Hilary had to yield to the pressure on him and send detectives to look
into the question of Northwick's fate at the scene of the accident. It
was a formal violation of his promise to Northwick that he should have
three days unmolested; but perhaps the circumstances would have
justified Hilary to any business man, and it could really matter nothing
to the defaulter dead or alive. In either case he was out of harm's way.
Matt, all the same, felt the ghastliness of being there on the same
errand with these agents of his father, and reaching the same facts with
them. At moments it seemed to him as if he were tacitly working in
agreement with them, for the same purpose as well as to the same end;
but he would not let this illusion fasten upon him; and he kept faith
with Suzette in the last degree. He left nothing undone which she could
have asked if he had done; he invented some quite useless things to do,
and did them, to give his conscience no cause against him afterwards.
The fire had left nothing but a few charred fragments of the wreck.
There had been no means of stopping it, and it had almost completely
swept away the cars in which it had broken out. Certain of the cars to
the windward were not burnt; these lay capsized beside the track, bent
and twisted, and burst athwart, fantastically like the pictures of
derailed cars as Matt had seen them in the illustrated papers; the
locomotive, pitched into a heavy drift, was like some dead monster that
had struggled hard for its life. Where the fire had raged, there was a
wide black patch in the whiteness glistening everywhere else; there were
ashes, and writhen iron-work; and bits of charred wood-work; but nothing
to tell who or how many had died there. It was certain that the porter
and the parlor-car conductor were among the lost; and his list of
passengers had perished with the conductor; there was only left with the
operator the original of that telegram, asking to have a chair reserved
in the Pullman from Wellwater, and signed with Northwick's name, but
those different initials, which had given rise to the report of his
death.
This was the definite fact which Matt could carry back with him to
Northwick's family, and this they knew already. It settled nothing; it
left the question of his death just where it was before. But Matt
struggled with it as if it were some quite new thing, and spent himself
in trying to determine how he should present it to them. In his own mind
he had very great doubt whether Northwick was in the accident, and
whether that dispatch was not a trick, a ruse to cover up the real
course of his flight. But then there was no sense in his trying to hide
his track, for he must have known that as yet there was no pursuit. If
the telegram was a ruse, it was a ruse to conceal the fact that
Northwick was still in the country, and had not gone to Canada at all.
But Matt could not imagine any reason for such a ruse; the motive must
be one of those illogical impulses which sometimes govern criminals. In
any case, Matt could not impart his conjectures to the poor women who
must be awaiting his return with such cruel anxiety. If the man were
really dead, it would simplify the matter beyond the power of any other
fact; Matt perceived how it would mitigate the situation for his family;
he could understand how people should hold that suicide was the only
thing left for a man in Northwick's strait. He blamed himself for coming
a moment to that ground, and owned the shame of his interested motive;
but it was, nevertheless, a relief which he did not know how to refuse
when Suzette Northwick took what he had to tell as final proof that her
father was dead.
She said that she had been talking it all over with her sister, and they
were sure of it; they were prepared for it; they expected him to tell
them so.
Matt tried to have her realize that he had not told her so; and he
urged, as far as he could, the grounds for hoping that her father was
not in the accident.
She put them all aside. The difference in the initials was really no
difference; and besides, and above all, there was the fact that if her
father were anywhere alive, he must have seen the report of his death by
this time, and sent some word, made some sign for their relief. She was
doubly sure of this, because he was so anxiously thoughtful of them when
they were separated. He expected them to notify him of every slight
change in their plans when they were away, and always telegraphed as to
his own. The only mystery was his going to Canada without letting them
know his plans before or afterwards. It must have been upon some very
suddenly urgent business that took his mind off everything else.
Matt silently hung his head, dreading lest she should ask him what he
thought, and wondering how he must answer if she did. He perceived that
he had no choice but to lie, if she asked him; but when he volunteered
nothing, she did not ask him.
It was the second morning after he had left her; but he could see that
she had lived long since their parting. He thought, "That is the way she
will look as she grows old." The delicate outline of her cheeks showed a
slight straightening of its curve; her lips were pinched; the aquiline
jut of her nose was sharpened. There was no sign of tears in her eyes;
but Adeline wept, and constantly dried her tears with her handkerchief.
She accepted her affliction meekly, as Suzette accepted it proudly, and
she seemed to leave all the conjectures and conclusions to her sister.
Suzette was in the exaltation which death first brings to the bereaved,
when people say that they do not realize it yet, and that they will feel
it later. Then they go about, especially if they are women, in a sort of
hysterical strength; they speak calmly of what has happened; they help
those beyond the immediate circle of their loss to bear up against it;
these look to see them break suddenly under the stress of their
bereavement, and wonder at their impassioned fortitude.
Matt knew neither how to stay nor to get away; it seemed intrusive to
linger, and inhuman to go when he had told the little he had to tell.
Suzette had been so still, so cold, in receiving him, that he was
astonished at her intensity when he rose to leave her at last.
"I shall never forget what you have done for us, Mr. Hilary. Never!
Don't belittle it, or try to make it seem nothing! It was everything! I
wonder you could do it!"
"Yes!" Adeline put in, as if they had been talking his kindness over, as
well as their loss, and were of one mind about it.
"Oh, indeed!" he began. "Any one would have done it--"
"Don't say so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because _you_ would have
done it for any one! But you have done it for _us_; and as long as I
live I shall remember that! Oh"--She broke off; and dropped her face
with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he
was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after
they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of
encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture which she had
accepted as certainty. He was one of those men in whom passion can be
born only of some form of unselfish kindness; and who alone can make
women happy. If it was love that was now stirring so strangely at his
heart, he did not know it was love; he thought it was still the pity
that he had felt for the girl's immense calamity. He knew that from
every phase of it he could not save her, but he tried to save her from
that which now confronted them, and from which he saw her suffering. He
went over all the facts again with the hapless creatures, and reasoned
from them the probability that their father was still alive. It was
respite from sorrow which misery must follow; it was insane, it was
foolish, it was even guilty, but he could not help trying to win it for
them; and when he left them at last, they were bright with the hope he
had given them, and which the event, whether it was death or whether it
was disgrace, must quench in a blacker despair.
The truth of this rushed upon him when he found himself staggering away
from the doomed house which cast its light gayly out upon the snow, and
followed him with a perverse sense of its warmth and luxury into the
night. But a strange joy mixed with the trouble in his soul; and for all
that sleepless night, the conflict of these emotions seemed to toss him
to and fro as if he were something alien and exterior to them. Northwick
was now dead, and his death had averted the disgrace which overhung his
name; now he was still alive, and his escape from death had righted all
the wrong he had done. Then his escape had only deepened the shame he
had fled from; his death had fixed a stain of a blood-guiltiness on his
misdeeds, and was no caprice of fate, but a judgment of the eternal
justice. Against this savage conclusion Matt rebelled, and made his
stand.