The Quality of Mercy Part 21

"Against us? What do they say we have done?"

Matt could have laughed at her heroic misapprehension of the affair, if it had not been for the pity of it. "Nothing! Nothing! But they can take everything here that belonged to your father--everything on the place, to satisfy his creditors. The question of his wrong-doing won't enter. I can't tell you how. But you ought to have a lawyer who would defend your rights in the case."

"If they don't pretend we've done anything then they can't do anything to us!"

"They can take everything your father had in the world to pay his debts."

"Then let them take it," said the girl. "If he had lived he would have paid them. We will never admit that he did anything for us to be ashamed of; that he ever wilfully wronged any one."

Matt could see that the profession of her father's innocence was essential to her. He could not know how much of it was voluntary, a pure effect of will, in fulfilment of the demands of her pride, and how much was real belief. He only knew that, whatever it was, his wish was not to wound her or to molest her in it, but to leave what should be sacred from human touch to the mystery that we call providence. It might have been this very anxiety that betrayed him, for a glance at his face seemed to stay her.

"Don't you think I am right, Mr. Hilary?"

"Yes, yes!" Matt began; and he was going to say that she was right in every way, but he found that his own truth was sacred to him as well as her fiction, and he said, "I've no right to judge your father. It's the last thing I should be willing to do. I certainly don't believe he ever wished to wrong any one if he could have helped it."

"Thank you!" said the girl. "That was not what I asked you. I _know_ what my father meant to do, and I didn't need any rea.s.surance. I'm sorry to have troubled you with all these irrelevant questions; and I thank you very much for the kind advice you have given me."

"Oh, don't take it so!" he entreated, simply. "I do wish to be of use to you--all the use that the best friend in the world can be; and I see that I have wounded you. Don't take my words amiss; I'm sure you couldn't take my will so, if you knew it! If the worst that anybody has said about your father were ten times true, it couldn't change my will, or--"

"Thank you! Thank you!" she said perversely. "I don't think we understand each other, Mr. Hilary. It's scarcely worth while to try. I think I must say good-by. My sister will be expecting me." She nodded, and he stood aside, lifting his hat. She dashed by him, and he remained staring after her till she vanished in the curve of the avenue. She suddenly reappeared, and came quickly back toward him. "I wanted to say that, no matter what you think or say, I shall never forget what you have done, and I shall always be grateful for it." She launched these words fiercely at him, as if they were a form of defiance, and then whirled away, and was quickly lost to sight again.

XXIII.

That evening Adeline said to her sister, at the end of the meagre dinner they allowed themselves in these days, "Elbridge says the hay is giving out, and we have got to do something about those horses that are eating their heads off in the barn. And the cows: there's hardly any feed for them."

"We must take some of the money and buy feed," said Suzette, pa.s.sively.

Adeline saw by her eyes that she had been crying; she did not ask her why; each knew why the other cried.

"I'm afraid to," said the elder sister. "It's going so fast, as it is, that I don't know what we shall do pretty soon. I think we ought to sell some of the cattle."

"We can't. We don't know whether they're ours."

"Not ours?"

"They may belong to the creditors. We must wait till the trial is over."

Adeline made no answer. They had disputed enough about that trial, which they understood so little. Adeline had always believed they ought to speak to a lawyer about it; but Suzette had not been willing. Even when a man came that morning with a paper which he said was an attachment, and left it with them, they had not agreed to ask advice. For one thing, they did not know whom to ask. Northwick had a lawyer in Boston; but they had been left to the ignorance in which most women live concerning such matters, and they did not know his name.

Now Adeline resolved to act upon a plan of her own that she had kept from Suzette because she thought Suzette would not like it. Her sister went to her room after dinner, and then Adeline put on her things and let herself softly out into the night. She took that paper the man had left, and she took the deeds of the property which her father had given her soon after her mother died, while Sue was a little girl. He said that the deeds were recorded, and that she could keep them safely enough, and she had kept them ever since in the box where her old laces were, and her mother's watch, that had never been wound up since her death.

Adeline was not afraid of the dark on the road or in the lonely village-streets; but when she rang at the lawyer Putney's door, her heart beat so with fright that it seemed as if it must jump out of her mouth. She came to him because she had always heard that, in spite of his sprees, he was the smartest lawyer in Hatboro'; and she believed that he could protect their rights if any one could. At the same time she wished justice to be done, though they should suffer, and she came to Putney, partly because she knew he had always disliked her father, and she reasoned that such a man would be less likely to advise her against the right in her interest than a friendlier person.

Putney came to the door himself, as he was apt to do at night, when he was in the house, and she saw him control his surprise at sight of her.

"Can I see--see--see you a moment," she stammered out, "about some--some law business?"

"Certainly," said Putney, with grave politeness. "Will you come in?" He led the way into the parlor, where he was reading when she rang, and placed a chair for her, and then shut the parlor door, and waited for her to offer him the papers that rattled in her nervous clutch.

"It's this one that I want to show you first," she said, and she gave him the writ of attachment. "A man left it this noon, and we don't know what it means."

"It means," said Putney, "that your father's creditors have brought suit against his estate, and have attached his property so that you cannot sell it, or put it out of your hands in any way. If the court declares him insolvent, then everything belonging to him must go to pay his debts."

"But what can we do? We can't buy anything to feed the stock, and they will suffer," cried Adeline.

"I don't think long," said Putney. "Some one will be put in charge of the place, and then the stock will be taken care of by the creditors."

"And will they turn us out? Can they take our house? It is our house--mine and my sister's; here are the deeds that my father gave me long ago; and he said they were recorded." Her voice grew shrill.

Putney took the deeds, and glanced at the recorder's endors.e.m.e.nt before he read them. He seemed to Adeline a long time; and she had many fears till he handed them back to her. "The land, and the houses, and all the buildings are yours and your sister's, Miss Northwick, and your father's creditors can't touch them."

The tears started from Adeline's eyes; she fell weakly back in her chair and let them run silently down her worn face. After a while Putney said, gently, "Was this all you wanted to ask me?"

"That is all," Adeline answered, and she began blindly to put her papers together. He helped her. "How much is there to pay?" she asked, with an anxiety she could not keep out of her voice.

"Nothing. I haven't done you any legal service. Almost any man you showed those papers to could have told you as much as I have." She tried to gasp out some acknowledgments and protests as he opened the doors for her. At the outer threshold he said, "Why, you're alone!"

"Yes. I'm not at all afraid--"

"I will go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and plunged into a shabby overcoat that dangled under it.

Adeline tried to refuse, but she could not. She was trembling so that it seemed as if she could not have set one foot before the other without help. She took his arm, and stumbled along beside him through the quiet, early spring night.

After a while he said, "Miss Northwick, there's a little piece of advice I _should_ like to give you."

"Well?" she quavered, meekly.

"Don't let anybody lead you into the expense of trying to fight this case with the creditors. It wouldn't be any use. Your father was deeply involved--"

"He had been unfortunate, but he didn't do anything wrong," Adeline hastened to put in, nervously.

"It isn't a question of that," said Putney, with a smile which he could safely indulge in the dark. "But he owed a great deal of money, and his creditors will certainly be able to establish their right to everything but the real estate."

"My sister never wished to have anything to do with the trial. We intended just to let it go."

"That's the best way," Putney said.

"But I wanted to know whether they could take the house and the place from us."

"That was right, and I a.s.sure you they can't touch either. If you get anxious, come to me again--as often as you like."

"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, with a pathetic little t.i.tter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested.

"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way."

"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think just as you do, Mr. Putney."