Part of Matt Hilary's protest against the status in which he found
himself a swell was to wash his face for dinner in a tin basin on the
back porch, like the farm-hands. When he was alone at the farm he had
the hands eat with him; when his mother and sister were visiting him he
pretended that the table was too small for them all at dinner and tea,
though he continued to breakfast with the hands, because the ladies were
never up at his hour; the hands knew well enough what it meant, but they
liked Matt.
Louise found him at the roller-towel, after his emblematic ablutions.
"Oh, is it so near dinner?" she asked.
"Yes. Where is Maxwell?"
"I left him up at the camp." She walked a little way out into the
ground-ivy that matted the back-yard under the scattering spruce trees.
Matt followed, and watched the homing and departing bees around the
hives in the deep, red-clovered grass near the wall.
"Those fellows will be swarming before long," he said, with a measure of
the good comradeship he felt for all living things.
"I don't see," said Louise, plucking a tender, green shoot from one of
the fir boughs overhead, "why Mr. Maxwell is so hard."
"Is he hard?" asked Matt. "Well, perhaps he is."
"He is very sneering and bitter," said the girl. "I don't like it."
"Ah, he's to blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that
probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he
wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but
somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against
odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the
chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be himself. But
I'm glad you don't like Maxwell's hardness; I don't myself."
"He seems to look upon the whole world as material, as he calls it; he
doesn't seem to regard people as fellow beings, as you do, Matt, or even
as servants or inferiors; he hasn't so much kindness for them as that."
"Well, that's the odious side of the artistic nature," said Matt,
smiling tolerantly. "But he'll probably get over that; he's very young;
he thinks he has to be relentlessly literary now."
"He's older than I am!" said Louise.
"He hasn't seen so much of the world."
"He thinks he's seen a great deal more. I don't think he's half so nice
as we supposed. I should call him dangerous."
"Oh, I shouldn't say _that_, exactly," Matt returned. "But he certainly
hasn't our traditions. I'll just step over and call him to dinner."
"Oh, no! Let me try if I can blow the horn." She ran to where the long
tin tube hung on the porch, and coming out with it again, set it to her
lips and evoked some stertorous and crumby notes from it. "Do you
suppose he saw me?" she asked, running back with the horn.
Matt could not say; but Maxwell had seen her, and had thought of a poem
which he imagined illustrated with the figure of a tall, beautiful girl
lifting a long tin horn to her lips with outstretched arms. He did not
know whether to name it simply The Dinner Horn, or grotesquely, Hebe
Calling the Gods to Nectar. He debated the question as he came lagging
over the grass with his cushion in one hand and Pinney's letter, still
opened, in the other. He said to Matt, who came out to get the cushion
of him, "Here's something I'd like to talk over with you, when you've
the time."
"Well, after dinner," said Matt.
Pinney's letter was a long one, written in pencil on one side of long
slips of paper, like printer's copy; the slips were each carefully
folioed in the upper right hand corner; but the language was the
language of Pinney's life, and not the decorative diction which he
usually addressed to the public on such slips of paper.
"I guess," it began, "I've got onto the biggest thing yet, Maxwell. The
_Events_ is going to send me to do the Social Science Congress which
meets in Quebec this year, and I'm going to take Mrs. Pinney along and
have a good time. She's got so she can travel first-rate, now; and the
change will do her and the baby both good. I shall interview the social
science wiseacres, and do their proceedings, of course, but the thing
that I'm onto is Northwick. I've always felt that Northwick kind of
belonged to yours truly, anyway; I was the only man that worked him up
in any sort of shape, at the time the defalcation came out, and I've got
a little idea that I think will simply clean out all competition. That
letter of his set me to thinking, as soon as I read it, and my wife and
I both happened on the idea at the same time; clear case of telepathy.
Our idea is that Northwick didn't go to Europe--of course he
didn't!--but he's just holding out for terms with the company. I don't
believe he's got off with much money; but if he was going into business
with it in Canada, he would have laid low till he'd made his
investments. So my theory is that he's got all the money he took with
him except his living expenses. I believe I can find Northwick, and I am
not going to come home without trying hard. I am going to have a
detective's legal outfit, and I flatter myself I can get Northwick over
the frontier somehow, and restore him to the arms of his anxious friends
of the Ponkwasset Company. I don't know yet just how I shall do it, but
I guess I shall do it. I shall have Mrs. Pinney's advice and counsel,
and she's a team; but I shall have to leave her and the baby at Quebec,
while I'm roaming round in Rimouski and the wilderness generally, and I
shall need active help.
"Now, I liked some things in that _Abstract_ article of yours; it was
snappy and literary, and all that, and it showed grasp of the subject.
It showed a humane and merciful spirit toward our honored friend that
could be made to tell in my little game if I could get the use of it. So
I've concluded to let you in on the ground floor, if you want to go into
the enterprise with me; if you don't, don't give it away; that's all. My
idea is that Northwick can be got at quicker by two than by one; but we
have not only got to get _at_ him, but we have got to _get_ him; and get
him on this side of Jordan. I guess we shall have to do that by moral
suasion mostly, and that's where your massive and penetrating intellect
will be right on deck. You won't have to play a part, either; if you
believe that his only chance of happiness on earth is to come home and
spend the rest of his life in State's prison, you can conscientiously
work him from that point of view. Seriously, Maxwell, I think this is a
great chance. If there's any of that money he speaks of we shall have
our pickings: and then as a mere scoop, if we get at Northwick at all,
whether we can coax him over the line or not, we will knock out the
fellow that fired the Ephesian dome so that he'll never come to time in
all eternity.
"I mean business, Maxwell; I haven't mentioned this to anybody but my
wife, yet; and if you don't go in with me, nobody shall. _I want you,
old boy, and I'm willing to pay for you._ If this thing goes through, I
shall be in a position to name my own place and price on the _Events_. I
expect to be managing editor before the year's out, and then I shall
secure the best talent as leading writer, which his name is Brice E.
Maxwell, and don't you forget it.
"Now, you think it over, Maxwell. There's no hurry. Take time. We've got
to wait till the Soc. Sci. Congress meets, anyway, and we've got to let
the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a
lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work
him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a
bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and
show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and reward
virtue."