After they were married, Suzette and Matt went to live on his farm; and
it was then that she accomplished a purpose she had never really given
up. She surrendered the whole place at Hatboro' to the company her
father had defrauded. She had no sentiment about the place, such as had
made the act impossible to Adeline, and must have prevented the
sacrifice on Suzette's part as long as her sister lived. But suffering
from that and from all other earthly troubles was past for Adeline; she
was dead; and Suzette felt it no wrong to her memory to put out of her
own hands the property which something higher than the logic of the case
forbade her to keep. As far as her father was concerned, she took his
last act as a sign that he wished to make atonement for the wrong he had
committed; and she felt that the surrender of this property to his
creditors was in the line of his endeavor. She had strengthened herself
to bear his conviction and punishment, if he came back; and since he was
dead, this surrender of possessions tainted for her with the dishonesty
in which the unhappy man had lived was nothing like loss; it was rather
a joyful relief.
Yet it was a real sacrifice, and she was destined to feel it in the
narrowed conditions of her life. But she had become used to narrow
conditions; she had learned how little people could live with when they
had apparently nothing to live for; and now that in Matt she had
everything to live for, the surrender of all she had in the world left
her incalculably rich.
Matt rejoiced with her in her decision, though he had carefully kept
himself from influencing it. He was poor, too, except for the
comfortable certainty that his father could not let him want; but so far
as he had been able, he had renounced his expectations from his father's
estate in order that he might seem to be paying Northwick's indebtedness
to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the
money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in
the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more
for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow
Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic
theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a living. It must be
said that the prospect dismayed neither Matt nor Suzette; there was that
in her life which enabled her to dispense with the world and its
pleasures and favors; and he had long ceased to desire them.
The Ponkwasset directors had no hesitation in accepting the assignment
of property made them by Northwick's daughter. As a corporate body they
had nothing to do with the finer question of right involved. They looked
at the plain fact that they had been heavily defrauded by the former
owner of the property, who had inferably put it out of his hands in view
of some such contingency as he had finally reached; and as it had
remained in the possession of his family ever since, they took no
account of the length of time that had elapsed since he was actually the
owner. They recognized the propriety of his daughter's action in
surrendering it, and no member of the Board was quixotic enough to
suggest that the company had no more claim upon the property she
conveyed to them than upon any other piece of real estate in the
commonwealth.
"They considered," said Putney, who had completed the affair on the part
of Suzette, and was afterwards talking it over with his crony, Dr.
Morrell, in something of the bitterness of defeat, "that their first
duty was to care for the interests of their stockholders, who seemed to
turn out all widows and orphans, as nearly as I could understand. It
appears as if nobody but innocents of that kind live on the Ponkwasset
dividends, and it would have been inhuman not to look after their
interests. Well," he went on, breaking from this grievance, "there's
this satisfactory thing about it; somebody has done something at last
that he intended to do; and, of course, the _he_ in question is a _she_.
'She that was' Miss Suzette is the only person connected with the whole
affair, that's had her way. Everybody else's way has come to nothing,
beginning with my own. _I_ can look back to the time when I meant to
have the late J. Milton Northwick's blood; I was lying low for years,
waiting for him to do just what he did do at last, and I expected
somehow, by the blessing of God, to help run him down, or bring him to
justice, as we say. The first thing I knew, I turned up his daughter's
counsel, and was devoting myself to the interests of a pair of
grass-orphans with the high and holy zeal of a Board of Directors. All I
wanted was to have J. Milton brought to trial, not so I could help send
him to State's prison with a band of music, but so I could get him off
on the plea of insanity. But I wasn't allowed to have my way, even in a
little thing like that; and of all the things that were planned for and
against, and round about Northwick, just one has been accomplished. The
directors failed to be in at the death; and old Hilary has had to resign
from the Board, and pay the defaulter's debts. Pinney, I understand,
considers himself a ruined man; he's left off detecting for a living,
and gone back to interviewing. Poor old Adeline lived in the pious hope
of making Northwick's old age comfortable in their beautiful home on the
money he had stolen; and now that she's dead it goes to his creditors.
Why, even Billy Gerrish, a high-minded, public-spirited man like William
B. Gerrish,--couldn't have his way about Northwick. No, sir; Northwick
himself couldn't! Look how he fooled away his time there in Canada,
after he got off with money enough to start him on the high road to
fortune again. He couldn't budge of his own motion; and the only thing
he really tried to do he failed in disgracefully. Adeline wouldn't let
him stay when he come back to buy himself off; and that killed _her_.
Then, when he started home again, to take his punishment, the first
thing he did was to drop dead. Justice herself couldn't have her way
with Northwick. But I'm not sorry he slipped through her fingers. There
wasn't the stuff for an example in Northwick; I don't know that he's
much of a warning. He just seems to be a kind of--incident; and a pretty
common kind. He was a mere creature of circumstances--like the rest of
us! His environment made him rich, and his environment made him a rogue.
Sometimes I think there _was_ nothing to Northwick, except what happened
to him. He's a puzzle. But what do you say, Doc, to a world where we
fellows keep fuming and fizzing away, with our little aims and purposes,
and the great ball of life seems to roll calmly along, and get where
it's going without the slightest reference to what we do or don't do? I
suppose it's wicked to be a fatalist, but I'll go a few æons of eternal
punishment more, and keep my private opinion that it's all Fate."
"Why not call it Law?" the doctor suggested.
"Well, I don't like to be too bold. But taking it by and large, and
seeing that most things seem to turn out pretty well in the end, I'll
split the difference with you and call it Mercy."