Putney listened with sarcastic patience, shifting the tobacco in his mouth from one thin cheek to the other, and letting his fierce blue eyes burn on Matt"s kindly face.
"Well, sir," he said, "what do _you_ think can be done for two women, brought up as ladies, who choose to beggar themselves?"
"Is it so bad as that?" Matt asked.
"Why, you can judge for yourself. My present instructions are to make their whole estate over to the Ponkwa.s.set Mills Company--"
"But I thought--I thought they might have something besides--something--"
"There was a little money in the bank that Northwick placed there to their credit when he went away; but I"ve had their instructions to pay that over to your company, too. I suppose they will accept it?"
"It isn"t my company," said Matt. "I"ve nothing whatever to do with it--or any company. But I"ve no doubt they"ll accept it."
"They can"t do otherwise," said the lawyer, with a humorous sense of the predicament twinkling in his eyes. "And that will leave my clients just nothing in the world until Mr. Northwick comes home with that fortune he proposes to make. In the meantime they have their chance of starving to death, or living on charity. And I don"t believe," said Putney, breaking down with a laugh, "they"ve the slightest notion of doing either."
Matt stood appalled at the prospect which the brute terms brought before him. He realized that after all there is no misery like that of want, and that yonder poor girl had chosen something harder to bear than her father"s shame.
"Of course," he said, "they mustn"t be allowed to suffer. We shall count upon you to see that nothing of that kind happens. You can contrive somehow not to let them know that they are dest.i.tute."
"Why," said Putney, putting his leg over the back of a chair into its seat, for his greater ease in conversation, "I could, if I were a lawyer in a novel. But what do you think I can do with two women like these, who follow me up every inch of the way, and want to know just what I mean by every step I take? You"re acquainted with Miss Suzette, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Matt, consciously.
"Well, do you suppose that such a girl as that, when she had made up her mind to starve, wouldn"t know what you were up to if you pretended to have found a lot of money belonging to her under the cupboard?"
"The company must do something," said Matt, desperately. "They have no claim on the property, none whatever!"
"Now you"re shouting." Putney put a comfortable ma.s.s of tobacco in his mouth, and began to work his jaws vigorously upon it.
"They mustn"t take it--they won"t take it!" cried Matt.
Putney laughed scornfully.
XIII.
Matt made his way home to his farm, by a tiresome series of circuitous railroad connections across country. He told his mother of the new shape the trouble of the Northwicks had taken, and asked her if she could not go to see them, and find out some way to help them.
Louise wished to go instantly to see them. She cried out over the n.o.ble action that Suzette wished to do; she knew it was all Suzette.
"Yes, it is n.o.ble," said Mrs. Hilary. "But I almost wish she wouldn"t do it."
"Why, mamma?"
"It complicates matters. They could have gone on living there very well as they were; and the company doesn"t need it; but now where will they go? What will become of them?"
Louise had not thought of that, and she found it shocking.
"I suppose," Matt said, "that the company would let them stay where they are, for the present, and that they won"t be actually houseless. But they propose now to give up the money that their father left for their support till he could carry out the crazy schemes for retrieving himself that he speaks of in his letter; and then they will have nothing to live on."
"I _knew_ Suzette would do that!" said Louise. "Before that letter came out she always said that her father never did what the papers said. But that cut the ground from under her feet, and such a girl could have no peace till she had given up everything--everything!"
"Something must be done," said Mrs. Hilary. "Have they--has Suzette--any plans?"
"None, but that of giving up the little money they have left in the bank," said Matt, forlornly.
"Well," Mrs. Hilary commented with a sort of magisterial authority, "they"ve all managed as badly as they could."
"Well, mother, they hadn"t a very hopeful case, to begin with," said Matt, and Louise smiled.
"I suppose your poor father is worried almost to death about it," Mrs.
Hilary pursued.
"He was annoyed, but I couldn"t see that he had lost his appet.i.te. I don"t think that even his worriment is the first thing to be considered, though."
"No; of course not, Matt. I was merely trying to think. I don"t know just what we can offer to do; but we must find out. Yes, we must go and see them. They don"t seem to have any one else. It is very strange that they should have no relations they can go to!" Mrs. Hilary meditated upon a hardship which she seemed to find personal. "Well, we must try what we can do," she said relentingly, after a moment"s pause.
They talked the question of what she could do futilely over, and at the end Mrs. Hilary said, "I will go there in the morning. And I think I shall go from there to Boston, and try to get your father off to the sh.o.r.e."
"Oh!" said Louise.
"Yes; I don"t like his being in town so late."
"Poor papa! Did he look very much wasted away, Matt? Why don"t you get him to come up here?"
"He"s been asked," said Matt.
"Yes, I know he hates the country," Louise a.s.sented. She rose and went to the gla.s.s door standing open on the piazza, where a syringa bush was filling the dull, warm air with its breath. "We must all try to think what we can do for Suzette."
Her mother looked at the doorway after she had vanished through it; and listened a moment to her voice in talk with some one outside. The two voices retreated together, and Louise"s laugh made itself heard farther off. "She is a light nature," sighed Mrs. Hilary.
"Yes," Matt admitted, thinking he would rather like to be of a light nature himself at that moment. "But I don"t know that there is anything wrong in it. It would do no good if she took the matter heavily."
"Oh, I don"t mean the Northwicks entirely," said Mrs. Hilary. "But she is so in regard to everything. I know she is a good child, but I"m afraid she doesn"t feel things deeply. Matt, I don"t believe I like this protege of yours."
"Maxwell?"
"Yes. He"s too intense."
"Aren"t you a little difficult, mother?" Matt asked. "You don"t like Louise"s lightness, and you don"t like Maxwell"s intensity. I think he"ll get over that. He"s sick, poor fellow; he won"t be so intense when he gets better."
"Oh, yes; very likely." Mrs. Hilary paused, and then she added, abruptly, "I hope Louise"s sympathies will be concentrated on Sue Northwick for awhile, now.""
"I thought they were that, already," said Matt. "I"m sure Louise has shown herself anxious to be her friend ever since her troubles began. I hadn"t supposed she was so attached to her--so constant--"
"She"s romantic; but she"s worldly; she likes the world and its ways.