighed faintly, and said, "We can't always tell. I presume it isn't
for us to say." He went on, with that leniency for the shortcomings of
others which we feel when we long for mercy to our own: "Putney is a
very able man; one of the ablest lawyers in the State, and very honest.
He could be almost anything if he would let liquor alone. I don't wish
to judge him. He may have"--Northwick sighed again, and ended
vaguely--"his reasons."