They did not discuss Northwick's letter at the dinner-parties in
Hatboro' because, socially speaking, they never dined there; but the
stores, the shops, the parlors, buzzed with comment on it; it became a
part of the forms of salutation, the color of the day's joke. Gates, the
provision man, had to own the error of his belief in Northwick's death.
He found his account in being the only man to own that he ever had such
a belief; he was a comfort to those who said they had always had their
doubts of it; the ladies of South Hatboro', who declared to a woman that
they had _never_ believed it, respected the simple heart of a man who
acknowledged that he had never questioned it. Such a man was not one to
cheat his customers in quantity or quality; that stood to reason; his
faith restored him to the esteem of many.
Mr. Gerrish was very bitter about the double fraud which he said
Northwick had practised on the community, in having allowed the rumor of
his death to gain currency. He denounced him to Mrs. Munger, making an
early errand from South Hatboro' to the village to collect public
opinion, as a person who had put himself beyond the pale of public
confidence, and whose professions of repentance for the past, and good
intention for the future, he tore to shreds. "It is said, and I have no
question correctly, that hell is paved with good intentions--if you will
excuse me, Mrs. Munger. When Mr. Northwick brings forth fruits meet for
repentance--when he makes the first payment to his creditors--I will
believe that he is sorry for what he has done, and not _till_ then."
"That is true," said Mrs. Munger. "I wonder what Mr. Putney will have to
say to all this. Can he feel that _his_ skirts are quite clean, acting
that way, as the family counsel of the Northwicks, after all he used to
say against him?"
Mr. Gerrish expressed his indifference by putting up a roll of muslin on
the shelf while he rejoined, "I care very little for the opinions of Mr.
Putney on any subject."
In some places Mrs. Munger encountered a belief, which she did not
discourage, that the Northwick girls had known all along that their
father was alive, and had been in communication with him; through
Putney, most probably. In the light of this conjecture the lawyer's
character had a lurid effect, which it did not altogether lose when Jack
Wilmington said, bluntly, "What of it? He's their counsel. He's not
obliged to give the matter away. He's obliged to keep it."
"But isn't it very inconsistent," Mrs. Munger urged, "after all he used
to say against Mr. Northwick?"
"I suppose it's a professional, not a personal matter," said Wilmington.
"And then, their putting on mourning! Just think of it!" Mrs. Munger
appealed to Mrs. Wilmington, who was listening to her nephew's savagery
of tone and phrase with the lazy pleasure she seemed always to feel in
it.
"Yes. Do you suppose they meant it for a blind?"
"Why, that's what people think now, don't they?"
"Oh, _I_ don't know. What do _you_ think, Jack?"
"I think they're a pack of fools!" he blurted out, like a man who
avenges on the folly of others the hurt of his own conscience. He cast a
look of brutal contempt at Mrs. Munger, who said she thought so, too.
"It is too bad the way people allow themselves to talk," she went on.
"To be sure, Sue Northwick has never done anything to make herself loved
in Hatboro'--not among the ladies at least."
Mrs. Wilmington gave a spluttering laugh, and said, "And I suppose it's
the ladies who allow themselves to talk as they do. I can't get the men
in my family to say a word against her."
Jack scowled his blackest. "It would be a pitiful scoundrel that did.
Her misfortunes ought to make her sacred to every one that has the soul
of a man."
"Well, so it does. That is just what I was saying. The trouble is that
they don't make her sacred to every one that has the soul of a woman,"
Mrs. Wilmington teased.
"I know it doesn't," Jack returned, in helpless scorn, as he left Mrs.
Munger alone to his aunt.
"_Do_ you suppose he still cares anything for her?" Mrs. Munger asked,
with cosey confidentiality.
"Who knows?" Mrs. Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very
poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go back to
her?"
"Beautiful!" sighed Mrs. Munger. "I do _like_ a manly man!"
She drove home through the village slowly, hoping for a chance of a
further interchange of conjectures and impressions; but she saw no one
she had not already talked with till she met Dr. Morrell, driving out of
the avenue from his house. She promptly set her phaeton across the road
so that he could not get by, if he were rude enough to wish it.
"Doctor," she called out, "what _do_ you think of this extraordinary
letter of Mr. Northwick's?"
Dr. Morrell's boyish eyes twinkled. "You mean that letter in the
_Events_? Do you think Northwick wrote it?"
"Why, don't _you_, doctor?" she questioned back, with a note of personal
grievance in her voice.
"I'm not very well acquainted with his style. Then, you think he _did_
write it? Of course, there are always various opinions. But I understood
you thought he was burned in that accident last winter."
"Now, _doctor_!" said Mrs. Munger, with the pout which Putney said
always made him want to kill her. "You're just trying to tease me; I
know you are. I'm going to drive right in and see Mrs. Morrell. _She_
will tell me what you think."
"I don't believe you can see her," said the doctor. "She isn't at all
well."
"Oh, I'm sorry for that. I don't understand what excuse she has, though,
with a physician for her husband. You must turn hom[oe]opathy. Dr.
Morrell, do you think it's true that Jack Wilmington will offer himself
to Sue Northwick, now that it's come to the worst with her? Wouldn't it
be romantic?"
"Very," said the doctor. He craned his head out of the buggy, as if to
see whether he could safely drive into the ditch, and pass Mrs. Munger.
He said politely, as he started, "Don't disturb yourself! I can get by."
She sent a wail of reproach after him, and then continued toward South
Hatboro'. As she passed the lodge at the gate of the Northwick avenue,
where the sisters now lived, she noted that the shades were closely
drawn. They were always drawn on the side toward the street, but Mrs.
Munger thought it interesting that she had never noticed it before, and
in the dearth of material she made the most of it, both for her own
emotion, and for the sensation of others when she reached South
Hatboro'.
Behind the drawn shades that Mrs. Munger noted, Adeline Northwick sat
crying over the paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door
that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her
hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter
in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be
crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette,
who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he
had been in his right mind; he couldn't! He was always so good to us,
and so thoughtful; he must have known that we had given him up for dead,
long ago; and he has let us go on grieving for him all this time. It's
just as if he had come back from death, and the first he did was to tell
us that everything they said against him was true, and that everything
we said and believed was all wrong. How could he do it, how could he do
it! We bore to think he was dead; yes, we bore that, and we didn't
complain; but this is more than any one can ask us to bear. Oh, Suzette,
what can we say, now? What can we say, after he's confessed himself that
he took the money, and that he has got part of it yet? But I know he
didn't! I know he hasn't! He's crazy! Oh, poor, poor father! Don't you
think he must be crazy? And where is he? Why don't he write to us, and
tell us what he wants us to do? Does he think we would tell any one
where he was? That _shows_ he's out of his mind. I always thought that
if he could come back to life somehow, he'd prove that they had lied
about him; and now! Oh, it isn't as if it were merely the company that
was concerned, or what people said; but it's as if our own father, that
we trusted so much, had broken his word to _us_. That is what kills me."
The day passed. They sent Mrs. Newton away when she came to help them at
dinner. They locked their doors, and shut themselves in from the world,
as mourners do with death. Adeline's monologue went on, with the brief
responses which she extorted from Suzette, and at last it ceased, as if
her heart had worn itself out in the futile repetition of its griefs.
Then Suzette broke her silence with words that seemed to break from it
of themselves in their abrupt irrelevance to what Adeline had last said.
"We must give it up!"
"Give what up?" Adeline groaned back.
"The house--and the farm--and this hovel. Everything! It isn't ours."
"Not ours?"
"No. That letter makes it theirs--the people's whose money he took. We
must send for Mr. Putney and tell him to give it to them. He will know
how."
Adeline looked at her sister's face in dismay. She gasped out, "Why, but
Mr. Putney says it's ours, and nobody can touch it!"
"That was _before_. Now it is theirs; and if we kept it from them we
should be stealing it. How do we know that father had any right to give
it to us when he did?"
"Suzette!"
"I keep thinking such things, and I had better say them unless I want to
go out of my senses. Once I would have died before I gave it up, because
he left it to us, and now it seems as if I couldn't live till I gave it
up, because he left it to us. No, I can never forgive him, if he is my
father. I can never speak to him again, or see him; never! He is dead to
me, _now_!"
The words seemed to appeal to the contrary-mindedness that lurks in such
natures as Adeline's. "Why, I don't see what there is so wrong about
father's letter," she began. "It just shows what I always said: that his
mind was affected by his business troubles, and that he wandered away
because he couldn't get them straight. And now it's preyed so upon him
that he's beginning to believe the things they say are true, and to
blame himself. That's the way I look at it."
"Adeline!" Suzette commanded, with a kind of shriek, "Be still! You
_know_ you don't believe that!"
Adeline hesitated between her awe of her sister, and her wish to persist
in a theory which, now that she had formulated it for Suzette's
confusion, she found effective for her own comfort. She ventured at
last, "It is what I said, the first thing, and I shall always say it,
Suzette; and I have a right."
"Say what you please. I shall say nothing. But this property doesn't
belong to us till father comes back to prove it."
"Comes back!" Adeline gasped. "Why, they'll send him to State's prison!"
"They won't send him to State's prison if he's innocent, and if he
isn't--"
"Suzette! Don't you dare!"
"But that has nothing to do with it. We must give up what doesn't belong
to us. Will you go for Mr. Putney, or shall I go? I'm not afraid to be
seen, if you don't like to go. I can hold up my head before the whole
world, now I know what we ought to do, and we're going to do it; but if
we kept this place after that letter, I couldn't even look _you_ in the
face again." She continued to Adeline's silence, "Why, we needn't either
of us go! I can get Elbridge to go." She made as if to leave the room.
"Wait! I can't let you--yet. I haven't thought it out," said Adeline.
"Not thought it out!" Suzette went back and stood over her where she sat
in her rocking-chair.
"No!" said Adeline, shrinking from her fierce look, but with a gathering
strength of resistance in her heart. "Because _you've_ been thinking of
it, you expect me to do what you say in an instant. The place was
mother's, and when she died it came to me, and I hold it in trust for
both of us; that's what Mr. Putney says. Even supposing that father did
use their money--and I don't believe he did--I don't see why I should
give up mother's property to them." She waited a moment before she said,
"And I won't."
"Is half of it mine?" asked Suzette.
"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so."
"I'm of age, and I shall give up my half. I'm going to send for Mr.
Putney." She went out of the room, and came back with her hat and gloves
on, and her jacket over her arm. She had never been so beautiful, or so
terrible. "Listen to me, Adeline," she said, "I'm going out to send
Elbridge for Mr. Putney; and when he comes I am not going to have any
squabbling before him. You can do what you please with your half of the
property, but I'm going to give up my half to the company. Now, if you
don't promise you'll freely consent to what I want to do with my own, I
will never come back to this house, or ever see you again, or speak to
you. Do you promise?"
"Oh, well, I promise," said Adeline, forlornly, with a weak dribble of
tears. "You can take your half of the place that mother owned, and give
it to the men that are trying to destroy father's character! But I shall
never say that I wanted you should do it."
"So that you don't say anything against it, I don't care what else you
say." Suzette put on her jacket and stood buttoning it at her soft
throat. "_I_ do it; and I do it for mother's sake and for father's. I
care as much for them as you do."
In the evening Putney came, and she told him she wished him to contrive
whatever form was necessary to put her father's creditors in possession
of her half of the estate. "My sister doesn't feel as I do about it,"
she ended. "She thinks they have no right to it, and we ought to keep
it. But she has agreed to let me give my half up."
Putney went to the door and threw out the quid of tobacco which he had
been absently chewing upon while she spoke. "You know," he explained,
"that the creditors have no more claim on this estate, in law, than they
have on my house and lot?"
"I don't know. I don't care for the law."
"The case isn't altered at all, you know, by the fact that your father
is still living, and your title isn't affected by any of the admissions
made in the letter he has published."
"I understand that," said the girl.
"Well," said Putney, "I merely wanted to make sure you had all the
bearings of the case. The thing can be done, of course. There's nothing
to prevent any one giving any one else a piece of property."
He remained silent for a moment, as if doubtful whether to say more, and
Adeline asked, "And do you believe that if we were to give up the
property, they'd let father come back?"
Putney could not control a smile at her simplicity. "The creditors have
got nothing to do with that, Miss Northwick. Your father has been
indicted, and he's in contempt of court as long as he stays away. There
can't be any question of mercy till he comes back for trial."
"But if he came back," she persisted, "our giving up the property would
make them easier with him?"
"A corporation has no bowels of compassion, Miss Northwick. I shouldn't
like to trust one. The company has no legal claim on the estate. Unless
you think it has a moral claim, you'd better hold on to your property."
"And do you think it has a moral claim?"
Putney drew a long breath. "Well, that's a nice question." He stroked
his trousers down over his little thin leg, as he sat. "I have some
peculiar notions about corporations. I don't think a manufacturing
company is a benevolent institution, exactly. It isn't even a
sanitarium. It didn't come for its health; it came to make money, and it
makes it by a profit on the people who do its work and the people who
buy its wares. Practically, it's just like everything else that earns
its bread by the sweat of its capital--neither better nor worse."
Launched in this direction, Putney recalled himself with an effort from
the prospect of an irrelevant excursion in the fields of speculative
economy. "But as I understand, the question is not so much whether the
Ponkwasset Mills have a moral claim, as whether you have a moral
obligation. And there I can't advise. You would have to go to a
clergyman. I can only say that if the property were mine I should hold
on to it, and let the company be damned, or whatever could happen to a
body that hadn't a soul for that purpose."
Putney thrust his hand into his pocket for his tobacco; and then
recollected himself, and put it back.
"There, Suzette!" said Adeline.
Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with
her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that.
I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the
company, and if you would do it for me at once."
"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow
morning and see their attorney."
"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary."
"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first,
if you wish."
"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the
company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr.
Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my
sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks
you. Will you?"
"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand,
I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole
place must be sold?"
Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place
sold?"
"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?"
"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm."