"I wish I could realize that Sue is fond of him, as we are of papa. But I can"t. He always made me feel creepy; didn"t he you?"
"He was a secret person. But as far as I had anything to do with him at the Mills, when I was there, I found him square enough. He was a country person."
"I suppose Sue"s pride is countrified," said Louise.
Matt went on, "His secrecy may have been only a sort of shyness; Heaven knows I don"t want to judge him. I suppose that that slow deliberation of his was an effort to maintain himself with dignity. Of course, we see him now in the light of his rascality, poor man, and most of his traits seem ugly."
They had a little time after they reached the station, and they walked up and down the platform, talking, and Matt explained how his father might be glad to have him go to Wellwater and settle the question whether Northwick was in the accident or not. It would be a great relief for him to know. He tried to make out that he was going from a divided motive.
"Oh, you needn"t be at the trouble to say all that to me, Matt," said Louise. "I don"t blame you for wanting to go, even out of kindness."
"No, I suppose there"s no guilt attaching to a thing of that kind," Matt answered.
There were a good many loungers about the station, young men and girls, released from the shops for the day; in such towns they find the station an agreeable resort, and enjoy a never-failing excitement in the coming and going of the trains. They watched the Hilarys, as they walked, with envy of that something distinguished which both of them had. They were both tall and handsomely made, and they had the ease before their fellow-beings which perhaps comes as much from the life-long habit of good clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it swirled and swayed with her long, dashing stride in a way that filled all those poor girls who saw it, with despair. It seemed to interest almost as painfully a young man with a thin, delicate face, whom she noticed looking at her; she took him at first for one of those educated or half-educated operatives, who are complicating the labor problem more and more. He was no better dressed than others in the crowd, and there was no reason why he should not be a hat-shop or a shoe-shop hand, and yet, at a second glance, she decided that he was not. He stood staring at her with a studious frown, and with the faint suggestion of a sneer on his clean-shaven, fine lips; but she knew that he was admiring her, however he might be hating her, and she spoke to Matt about him as they turned from him in their walk and promised to point him out. But when they came up again to where he had been standing, he was gone. The train came in, and Louise got aboard, and Matt made his way into the station, and went to ask the operator in the telegraph office if she had got anything for Miss Northwick.
She said, "Something just come. I was waiting for the hack to send it up."
"Oh, I will take it, if you please. I am going back to Mr. Northwick"s,"
said Matt.
"All right."
Matt took the dispatch, and hurried out to find some means of getting quickly to Miss Northwick with it. There was no conveyance about the station, and he started up the street at a gait which was little short of a run, and which exposed him to the ridicule of such small boys as observed his haste, in their intervals of punging. One, who dropped from the runner of a sleigh which came up behind him, jeered him for the awkwardness with which he floundered out of its way in the deep snow of the roadside. The sleigh was abruptly halted, and Sue Northwick called from it, "Mr. Hilary! I couldn"t wait at home; and I"ve just been at the depot by the lower road. You have a dispatch?"
"Yes, I have a telegram."
"Oh, give it to me!"
He withheld it a moment. "I don"t know what it is, Miss Northwick. But if isn"t what you expected, will you let--will you allow me--"
As if she did not know what she was doing, she caught the dispatch from his hand, and tore it open. "Well," she said, "I knew it. He hasn"t been there; now I shall go to Wellwater." She crumpled the telegram nervously in her hand, and made a motion to lift the reins.
Matt put his hand on her wrist. "You couldn"t. You--you must let me go."
"You?"
"Me. I can get into Boston in time for that half-past-seven train, and I can do all the things when I get to Wellwater that you couldn"t do.
Come; be reasonable! You must see that what I propose is best. I solemnly promise you that nothing shall be left undone, or omitted or forgotten, that could set your mind at rest. Whatever you would wish done, I will do. Go home; your sister needs you; you need yourself; if you have a trial to meet greater than this suspense, which you"ve borne with such courage, you want all your strength for it. I beg you to trust me to do this for you. I know that it seems recreant to let another go in your place on such an errand, but it really isn"t so. You ought to know that I wouldn"t offer to go if I were not sure that I could do all that you could do, and more. Come! Let me go for you!"
He poured out his reasons vehemently, and she sat like one without strength to answer. When he stopped, she still waited before she answered simply, almost dryly, "Well," and she gave no other sign of a.s.sent in words. But she turned over the hand, on which he was keeping his, and clutched his hand hard; the tears, the first she had shed that day, gushed into her eyes. She lifted the reins and drove away, and he stood in the road gazing after her, till her sleigh vanished over the rise of ground to the southward.
XIII.
The pale light in which Matt Hilary watched the sleigh out of sight thickened into early winter dusk before his train came and he got off to Boston. In the meantime the electrics came out like sudden moons, and shed a lunar ray over the region round about the station, where a young man, who was in the habit of describing himself in print as "one of _The Boston Events_" young men," found his way into an eating-house not far from the track. It had a simple, domestic effect inside, and the young man gave a sigh of comfort in the pleasant warmth and light. There was a woman there who had a very conversable air, a sort of eventual sociability, as the young man realized when she looked up from twitching the white, clean cloths perfectly straight on the little tables set in rows on either side of the room.
She finally reached the table where the young man had taken a chair for his overcoat and hat, and was about taking another for himself.
"Well," he said, "let"s see. No use asking if you"ve got coffee?" He inhaled the odor of it coming from the open door of another room, with a deep breath.
"Baked beans?"
"Yes."
"Well, I don"t think there"s anything much better than baked beans. Do you?"
"Well, not when you git "em _good_," the woman admitted. "_Ril_ good."
"And what"s the matter with a piece of mince pie?"
"I don"t see"s there"s any great deal. Hot?"
"Every time."
"I _thought_ so," said the woman. "We have it both ways, but I"d as soon eat a piece of I don"t know what as a piece o" _cold_ mince pie."
"We have mince pie right along at our house," said the young man. "But I guess if I was to eat a piece of it cold, my wife would have the doctor round inside of five minutes."
The woman laughed as if for joy in the hot mince-pie fellowship established between herself and the young man. "Well, I guess she need to. Nothin" else you want?" She brought the beans and coffee, with a hot plate, and a j.a.panese paper napkin, and she said, as she arranged them on the table before the young man, "Your pie"s warmin" for you; I got you some rolls; they"re just right out the oven; and here"s some the best b.u.t.ter I ever put a knife to, if I _do_ say so. It"s just as good and sweet as b.u.t.ter can be, if it _didn"t_ come from the Northwick place at a dollar a pound."
"Well, now, I should have thought you"d have used the Northwick b.u.t.ter,"
said the young man with friendly irony.
"You know the Northwick b.u.t.ter?" said the woman, charmed at the discovery of another tie.
"Well, my wife likes it for cooking," said the young man. "We have a fancy brand for the table."
The woman laughed out her delight in his pleasantry. "Land! I"ll bet you grumble at it, too!" she said, with a precipitate advance in intimacy which he did not disallow.
"Well, I"m pretty particular," said the young man. "But I _have_ to be, to find anything to find fault with in the way _my_ wife manages. I don"t suppose I shall be able to get much more Northwick b.u.t.ter, now."
"Why not?"
"Why, if he was killed in that accident--"
"Oh, I guess there ain"t anything to that," said the woman. "I guess it was some other Northwick. Their coachman--Elbridge Newton--was tellin"
my husband that Mr. Northwick had stopped over at Springfield to look at some hosses there. He"s always buyin" more hosses. I guess he must have as much as eighty or ninety hosses now. I don"t place any dependence on that report."
"That so?" said the young man. "Why, what did that fellow mean, over at the drug store, just now, by his getting out for Canada?"
"What fellow?"
"Little slim chap, with a big black moustache, and blue eyes, blue and blazing, as you may say."
"Oh,--Mr. Putney! That"s just one of his jokes. He"s always down on Mr.