The Quality of Mercy Part 33

There never was a girl who liked better the pleasure, the interest of the moment. I don't say she's fickle; but one thing drives another out of her mind. She likes to live in a dream; she likes to make-believe.

Just now she's all taken up with an idyllic notion of country life, because she's here in June, with that sick young reporter to patronize.

But she's the creature of her surroundings, and as soon as she gets away she'll be a different person altogether. She's a strange contradiction!"

Mrs. Hilary sighed. "If she would only be _entirely_ worldly, it wouldn't be so difficult; but when her mixture of unworldliness comes in, it's quite distracting." She waited a moment as if to let Matt ask her what she meant; but he did not, and she went on: "She's certainly not a simple character--like Sue Northwick, for instance."

Matt now roused himself. "Is _she_ a simple character?" he asked, with a show of indifference.

"Perfectly," said his mother. "She always acts from pride. That explains everything she does."

"I know she is proud," Matt admitted, finding a certain comfort in openly recognizing traits in Sue Northwick that he had never deceived himself about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her with something better than pride in what she proposes to do now."

"She has behaved very well," said Mrs. Hilary, "and much better than could have been expected of her father's daughter."

Matt felt himself getting angry at this scanty justice, but he tried to answer calmly, "Surely, mother, there must be a point where the blame of the innocent ends! I should be very sorry if you went to Miss Northwick with the idea that we were conferring a favor in any way. It seems to me that she is indirectly putting us under an obligation which we shall find it difficult to discharge with delicacy."

"Aren't you rather fantastic, Matt?"

"I'm merely trying to be just. The company has no right to the property which she is going to give up."

"We are not the company."

"Father is the president."

"Well, and he got Mr. Northwick a chance to save himself, and he abused it, and ran away. And if she is not responsible for her father, why should you feel so for yours? But I think you may trust me, Matt, to do what is right and proper--even what is delicate--with Miss Northwick."

"Oh, yes! I didn't mean that."

"You said something like it, my dear."

"Then I beg your pardon, mother. I certainly wasn't thinking of her alone. But she is proud, and I hoped you would let her feel that _we_ realize all that she is doing."

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Hilary, with a final sigh, "that if I were quite frank with her, I should tell her she was a silly, headstrong girl, and I wished she wouldn't do it."

XIV.

The morning which followed was that of a warm, lulling, luxuriant June day, whose high tides of life spread to everything. Maxwell felt them in his weak pulses where he sat writing at an open window of the farmhouse, and early in the forenoon he came out on the piazza of the farmhouse, with a cus.h.i.+on clutched in one of his lean hands; his soft hat-brim was pulled down over his dull, dreamy eyes, where the far-off look of his thinking still lingered. Louise was in the hammock, and she lifted herself alertly out of it at sight of him, with a smile for his absent gaze.

"Have you got through?"

"I've got tired; or, rather, I've got bored. I thought I would go up to the camp."

"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her.

"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?"

"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly across the b.u.t.tercupped and dandelioned gra.s.s of the meadow-land about the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their needles to a glistening ma.s.s; underneath, the ground was red, and through the warm-looking twilight of the spa.r.s.e wood the gray canvas of a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it.

Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen s.h.i.+rt and overalls and high boots, and his cork helmet topping all.

"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?"

Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell--"

"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the camp."

"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you think he is, this morning?"

"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast."

"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at such a time as this?"

"How, help? It's very difficult to help people," said Louise, wisely.

"Especially when they're not able to help themselves. Poor Sue! I don't know what she _will_ do. If Jack Wilmington--but he never really cared for her, and now I don't believe she cares for him. No, it couldn't be."

"No; the idea of love would be sickening to her now."

Louise opened her eyes. "Why, I don't know what you mean, Matt. If she still cared for him, I can't imagine any time when she would rather know that he cared for her."

"But her pride--wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal terms--"

"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a thing as that there _is_ no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are just alike--like cats in the dark."

"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting to them before, came into his eyes.

"I _know_ so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington still--"

"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston to-morrow, and see father--Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it."

Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters.

"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that I thought perhaps you might want to see at once."

He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground.

"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to feel like work, for the first time since I came up here."

"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything.

You must stay the whole summer."

"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like."

"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly well?"

"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the light and shade flecks on her face and figure.

"I _know_ you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted.