The affair had been mixed up with tea and lunch, and there was now the
suggestion of a gay return to the Northwick place and an hour or two
more in that pleasant company of pretty and lively women, which Wade
loved almost as well as he loved righteousness. He knew that there was
such a thing as death in the world; he had often already seen its
strange, peaceful face; he had just stood by an open grave; but at the
moment, his youth denied it all, and he swung along over the hard-packed
roadway thinking of the superb beauty of Suzette Northwick, and the
witchery of Louise Hilary's face. It was like her, to come at once to
her friend in this anxiety; and he believed a strength in her to help
bear the worst, the worst that now seemed so remote and impossible.
He did not find Matt Hilary in the station; but he pushed through to the
platform outside and saw him at a little distance standing between two
of the tracks, and watching a group of men there who were replacing some
wornout rails with new ones.
"Matt!" he called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello,
Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his
face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in
position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the
plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide,
free-handed rhythmical swing of his hammer.
"Beautiful! Isn't it?" said Matt. "I never see any sort of manual labor,
even the kinds that are brutified and demoralized by their association
with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of
the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief
just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again:
in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their
work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy dress, which
ennobled the scene.
When Matt once more faced round, he smiled serenely on his friend. Wade,
who knew his temperament and his philosophy, was deceived for the
moment. "Then you don't share Miss Northwick's anxiety about her
father," he began, as if Matt had been dealing directly with that
matter, and had been giving his reasons for not being troubled about it.
"Have you heard any thing yet? But of course you haven't, or--"
Matt halted him, and looked down into his face from his greater height
with a sort of sobered cheerfulness. "How much do you know about Miss
Northwick's father?"
"Very little--nothing in fact but what she and her sister showed me in
the morning paper. I know they're in great distress about him; I just
met Miss Suzette and your sister, and they told me I should find you at
the station."
Matt began to walk on again. "I didn't know but you had heard some talk
from the outside. I came off to escape the pressure of inquiry at the
station; people had found out somehow that I had been put in charge of
the telegraphing when the young ladies left. I imagined they wouldn't
follow me if I went for a walk." He put his hand through Wade's arm, and
directed their course across the tracks toward the street away from the
station, where Elbridge had walked his horses up and down the evening he
met Northwick. "I told them to look out for me, if they got anything; I
should keep in sight somewhere. Isn't it a curious commentary on our
state of things," he went on, "that when any man in a position of trust
can't be accounted for twenty-four hours after he leaves home, the
business-like supposition is that he has run away with money that
doesn't belong to him?"
"What do you mean, Matt?"
"I mean that the popular belief in Hatboro' seems to be that Northwick
was on his way to Canada on the train that was wrecked."
"Shocking, shocking!" said Wade. "What makes you think they believe
that?"
"The conjecture and speculation began in the station the moment Miss
Northwick left it, and before it could be generally understood that I
was there to represent her. I suppose there wasn't a man among them that
wouldn't have trusted Northwick with all he had, or wouldn't have felt
that his fortune was made if Northwick had taken charge of his money. In
fact I heard some of them saying so before their deference for me shut
their mouths. Yet I haven't a doubt they all think he's an absconding
defaulter."
"It's shocking," said Wade, sadly, "but I'm afraid you're right. These
things are so common that people are subjected to suspicion on no kind
of--" But just at this juncture Matt lifted his head from the moment's
revery in which he seemed to have been far absent.
"Have you seen much of the family this winter?"
"Yes, a good deal," said Wade. "They're not communicants, but they've
been regular attendants at the services, and I've been a good deal at
their house. They seem rather lonely; they have very little to do with
the South Hatboro' people, and nothing at all with the villagers. I
don't know why they've spent the winter here. Of course one hears all
kinds of gossip. The gossips at South Hatboro' say that Miss Suzette was
willing to be on with young Wilmington again, and that _she_ kept the
family here. But I place no faith in such a conjecture."
"It has a rustic crudity," said Matt. "But if Jack Wilmington ever cared
anything for the girl, now's his chance to be a man and stand by her."
Something in Matt's tone made Wade stop and ask, "What do you mean,
Matt? Is there anything besides--"
"Yes." Matt took a fresh grip of his friend's arm, and walked him
steadily forward, and kept him walking in spite of his involuntary
tendency to come to a halt every few steps, and try to urge something
that he never quite got from his tongue, against the probability of what
Matt was saying. "I mean that these people are right in their
suspicions."
"Right?"
"My dear Caryl, there is no doubt whatever that Northwick is a defaulter
to the company in a very large amount. It came out at a meeting of the
directors on Monday. He confessed it, for he could not deny it in the
face of the proof against him, and he was given a number of days to make
up his shortage. He was released on parole: it was really the best
thing, the wisest as well as the mercifullest, and of course he broke
his word, and seized the first chance to run away. I knew all about the
defalcation from my father just after the meeting. There is simply no
question about it."
"Gracious powers!" said Wade, finally helpless to dispute the facts
which he still did not realize. "And you think it possible--do you
suppose--imagine--that it was really he who was in that burning car?
What an awful fate!"
"An awful fate?" asked Matt. "Do you think so? Yes, yours is the safe
ground in regard to a thing of that kind--the only ground."
"The only ground?"
"I was thinking of my poor father," said Matt.
"He said some sharp things to that wretched creature at the meeting of
the Board--called him a thief, and I dare say other hard names--and told
him that the best thing that could happen to him was a railroad accident
on his way home."
"Ah!"
"You see? When he read the account of that accident in the paper this
morning, and found a name so much like Northwick's among the victims, he
was fearfully broken up, of course. He felt somehow as if he had caused
his death--I could see that, though of course he wouldn't admit anything
of the kind."
"Of course," said Wade, compassionately.
"I suppose it isn't well to invoke death in any way. He is like the
devil, and only too apt to come, if you ask for him. I don't mean
anything superstitious, and I don't suppose my father really has any
superstitious feeling about the matter. But he's been rather a
friend--or a victim--of that damnable theory that the gentlemanly way
out of a difficulty like Northwick's is suicide, and I suppose he spoke
from association with it, or by an impulse from it. He has been
telegraphing right and left, to try to verify the reports, as it was his
business and duty to do, anyway; and he caught at the notion of my
coming up here with Louise to see if we could be of any use to those two
poor women."
"Poor women!" Wade echoed. "The worst must fall upon them, as the worst
always seems to do."
"Yes, wherever a cruel blow falls there seems to be a woman for it to
fall on. And you see what a refinement of cruelty this is going to be
when it reaches them? They have got to know that their father met that
awful death, and that he met it because he was a defaulter and was
running away. I suppose the papers will be full of it."
"That seems intolerable. Couldn't anything be done to stop them?"
"Why the thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but
sorrow and shame have to come out--I don't know why, but they do. Then,
when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the
cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in
silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in
words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that
bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held her head, as she
took the reins and drove off, with poor Louise beside her palpitating
with sympathy for her trouble and anxiety about her horses, was, yes, it
was superb: there's no other word for it. Ah, poor girl!"
"Your sister's presence will be a great help to her," said Wade. "It was
very good of her to come."
"Ah, there wasn't anything else for it," said Matt, flinging his head
up. "Louise has my father's loyalty. I don't know much about her
friendship with Miss Northwick--she's so much younger than I, and they
came together when I was abroad--but I've fancied she wasn't much liked
among the girls, and Louise was her champion, in a way. When Louise read
that report, nothing would do but she must come."
"Of course."
"But our being here must have its embarrassments for my father. It was a
sacrifice for him to let us come."
"I don't understand."
"It was he who carried through the respite the directors gave Northwick;
and now he will have the appearance before some people of helping to
cover up the miserable facts, of putting a good face on things while a
rogue was getting away from justice. He might even be supposed to have
some interest in getting him out of the way."
"Oh, I don't think any such suspicion can attach itself to such a man as
Mr. Hilary," said Wade, with a certain resentment of the suggestion even
from the man's son.
"In a commercial civilization like ours any sort of suspicion can attach
to any sort of man in a case like this," said Matt.
Wade took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I can't realize that the
case is what you say. I can't realize it at all. It seems like some poor
sort of play, of make-believe. I can't forgive myself for being so
little moved by it. We are in the presence of a horror that ought to
make us uncover our heads and fall to our knees and confess our own sins
to God!"
"Ah, I'm with you _there_!" said Matt, and he pushed his hand farther
through his friend's arm.
They were both still well under thirty, and they both had that zest for
mere experience, any experience, that hunger for the knowledge of life,
which youth feels. In their several ways they were already men who had
thought for themselves, or conjectured, rather; and they were eager to
verify their speculations through their emotions. They thought a good
deal alike in many things, though they started from such opposite points
in their thinking; and they both had finally the same ideal of life.
Their intimacy was of as old a date as their school days; at Harvard
they were in the same clubs as well as the same class. Wade's father was
not a Boston man, but his mother was a Bellingham, and he was nurtured
in the traditions of Hilary's social life. Both had broken with them:
Wade not so much when he became a ritualist as Hilary when he turned his
back on manufacturing.
They were now not without a kind of pride in standing so close to the
calamity they were fated witnesses of, and in the midst of their
sympathy they had a curiosity which concerned itself with one of the
victims because she was a young and beautiful girl. Their pity not so
much forgot as ignored Northwick's elder daughter, who was a plain, sick
old maid, and followed the younger with a kind of shrinking and dread of
her doom which Matt tried to put into words.
"I assure you if I couldn't manage to pull away from it at moments, I
don't see how I could stand it. I had a sense of personal disgrace, when
I met that poor girl, with what I had in my mind. I felt as if I were
taking some base advantage of her in knowing that about her father, and
I was so glad when she went off with Louise and left me to struggle with
my infamous information alone. I hurried Louise away with her in the
most cowardly haste. We don't any of us realize it, as you say. Why,
just imagine! It means sorrow, it means shame, it means poverty. They
will have to leave their house, their home; she will have to give up
everything to the company. It isn't merely friends and her place in the
world; it's money, it's something to eat and wear, it's a roof over her
head!"
Wade refused the extreme view portrayed by his friend's figures. "Of
course she won't be allowed to come to want."
"Of course. But there's really no measuring the sinuous reach of a
disaster like this. It strikes from a coil that seems to involve
everything."
"What are you going to do if you get bad news?" asked Wade.
"Ah, I don't know! I must tell her, somehow; unless you think that
you--" Wade gave a start which Matt interpreted aright; he laughed
nervously. "No, no! It's for me to do it. I know that; unless I can get
Louise. Ah! I wonder what that is."
They were walking back toward the station again, and Matt had seen a
head and arm projected from the office window, and a hand waving a sheet
of yellow paper. It seemed meant for them. They both began to run, and
then they checked themselves; and walked as fast as they could.
"We must refer the matter to your sister," said Wade, "and if she thinks
best, remember that I shall be quite ready to speak to Miss Northwick.
Or, if you think best, I will speak to her without troubling your
sister."
"Oh, you're all right, Wade. You needn't have any doubt of that. We'll
see. I wonder what there is in that dispatch."
The old station master had come out of the station and was hurrying to
meet them with the message, now duly enclosed in an envelope. He gave it
to Matt and promptly turned his back on him.
Matt tore it open, and read: "Impossible to identify parlor-car
passengers." The telegram was signed "Operator," and was dated at
Wellwater. It fell blankly on their tense feeling.
"Well," said Wade, after a long breath. "It isn't the worst."
Matt read it frowningly over several times; then he smiled. "Oh, no.
This isn't at all bad. It's nothing. But so far, it's rather comforting.
And it's something, even if it is nothing. Well, I suppose I'd better go
up to Miss Northwick with it. Wait a moment; I must tell them where to
send if anything else comes."
"I'll walk with you as far as St. Michael's," said Wade, when they left
the station. "I'm going to my study, there."
They set off together, up the middle of the street, which gave them more
elbow-room than the sidewalk narrowly blocked out of the snow.
From a large store as they were passing, a small, dry-looking, pompous
little man advanced to the middle of the street, and stopped them. "I
beg your pardon, Mr. Wade! I beg your pardon, sir!" he said, nimbly
transferring himself, after the quasi self-introduction, from Wade to
Matt. "May I ask whether you have received any further information?"
"No," said Matt, amiably, "the only answer we have got is that it is
impossible to identify the passengers in the parlor-car."
"Ah, thank you! Thank you very much, sir! I felt sure it couldn't be
_our_ Mr. Northwick. Er--good-morning, sir."
He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked
Wade, "Who in the world is that?"
"He's a Mr. Gerrish--keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant
type."
Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so
low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business
standing."
"Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar
of material success."
Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is
simply seething with curiosity."
Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down
to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was
alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble.
"Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply.
Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater.
"I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn.
"It's perfectly ridiculous! _Why_ should he have been there? I think
there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating
false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the
train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some
horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm
going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's
bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out."
"Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt.
"No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you
back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she
handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell
them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes."
The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the
paper in his hand.
"Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully
backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing
from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater
Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's
the worst, I want to know the worst."
Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to
gain time.
"Of course! At such a time, I would _rather_ be alone."
At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he
said he would like to speak with her there.
She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said,
"Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my
sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this
week. What have you heard?"
"Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?"
"I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why?
Must you go back?"
"No--not exactly."
"Not exactly? What are you driving at?"
"Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go
up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she
wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose
she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she
do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the
accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was--"
"Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She
mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her
go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this
point. "She must send somebody--some of their men. She mustn't go. It's
too hideous!"
"No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go."
"You!"
"Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I
can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible
suspense for her."
"For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that
poor, sick old maid."
"Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left
her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for
her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more."
"Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go,
Matt. _You_ couldn't do _less_! It's magnificent of you. Have you told
her, yet, that you would go?"
"Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first."
"Oh, _I_ approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay
here till you come back--"
"Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice.
"You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for
them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts
with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to
Canada to escape arrest."
He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her.
"Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope
he's killed."
Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much
the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way."
"When must it come out?"
"A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may
come out--some rumor of it--in the morning papers. The question is
whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be
wise, or useful."
"Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a
thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me
get away alive. I must go at once!"
She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up
a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from.
"I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without
telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would
insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed."
"Oh, _that_ was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to
get away."
"I hope you won't let her suspect--"
"Well, I _think_ you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning
round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as
sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a
warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he
was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and
he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards,
fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other
than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from
her friend.
Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library.
"I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at
Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would
be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the
same farm."
The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head
in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness,
she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe
herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an
apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable."
"At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no
news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to
that."
"I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were
red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears
came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world.
Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time
we went to Quebec?"
Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at
least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?"
Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it.
"Yes; it is, and it isn't." She opened the book and showed him the map
of the road. "The train divides at Wellwater, and part goes to Montreal
and part to Quebec. There are all sorts of stops and starts on the
Quebec branch, so that you don't arrive till next morning, but you get
to Montreal in five or six hours. But the whole thing seems perfectly
frantic. I don't see why we pay the slightest attention to it! Of
_course_, papa has stayed over in Springfield for something; only he's
usually so careful about telegraphing us if he changes his plans--"
She faltered, and let the book drop. Matt picked it up for her, and
began to look at the time-table, at first to hide the pain he felt at
the self-discouragement in which she ended, and then to see if he might
not somehow be useful to her. "I see that a train from Boston meets the
Springfield train at Wellwater."
"Does there?" She bent to look over the book with him, and he felt the
ungovernable thrill at being near the beauty of a woman's face which a
man never knows whether to be ashamed of or glad of, but which he cannot
help feeling. "Then perhaps I had better go by way of Boston. What time
does it start? Oh, I see! Seven, thirty. I could get that train--if I
don't hear from him at Springfield. But I know I shall hear."
A stir of drapery made them aware of Louise at the library door. Suzette
went toward her, "Are you going?" she asked, without apparently sharing
the surprise Matt felt at seeing his sister with her hat and gloves on,
and her jacket over her arm.
"Yes, I'm going, Sue. I just ran up to see you--I had to do that--but we
both know I'm of no use here; and so we won't make any pretences."
Louise spoke very steadily, almost coldly; her brother did not quite
know what to make of her; she was pale, and she looked down, while she
spoke. But when she finished buttoning the glove she was engaged with,
she went up and put both her hands in Suzette's. "I don't need to tell
you that I'm going just to get myself out of your way. It isn't a time
for ornamental friend-shipping, and you've got all the good you could
out of seeing me, and knowing that I'm anxious with you. That's about
all there is of it, and I guess we'd better not spin it out. But
remember, Sue, whenever you need me, when you really want me, you can
send for me, and if I don't come again till you do, you'll know that I'm
simply waiting. Will you remember that--_whatever_ happens?"
Matt gave a long tacit sigh of relief.
"Yes, I will, Louise," said Suzette. They kissed each other as if in
formal ratification of their compact, which meant so much more to one of
them than it could to the other.
"Come, Matt!" said Louise.
She added hastily, to prevent insistence against her plan, that they
would have time to walk to the station, and she wished to walk. Then
Matt said, "I will see you aboard the train, and then I'll come back and
wait till you hear from Springfield, Miss Suzette."
"That is a good idea," said Louise.
"But," Adeline urged tremulously, "sha'n't you be afraid to go to Boston
alone? It'll be dark by the time you get there!"
"The journey can't be very dangerous," said Louise, "and when I arrive,
I shall put myself in charge of a faithful Boston hackman, and tell him
I'm very valuable, and am to be taken the best of care of. Then I shall
be set down at our door in perfect safety."
They all had the relief of a little laugh; even Adeline joined
reluctantly in it.
When they were once free of the house, Matt said, "I wonder whether she
will remember, after the worst comes, what you said, and whether she
will trust you enough to turn to us?"
"I don't know. Probably she will be too proud at first. But I shall
come, whether she asks me or not. If they had relations or connections,
as everybody else has, it would be different. But as it is--"
"Yes, of course," said Matt.
"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But
I can't. He always made me feel creepy; didn't he you?"
"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at
the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country
person."
"I suppose Sue's pride is countrified," said Louise.
Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven
knows I don't want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation
of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see
him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits
seem ugly."
They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked
up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father
might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question
whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief
for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided
motive.
"Oh, you needn't be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said
Louise. "I don't blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness."
"No, I suppose there's no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt
answered.
There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls,
released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station
an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming
and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with
envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were
both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their
fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of
good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against
whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help
carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to
help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality
she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the
front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell
plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed
with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls
who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a
young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her;
she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated
operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was
no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why
he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second
glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a
studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his
clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however
he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned
from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came
up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in,
and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went
to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for
Miss Northwick.
She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it
up."
"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick's,"
said Matt.
"All right."
Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting
quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the
station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short
of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as
observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from
the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the
awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of
the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called
from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn't wait at home; and I've just been at the
depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?"
"Yes, I have a telegram."
"Oh, give it to me!"
He withheld it a moment. "I don't know what it is, Miss Northwick. But
if isn't what you expected, will you let--will you allow me--"
As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from
his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn't been
there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously
in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins.