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."