Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it
appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to
pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him
suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They
would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see
him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all
the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family
required him to use every means for making copy.
He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably
doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly
well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden
palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the
inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of
baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance
gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or
a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring.
"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney
in, and in his absence, the representative of the _Events_ made note of
the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and
of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The
inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he
returned with his card still in his hand.
"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at
home."
"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see
Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home."
"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in.
She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence
of an interviewer.
"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card
which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A.
Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words _Representing the Boston
Events_. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and
business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a
certain shade of authority.
"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some
conversation with you in regard to this--this rumor--accident. Can you
tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?"
"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline.
She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the
mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to
its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She
wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do
this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not
telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning;
and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to
have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this
reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior.
"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully.
"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days."
"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney.
"Yes, three or four. There _is_ one train, at half-past-twelve, I
think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you
there in three hours."
"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?"
"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often
take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the
Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses
from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have
run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any
reliance on that story"--she gasped the rest out--"about--that
accident."
"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those
flying rumors--they get the names all mixed up, those country
operators."
"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline.
"Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs."
"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are
they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed
questionings.
"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield,
and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the
Falls."
"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope
you'll find out it's all a mistake about--"
"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman--a friend of ours--has
just gone up to Wellwater to see about it."
"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news.
I suppose you've telegraphed?"
"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went."
It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did
not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said,
"Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to
see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd
taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said,
smiling.
There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by
seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They
take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman;
their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts
warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use
to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about
him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five
minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later.
When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't
at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the
troubles."
"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her
relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here,
in summer, Miss Northwick."
"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been
enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long
time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to
their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and
to warrant her father's safety.
"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my
wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the
country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have
to live there."
Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the
vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper
from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to
your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth
in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She
thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and
keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to
ask him not to do so.
"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to--it's very kind of
you--I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely
human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away
from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now
suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home
life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him,
he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment,
it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him
down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given
him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife;
on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and
dropped them into the deep snow.
His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success
he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an
enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done.
She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren,
you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the _Abstract_ clear out
of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and
the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on
the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the
world."
Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are
ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big
default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a
chance to make up his shortage--it's the old story. I've got just the
setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the
word to go ahead--"
"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall
do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute."
Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her
enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why
he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective
authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton.
"We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm
going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat.
There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out,
any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell
you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk.
His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work
on the table there. It's bigger than this desk."
"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and
followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their
simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?"
He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into
it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!"
"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a
pathetic little mouth.
Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he
was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his
dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it,
of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter
which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which
enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do
justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's
home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with
a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit
in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when
he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as
plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would
sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his
daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't
quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently
hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to
Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!"
His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen.
"Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure
out of it for _me_; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of
his family, I can't help you any more."
"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I
guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall
handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him.
"Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it
hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to
Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I
knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so
I didn't go."
"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes
upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back."
"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he
asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks,
and the love he saw in them.
Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take
air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife
often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she
saw him.
This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before,
when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the _Events_. She
had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in
a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up
the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main
dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the
clerks.
At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in
the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready
to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes,
and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under
his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more
like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He
wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they
began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the
summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first
meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect.
They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social
splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that
they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value
each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the
greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they
were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was
good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great
deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a
virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual
devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great
merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they
prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so
deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of
altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and
content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married
on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been
rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their
happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest.