The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast. Mrs. Hilary
heard Matt's confession without apparently anything of his tumult in
making it. Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the
affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes,
and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a
personal question with them. She was not a very worldly woman; but she
liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and
similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest
kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them
to advantage. Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had
them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas. But her family was
more, far more, to her than her world was. She knew that in his time her
husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she
had always contrived to honor the ideas of both. Since her son had begun
to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial
slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer
him and yet remain with the world. She represented in her maternal
tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts
as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of
doctrine.
"Then you mean, Matt," she asked, "that you are going to marry her?"
"Yes," said Matt, "that is what I mean," and then, something in his
mother's way of taking it nettled him on Sue's behalf. "But I don't know
that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her. I expected
her to refuse me."
"Men always do; I don't know why," said Mrs. Hilary. "But in this case I
can't imagine it."
"Can't imagine it? _I_ can imagine it!" Matt retorted; but his mother
did not seem to notice his resentment.
"Then, if it's quite settled, you don't wish me to say anything?"
"I wish you to say everything, mother--all that you feel and
think--about her, and the whole affair. But I don't wish you to think--I
can't _let_ you think--that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed
me to suppose that my offer would be welcome."
"Oh, I didn't mean that," said Mrs. Hilary. "She would be too proud for
that. But I've no doubt it was welcome." Matt fretted in silence, but he
allowed his mother to go on. "She is a very proud girl, and I've no
doubt that what she's been through has intensified her pride."
"I don't suppose she's perfect," said Matt. "I'm not perfect, myself.
But I don't conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own. I
know she's proud. I don't admire pride; but I suppose that with her it
can't be helped."
"I don't know that I object to it," said Mrs. Hilary. "It doesn't always
imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes. That hauteur
of hers is very effective. I've seen it carry her through with people
who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons."
"I shouldn't value it, for that," Matt interrupted.
"No. But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family
connections that every one else has--"
"She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!" Matt broke in, with a
smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was
making.
"And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn't have. I'm sure that to
see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the
princes of the blood, were her cousins. She's certainly a magnificent
creature."
Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly
reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to
overflowing. Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled:
"She is--she _is_--angelically!"
"Well, not just that type, perhaps," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is a
good girl. No one can help respecting her; and I think she's even more
to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about
their property, than for wishing to give it up."
"Yes," Matt breathed gratefully.
"But there, _there_ is the real skeleton, Matt! Suzette would grace the
highest position. But her father! What will people say?"
"Need we mind that, mother?"
"Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were--if he had
never been heard from again. But that letter of his! And what will he do
next? He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!"
"I would respect him for that!" cried Matt passionately.
"Matt!"
"It isn't a thing I should urge him to do. He may not have the strength
for it. But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I
should be glad to stand by him!"
"And drag us all through the mire? Surely, my son, whatever you feel
about your mother and sister, you can't wish your poor father to suffer
anything more on that wretch's account?"
"Wish? No. And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my
engagement may have on father. I'm afraid it will embarrass
him--compromise him, even--"
"As to that, I can't say," said Mrs. Hilary. "You and he ought to know
best. One thing is certain. There won't be any opposition on his part or
mine, my son, that you won't see yourself is reasonable--"
"Oh, I am sure of that, mother! And I can't tell you how deeply I
feel--"
"Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don't believe
he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to
make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into
State's prison, you may be very sure your father won't approve of your
marriage."
Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not
perceive so keenly.
"I don't intend that, exactly."
"And I'm satisfied, as it is, he won't be easy about it till the thing
is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it's let alone."
"But father can't let it alone!" said Matt. "It's his duty to follow it
up at every opportunity. I don't want you to deceive yourself about the
matter. I want you to understand just how it will be. I have tried to
face it squarely, and I know how it looks. I shall try to make Suzette
see it as I do, and I'm sure she will. I don't think her father is
guiltier than a great many other people who haven't been found out. But
he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to
be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts. That is his only hope,
his salvation, his duty. Father's duty is to make him bear it whether
he's willing or not. It's a much more odious duty--"
"I don't understand you, Matt, saying your father's part is more odious
than a self-confessed defaulter's."
"No, I don't say--"
"Then I think you'd better go to your father, and reconcile your duty
with his, if you can. I wash my hands of the affair. It seems to me,
though, that you've quite lost your head. The world will look very
differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada,
nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father
was sent to State's prison for taking money that didn't belong to him."
Matt flung up his arms; "Oh, the world, the world! I won't let the world
enter! I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices. She
will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of
what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way."
"And don't you think the world will follow you here? Don't you suppose
it _is_ here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you
hope you can shun? Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point
Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail
for fraud. The great world forgets, but this little world around you
here would remember it as long as either of you lived. No; the day you
marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father
into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home."
"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her
to run from it."
"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or,
if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he
dies. Good-night."
Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had
sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved
one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not
rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in
dazzling illusions.
The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it;
he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew
how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his
father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt
instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more
unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.
But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all
his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of
meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had
done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said
it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he
said, "I shall have to take some action about it."
"How, action?"
"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes
known--and you wish it to be known, of course--"
"Of course!"
"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to
Northwick."
"Northwick?"
"As president of the Board, I'm _ex officio_ his enemy and persecutor.
It wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be decent, for me to continue that
after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter. It
wouldn't be possible. I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board
altogether. I haven't the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a
cost; so I'd better give up my office, and get rid of my duty."
"That will be a great sacrifice for you, father," said Matt.
"It won't bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise."
"I didn't mean money-wise. But I know you've always enjoyed the position
so much."
Hilary laughed uneasily. "Well, it hasn't been a bed of roses since we
discovered Northwick's obliquities--excuse me!"