The Quality of Mercy Part 29

"There, Suzette!" said Adeline.

Suzette had listened in a restive silence, while Putney was talking with her sister. She said in answer to him: "I don't want advice about that.

I wished to know whether I could give up my part of the estate to the company, and if you would do it for me at once."

"Oh, certainly," said Putney. "I will go down to Boston to-morrow morning and see their attorney."

"Their attorney? I thought you would have to go to Mr. Hilary."

"He would send me to their lawyer, I suppose. But I can go to him first, if you wish."

"Yes, I do wish it," said the girl. "I don't understand about the company, and I don't care for it. I want to offer the property to Mr.

Hilary. Don't say anything but just that I wished to give it up, and my sister consented. Don't say a single word more, no matter what he asks you. Will you?"

"I will do exactly what you say," answered Putney. "But you understand, I suppose, don't you, that in order to make the division, the whole place must be sold?"

Suzette looked at him in surprise. Adeline wailed out, "The whole place sold?"

"Yes; how else could you arrive at the exact value?"

"I will keep the house and the grounds, and Suzette may have the farm."

Putney shook his head. "I don't believe it could be done. Perhaps--"

"Well, then," said Adeline, "I will never let the place be sold in the world. I--" She caught Suzette's eye and faltered, and then went on piteously, "I didn't know what we should have to do when I promised. But I'll keep my promise; yes, I will. We needn't sign the papers to-night, need we, Mr. Putney? It'll do in the morning?"

"Oh, yes; just as well," said Putney. "It'll take a little time to draw up the writings."

"But you can send word to Mr. Hilary at once?" Suzette asked.

"Oh, yes; if you wish."

"I do."

"It won't be necessary."

"I wish it."

Since the affair must so soon be known to everybody, Putney felt justified in telling his wife when he went home. "If that poor old girl freely consented, it must have been at the point of the hairpin. Of course, the young one is right to obey her conscience, but as a case of conscience, what do you think of it, Ellen? And do you think one ought to make any one else obey one's conscience?"

"That's a hard question, Ralph. And I'm not sure that she's right. Why should she give up her property, if it was hers so long ago before the frauds began? Suppose he were not their father, and the case stood just as it does?"

"Ah, there's something very strange about the duty of blood."

"Blood? I think Suzette Northwick's case of conscience is a case of pride," said Mrs. Putney. "I don't believe she cares anything about the right and wrong of it. She just wishes to stand well before the world.

She would do anything for that. She's as _hard_!"

"That's what the world will say, I've no doubt," Putney admitted.

X.

The next morning Adeline came early to her sister's bed, and woke her.

"I haven't slept all night--I don't see how _you_ could--and I want you shouldn't let Mr. Putney send that letter to Mr. Hilary, just yet. I want to think it over, first."

"You want to break your promise?" asked Suzette, wide awake at the first word.

Adeline began to cry. "I want to think. It seems such a dreadful thing to sell the place. And why need you hurry to send off a letter to Mr.

Hilary about it? Won't it be time enough, when Mr. Putney has the writings ready? I think it will look very silly to send word beforehand.

I could see that Mr. Putney didn't think it was business-like."

"You want to break your promise?" Suzette repeated.

"_No_, I don't want to break my promise. But I do want to do what's right; and I want to do what _I_ think is right. I'm almost sick. I want Elbridge should stop for the doctor on his way to Mr. Putney's." She broke into a convulsive sobbing. "Oh, Suzette! _Do_ give me a little more time! Won't you? And as soon as I can see it as you do--"

They heard the rattling of a key in the back door of the cottage, and they knew it was Elbridge coming to make the fire in the kitchen stove, as he always did against the time his wife should come to get breakfast.

Suzette started up from her pillow, and pulled Adeline's face down on her neck, so as to smother the sound of her sobs. "Hus.h.!.+ Don't let him hear! And I wouldn't let any one know for the world that we didn't agree! You can think it over all day, if you want; and I'll stop Mr.

Putney from writing till you think as _I_ do. But be still, now!"

"Yes, yes! I will," Adeline whispered back. "And I won't quarrel with you, Sue! I know we shall think alike in the end. Only, don't hurry me!

And let Elbridge get the doctor to come. I'm afraid I'm going to be down sick."

She crept sighing back to bed, and after a little while, Suzette came, dressed, to look after her. "I think I'm going to get a little sleep, now," she said. "But don't forget to stop Mr. Putney."

Suzette went out into the thin, sweet summer morning air, and walked up and down the avenue between the lodge and the empty mansion. She had not slept, either; it was from her first drowse that Adeline had wakened her. But she was young, and the breath of the cool, southwest wind was a bath of rest to her fevered senses. She felt herself grow stronger in it, and she tried to think what she ought to do. If her purpose of the day before still seemed so wholly and perfectly just, it seemed very difficult; and she began to ask herself whether she had a right to compel Adeline's consent to it. She felt the perplexities of the world where good and evil are often so mixed that when the problem pa.s.ses from thoughts to deeds, the judgment is darkened and the will palsied. Till now the wrong had always appeared absolutely apart from the right; for the first time she perceived that a great right might involve a lesser wrong; and she was daunted. But she meant to fight out her fight wholly within herself before she spoke with Adeline again.

That day Matt Hilary came over from his farm to see Wade, whom he found as before, in his study at the church, and disposed to talk over Northwick's letter. "It's a miserable affair; humiliating; heart-sickening. That poor soul's juggle with his conscience is a most pathetic spectacle. I can't bring myself to condemn him very fiercely.

But while others may make allowance for him, it's ruinous for him to excuse himself. That's truly perdition. Don't you feel that?" Wade asked.

"Yes, yes," Matt a.s.sented, with a kind of absence. "But there is something else I wanted to speak with you about; and I suppose it's this letter that's made it seem rather urgent now. You know when I asked you once about Jack Wilmington--"

Wade shook his head. "There isn't the least hope in that direction. I'm sure there isn't. If he had cared anything for the girl, he would have shown it long ago!"

"I quite agree with you," said Matt, "and that isn't what I mean. But if it would have been right and well for him to come forward at such a time, why shouldn't some other man, who does love her?" He hurried tremulously on: "Wade, let me ask you one thing more! You have seen her so much more than I; and I didn't know--Is it possible--Perhaps I ought to ask if _you_ are at all--if _you_ care for her?"

"For Miss Northwick? What an idea? Not the least in the world! _Why_ do you ask?"

"Because _I_ do!" said Matt. "I care everything for her. So much that when I thought of my love for her, I could not bear that it should be a wrong to any living soul or that it should be a shadow's strength between her and any possible preference. And I came here with my mind made up that if you thought Jack Wilmington had still some right to a hearing from her, I would stand back. If there were any hopes for him from himself or from her, I should be a fool not to stand back. And I thought--I thought that if you, old fellow--But now, it's all right--all right--"

Matt wrung the hand which Wade yielded him with a dazed air, at first. A great many things went through Wade's mind, which he silenced on their way to his lips. It would not do to impart to Matt the impressions of a cold and arrogant nature which the girl had sometimes given him, and which Matt could not have received in the times of trouble and sorrow when he had chiefly seen her. Matt's confession was a shock; Wade was scarcely less dismayed by the complications which it suggested; but he could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no more tell Matt that his father would be embarra.s.sed and compromised by his pa.s.sion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants often find themselves in, but his final perception of his impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the purpose when another wishes to do the talking.

"Of course," said Matt, "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of anything; and I don't see how I'm to find out whether I have or not, for the present. You know, Wade," he went on, with a simple-hearted sweetness, which Wade found touching, "I'm twenty-eight years old, and I don't believe I've ever been in love before. Little fancies, of course; summer flirtations; every one has them; but never anything serious, anything like _this_. And I could see, at home, that they would be glad to have had me married. I rather think my father believes that a good sensible wife would bring me back to faith in commercial civilization."

He laughed out his relish of the notion, but went on, gravely: "Poor father! This whole business has been a terrible trial to him."

Wade wondered at his ability to separate the thought of Suzette from the thought of her father; he inferred from his ability to do so that he must have been thinking of her a great deal, but he asked, "Isn't it all rather sudden, Matt?" Wade put on a sympathetic, yet diplomatic, smile for the purpose of this question.