The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at
Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother,
he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the
troubled dream he had waked from.
"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have _you_ been?" he
demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood.
A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face.
"I've been at home--at Hatboro'."
"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference
he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at
him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could
only have it for a scoop--"
Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and
fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney
listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest
thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it
leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent
of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and
given the whole thing away, _I_ can't ask anything for my services."
Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had
worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested.
"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked
Pinney.
"Yes. Only--don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence.
"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He
took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to
Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He
counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he
called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay
it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it."
Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own
wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby
got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established
with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's
filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit;
and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of
his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was;
but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters
when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself.
Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but
was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy
confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with
the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her
to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She
asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his
answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his
farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them;
and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not
thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she
began to sink rapidly.
In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had
dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come
back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind.
The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or,
if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about
it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know
there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he
ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside
her mother.
The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last
words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms,
whimpered too.
"I believe he _could_ be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife,
in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his
own room.
The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in
Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return,
but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a
course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his
ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he
suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he
could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion.
Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business
view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great
tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both
took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms
round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good
care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his
hand at the last moment.
Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after
these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his
own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had
with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's
forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she
proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her
undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for
a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved
of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to
Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances,
recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and
expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent.
If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told
heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity,
it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert
might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of
Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct
in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances
which he really was.
Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of
their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the
parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old
Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile
frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the
admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your
enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have
been more of a Roman father."
"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper
to that moment of the dinner. "Mrs. Hilary and Louise are taking me over
to Rome for the winter."
"You don't say so, you don't say!" said Corey, "I wish my family would
take me. Boston is gradually making an old man of me. I'm afraid it will
end by killing me."