The Quality of Mercy Part 18

"And so he ought to be allowed to stay away! You are a pretty Dogberry come to judgment! You would convict a thief by letting him steal out of your company."

"It seems to me that's what you did, father. And I think you did right, as I've told you."

"What _I_ did?" shouted Hilary. "No, sir, I did nothing of the kind! I gave him a chance to make himself an honest man--"

"My dear," said Mrs. Hilary, "you _must_ go and get rid of that woman, at least; or let _me_."

Hilary flung down his napkin, and red from argument cast a dazed look about him, and without really quite knowing what he was about rushed out of the room.

His wife hardly had time to say, "You oughtn't to have got into a dispute with your father, Matt, when you know he's been so perplexed,"

before they heard his voice call out, "Good heavens, my poor child!" For the present they could not know that this was a cry of dismay at the apparition of Suzette Northwick, who met him in the reception-room with the demand:

"What is this about my father, Mr. Hilary?"

"About your father, my dear?" He took the hands she put out to him with her words, and tried to think what pitying and helpful thing he could say. She got them away from him, and held one fast with the other.

"Is it true?" she asked.

He permitted himself the pretence of not understanding her; he had to do it. "Why, we hope--we hope it isn't true. Nothing more is known about his being in the accident than we knew at first. Didn't Matt--"

"It isn't _that_. It's worse than that. It's that other thing--that the papers say--that he was a defaulter--dishonest. Is _that_ true?"

"Oh, no, no! Nothing of the kind, my dear!" Hilary had to say this; he felt that it would be inhuman to say anything else; nothing else would have been possible. "Those newspapers--confound them!--you know how they get things all--You needn't mind what the papers say."

"But why should they say anything about my father, at such a time, when he's--What does it all mean, Mr. Hilary? I don't believe the papers, and so I came to you--as soon as I could, this morning. I knew you would tell me the truth. You have known my father so long; and you know how _good_ he is! I--You know that he never wronged any one--that he _couldn't_!"

"Of course, of course!" said Hilary. "It was quite right to come to me--quite right. How--how is your sister? You must stay, now--Louise isn't down, yet--and have breakfast with her. I've just left Mrs. Hilary at the table. You must join us. She can a.s.sure you--Matt is quite confident that there's nothing to be distressed about in regard to the--He--"

Hilary kept bustling aimlessly about as he spoke these vague phrases, and he now tried to have her go out of the room before him; but she dropped into a chair, and he had to stay.

"I want you to tell me, Mr. Hilary, whether there is the slightest foundation for what the papers say this morning?"

"How, foundation? My dear child--"

"Has there been any trouble between my father and the company?"

"Well--well, there are always questions arising."

"Is there any question of my father's accounts--his honesty?"

"People question everything nowadays, when there is so much--want of confidence in business. There have to be investigations, from time to time."

"And has there been any reason to suspect my father? Does any one suspect him?"

Hilary looked round the room with a roving eye, that he could not bring to bear upon the girl's face. "Why, I suppose that some of us--some of the directors--have had doubts--"

"Have _you_?"

"My dear girl--my poor child! You couldn't understand. But I can truly say, that when this examination--when the subject came up for discussion at the board-meeting, I felt warranted in insisting that your father should have time to make it all right. He said he could; and we agreed that he should have the chance." Hilary said this for the sake of the girl; and he was truly ashamed of the magnanimous face it put upon his part in the affair. He went on: "It is such a very, very common thing for people in positions of trust to use the resources in their charge, and then replace them, that these things happen every day, and no harm is meant, and none is done--unless--unless the venture turns out unfortunately. It's not an isolated case!" Hilary felt that he was getting on now, though he was aware that he was talking very immorally; but he knew that he was not corrupting the poor child before him, and that he was doing his best to console her, to comfort her. "The whole affair was very well put in the _Abstract_. Have you seen it? You must see that, and not mind what the other papers say. Come in to Mrs.

Hilary--we have the paper--"

Suzette rose. "Then some of the directors believe that my father has been taking the money of the company, as the papers say?"

"Their believing this or that, is nothing to the point--"

"Do _you_?"

"I can't say--I don't think he meant----He expected to restore it, of course. He was given time for that." Hilary hesitated, and then he thought he had better say: "But he had certainly been employing the company's funds in his private enterprises."

"That is all," said the girl, and she now preceded Hilary out of the room. It was with inexpressible relief that he looked up and saw Louise coming down the stairs.

"Why, Sue!" she cried; and she flew down the steps, and threw her arms around her friend's neck. "Oh, Sue, Sue!" she said, in that voice a woman uses to let another woman know that she understands and sympathizes utterly with her.

Suzette coldly undid her clasping arms. "Let me go, Louise."

"No, no! You shan't go. I want you--you must stay with us, now. I know Matt doesn't believe at all in that dreadful report."

"That wouldn't be anything now, even if it were true. There's another report--don't you know it?--in the paper this morning." Louise tried to look unconscious in the slight pause Suzette made before she said: "And your father has been saying my father is a thief."

"Oh, papa!" Louise wailed out.

It was outrageously unfair and ungrateful of them both; and Hilary gave a roar of grief and protest. Suzette escaped from Louise, and before he could hinder it, flashed by Hilary to the street door, and was gone.

XX.

The sorrow that turned to shame in other eyes remained sorrow to Northwick's daughters. When their father did not come back, or make any sign of being anywhere in life, they reverted to their first belief, and accepted the fact of his death. But it was a condition of their grief, that they must refuse any thought of guilt in him. Their love began to work that touching miracle which is possible in women's hearts, and to establish a faith in his honor which no proof of his dishonesty could shake.

Even if they could have believed all the things those newspapers accused him of, they might not have seen the blame that others did in his acts.

But as women, they could not make the fine distinctions that men make in business morality, and as Northwick's daughters, they knew that he would not have done what he did if it was wrong. Their father had borrowed other people's money, intending to pay it back, and then had lost his own, and could not; that was all.

With every difference of temperament they agreed upon this, and they were agreed that it would be a sort of treason to his memory if they encouraged the charges against him by making any change in their life.

But it was a relief to them, especially to Suzette, who held the purse, when the changes began to make themselves, and their costly establishment fell away, through the discontent and anxiety of this servant and that, till none were left but Elbridge Newton and his wife.

She had nothing to do now but grieve for the child she had lost, and she willingly came in to help about the kitchen and parlor work, while her husband looked after the horses and cattle as well as he could, and tended the furnaces, and saw that the plants in the greenhouses did not freeze. He was up early and late; he had no poetic loyalty to the Northwicks; but as nearly as he could explain his devotion, they had always treated him well, and he could not bear to see things run behind.

Day after day went by, and week after week, and the sisters lived on in the solitude to which the compa.s.sion, the diffidence, or the contempt of their neighbors left them. Adeline saw Wade, whenever he came to the house, where he felt it his duty and his privilege to bring the consolation that his office empowered him to offer in any house of mourning; but Suzette would not see him; she sent him grateful messages and promises, when he called, and bade Adeline tell him each time that the next time she hoped to see him.

One of the ladies of South Hatboro', a Mrs. Munger, who spent her winters as well as her summers there, penetrated as far as the library, upon her own sense of what was due to herself as a neighbor; but she failed to find either of the sisters. She had to content herself with urging Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the doctor, to join her in a second attempt upon their privacy; but Mrs. Morrell had formed a notion of Suzette's character and temper adverse to the motherly impulse of pity which she would have felt for any one else in the girl's position. Mrs.

Gerrish, the wife of the leading merchant in Hatboro', who distinguished himself by coming up from Boston with Northwick, on the very day of the directors' meeting, would have joined Mrs. Munger, but her husband forbade her. He had stood out against the whole community in his belief in Northwick's integrity and solvency; and while every one else accused him of running away as soon as he was reported among the missing in the railroad accident, Gerrish had refused to admit it. The defalcation came upon him like thunder out of a clear sky; he felt himself disgraced before his fellow-citizens; and he resented the deceit which Northwick had tacitly practised upon him. He was impatient of the law's delays in seizing the property the defaulter had left behind him, and which was now clearly the property of his creditors. Other people in Hatboro', those who had been the readiest to suspect Northwick, cherished a guilty leniency toward him in their thoughts. Some believed that he had gone to his account in other courts; some that he was still alive in poverty and exile, which were punishment enough, as far as he was concerned. But Gerrish demanded something exemplary, something dramatic from the law.

He blamed the Ponkwa.s.set directors for a species of incivism, in failing to have Northwick indicted at once, dead or alive.

"Why don't they turn his family out of that house, and hand it over to the stockholders he has robbed?" he asked one morning in the chance conclave of loungers in his store. "I understand it is this man Hilary, in Boston, who has s.h.i.+elded and--and protected him from the start, and--and right along. I don't know _why_; but if I was one of the Ponkwa.s.set stockholders, I think I _should_. I should make a point of inquiring why Northwick's family went on living in my house after he had plundered me of everything he could lay his hands on."

The lawyer Putney was present, and he s.h.i.+fted the tobacco he had in one cheek to the other cheek, and set his little, firm jaw. "Well, Billy, I'll tell you why. Because the house, and farm, and all the real estate belong to Northwick's family and not to Northwick's creditors." The listeners laughed, and Putney went on, "That was a point that brother Northwick looked after a good while ago, I guess. I guess he must have done it as long ago as when you first wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument."

"I _never_ wanted his statue put on top of the soldier's monument!" Mr.