X.

The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her.

"I haven't slept all night--I don't see how _you_ could--and I want you

shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I

want to think it over, first."

"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first

word.

Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing

to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr.

Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the

writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand.

I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like."

"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated.

"_No_, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's

right; and I want to do what _I_ think is right. I'm almost sick. I want

Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She

broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! _Do_ give me a little

more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do--"

They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and

they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove,

as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast.

Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on

her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hush! Don't let him

hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't

agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr.

Putney from writing till you think as _I_ do. But be still, now!"

"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with

you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me!

And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down

sick."

She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came,

dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep,

now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney."

Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up

and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not

slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened

her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a

bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in

it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the

day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very

difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to

compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world

where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem passes from

thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till

now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for

the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser

wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly

within herself before she spoke with Adeline again.

That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found

as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over

Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating;

heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most

pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely.

But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to

excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade

asked.

"Yes, yes," Matt assented, with a kind of absence. "But there is

something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this

letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you

once about Jack Wilmington--"

Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm

sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have

shown it long ago!"

"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if

it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a

time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried

tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her

so much more than I; and I didn't know--Is it possible--Perhaps I ought

to ask if _you_ are at all--if _you_ care for her?"

"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! _Why_ do

you ask?"

"Because _I_ do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that

when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a

wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength

between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind

made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a

hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him

from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I

thought--I thought that if you, old fellow--But now, it's all right--all

right--"

Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A

great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their

way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a

cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and

which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow

when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was

scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he

could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no

more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by

his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick

was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants

often find themselves in, but his final perception of his

impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's

hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the

purpose when another wishes to do the talking.

"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got

anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my

way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and

can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere

bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he

walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of

anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for

the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted

sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I

don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course;

summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious,

anything like _this_. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad

to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good

sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization."

He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor

father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him."

Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the

thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he

must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all

rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile

for the purpose of this question.

"Not for me!" said Matt. He added, not very consequently, "I suppose it

must have happened to me the first moment I saw her here that day Louise

and I came up about the accident. I couldn't truly say that she had ever

been out of my mind a moment since. No, there's nothing sudden about it,

though I don't suppose these things usually take a great deal of time,"

Matt ended, philosophically.

Wade left the dangerous ground he found himself on. He asked, "And your

family, do they know of your--feeling?"

"Not in the least!" Matt answered, radiantly. "It will come on them like

a thunder-clap! If it ever comes on them at all," he added,

despondently.

Wade had his own belief that there was no cause for despondency in the

aspect of the affair that Matt was looking at. But he could not offer to

share his security with Matt, who continued to look serious, and said,

presently, "I suppose my father might think it complicated his relation

to the Northwicks' trouble, and I have thought that, too. It makes it

very difficult. My father is to be considered. You know, Wade, I think

there are very few men like my father?"

"There are none, Matt!" said Wade.

"I don't mean he's perfect; and I think his ideas are wrong, most of

them. But his conduct is as right as the conduct of any quick-tempered

man ever was in the world. I know him, and I don't believe a son ever

loved his father more; and so I want to consider him all I can."

"Ah, I know that, my dear fellow!"

"But the question is, how far can I consider him? There are times," said

Matt, and he reddened, and laughed consciously, "when it seems as if I

couldn't consider him at all; the times when I have some faint hope that

she will listen to me, or won't think me quite a brute to speak to her

of such a thing at such a moment. Then there are other times when I

think he ought to be considered to the extreme of giving her up

altogether; but those are the times when I know that I shall never have

her to _give_ up. Then it's an easy sacrifice."

"I understand," said Wade, responding with a smile to Matt's

self-satire.

Matt went on, and as he talked he sometimes walked to Wade's window and

looked out, sometimes he stopped and confronted him across his desk.

"It's cowardly, in a way, not to speak at once--to leave her to suffer

it out to the end alone; but I think that's what I owe to my father. No

real harm can come to her from waiting. I risk the unfair chance I might

gain by speaking now when she sorely needs help; but if ever she came to

think she had given herself through that need--No, it wouldn't do! My

father can do more for her if he isn't hampered by my feeling, and

Louise can be her friend--What do you think, Wade? I've tried to puzzle

it out, and this is the conclusion I've come to. Is it rather

cold-blooded? I know it isn't at all like the lovemaking in the books. I

suppose I ought to go and fling myself at her feet, in defiance of all

the decencies and amenities and obligations of life, but somehow I can't

bring myself to do it. I've thought it all conscientiously over, and I

think I ought to wait."

"I think so, too, Matt. I think your decision is a just man's, and it's

a true lover's, too. It does your heart as much honor as your head," and

Wade gave him his hand now, with no mental reservation.

"Do you really think so, Caryl? That makes me very happy! I was afraid

it might look calculating and self-interested--"

"You self-interested, Matt!"

"Oh, I know! But is it considering my duty too much, my love too little?

If I love her, hasn't she the first claim upon me, before father and

mother, brother and sister, before all the world?"

"If you are sure she loves you, yes."

Matt laughed. "Ah, that's true; I hadn't thought of that little

condition! Perhaps it changes the whole situation. Well, I must go, now.

I've just run over from the farm to see you--"

"I inferred that from your peasant garb," said Wade, with a smile at the

rough farm suit Matt had on: his face refined it and made it look mildly

improbable. "Besides," said Wade, as if the notion he recurred to were

immediately relevant to Matt's dress, "unless you are perfectly sure of

yourself beyond any chance of change, you owe it to her as well as

yourself, to take time before speaking."

"I am perfectly sure, and I shall never change," said Matt, with a shade

of displeasure at the suggestion. "If there were nothing but that I

should not take a moment of time." He relented and smiled again, in

adding, "But I have decided now, and I shall wait. And I'm very much

obliged to you, old fellow, for talking the matter over with me, and

helping me to see it in the right light."

"Oh, my dear Matt!" said Wade, in deprecation.

"Yes. And oh, by the way! I've got hold of a young fellow that I think

you could do something for, Wade. Do you happen to remember the article

on the defalcation in the _Boston Abstract_?"

"Yes, I do remember that. Didn't it treat the matter, if I recall it,

very humanely--too humanely, perhaps?"

"Perhaps, from one point of view, too humanely. Well, it's the writer of

that article--a young fellow, not twenty-five, yet as completely at odds

with life as any one I ever saw. He has a great deal of talent, and no

health or money; so he's toiling feebly for a living on a daily

newspaper, instead of making literature. He was a reporter up to the

time he wrote that article, but the managing editor is a man who

recognizes quality; he's fond of Maxwell--that's the fellow's name--and

since then he's given him a chance in the office, at social topics. But

he hasn't done very well; the fact is, the boy's too literary, and he's

out of health, and he needs rest and the comfort of appreciative

friendship. I want you to meet him. I've got him up at my place out of

the east winds. You'll be interested in him as a type--the artistic type

cynicised by the hard conditions of life--newspaper conditions, and then

economic conditions."

Matt smiled with satisfaction in what he felt to be his very successful

formulation of Maxwell.

Wade said he should be very glad to meet him; and if he could be of any

use to him he should be even more glad. But his mind was still upon

Matt's love affair, and as they wrung each other's hands, once more he

said, "I think you've decided _so_ wisely, Matt; and justly and

unselfishly."

"It's involuntary unselfishness, if it's unselfishness at all," said

Matt. He did not go; Wade stood bareheaded with him at the outer door of

his study. After awhile he said with embarrassment, "Wade! Do you think

it would seem unfeeling--or out of taste, at all--if I went to see her

at such a time?"

"Why, I can't imagine _your_ doing anything out of taste, Matt."

"Don't be so smooth, Caryl! You know what I mean. Louise sent some

messages by me to her. Will you take them, or--"

"I certainly see no reason why you shouldn't deliver Miss Hilary's

messages yourself."

"Well, I do," said Matt. "But you needn't be afraid."