The Quality of Mercy

VII

On his way home from the station, Elbridge Newton began to have some anxieties. He had no longer occasion for any about Northwick, he was safe on his way back to Canada; and Elbridge's anxieties were for himself. He was in the cold fit after his act of ardent generosity. He had no desire to entangle himself with the law by his act of incivism in helping Northwick to escape, and he thought it might be well to put himself on the safe side by seeing Putney about it, and locking the stable after the horse was stolen.

He drove round by the lawyer's house, and stopped at his gate just as Putney pushed his lawn-mower up to it, in his exercise of the instrument before breakfast.

Elbridge leaned out of the carryall, and asked, in a low confidential voice, "If J. Milton Northwick was to come back here, on the sly, say, to see his family, and I was to help him git off again, would I be li'ble?"

"Why?" asked Putney.

"Because I just done it," said Elbridge, desperately.

"Just done it?" shouted Putney. "Why, confound you!" He suddenly brought his voice down. "Do you mean to tell me the fellow's been back here, and you didn't let me know?"

"I hadn't any orders to do it," Elbridge weakly urged.

"Orders, the devil!" Putney retorted. "I'd 'a' given a hundred dollars to see that man and talk with him. Come, now; tell me all you know about it! Don't miss a thing!" After a few words from Newton, he broke out: "Found him in the house! And I was down there prowling round the place myself not three hours before! Go on! Great Scott! Just think of it!"

Putney was at one of those crises of his life when his drink-devil was besetting him with sore temptation, and for the last twenty-four hours he had been fighting it with the ruses and pretences which he had learned to employ against it, but he felt that he was losing the game, though he was playing for much greater stakes than usual. He had held out so long since his last spree, that if he lost now he would defeat hopes that were singularly precious and sacred to him: the hopes that those who loved him best, and distrusted him most, and forgave him soonest, had begun to cherish. It would not break his wife's heart; she was used to his lapses; but it would wring it more cruelly than usual if he gave way now.

When the fiend thrust him out of his house the night before, he knew that she knew of it, though she let him go in that fearful company, and made no effort to keep him. He was so strait an agnostic that, as he boasted, he had no superstitions even; but his relation to the Northwicks covered the period of his longest resistance of temptation, and by a sort of instinctive, brute impulse, he turned his step towards the place where they lived, as if there might be rescue for him in the mere vicinity of those women who had appealed to him in their distress, as to a faithful enemy. His professional pride, his personal honor, were both involved in the feeling that he must not fail them; their implicit reliance had been a source of strength to him. He was always hoping for some turn of affairs which would enable him to serve them, or rather to serve Adeline; for he cared little for Suzette, or only secondarily; and since Pinney had gone upon his mission to Canada he was daily looking for this chance to happen. He must keep himself for that, and not because of them alone, but because those dearest to him had come tacitly to connect his resistance of the tempter with his zeal for the interests of his clients. With no more reasoned motives than these he had walked over the Northwick place, calling himself a fool for supposing that some virtue should enter into him out of the ground there, and yet finding a sort of relief, in the mere mechanical exercise, the novelty of exploring by night the property grown so familiar to him by day, and so strangely mixed up with the great trial and problem of his own usefulness.

He listened by turns, with a sinking and a rising heart, as Newton now dug the particulars of his adventure out of himself. At the end, he turned to go into the house.

"Well, what do you say, Squire Putney?" Elbridge called softly after him.

"Say?"

"You know: about what I done."

"Keep your mouth shut about what you 'done.' I should like to see you sent to jail, though, for what you didn't do."

Elbridge felt a consolatory quality in Putney's resentment, and Putney, already busy with the potentialities of the future, was buoyed up by the strong excitement of what had actually happened rather than finally cast down by what he had missed. He took three cups of the blackest coffee at breakfast, and he said to the mute, anxious face of his wife, "Well, Ellen, I seem to be pulling through, somehow."

VIII

Adeline was in a flutter of voluble foreboding till Elbridge came back. She asked Suzette whether she believed their father would get away; she said she knew that Elbridge would miss the train, with that slow, old mare, and their father would be arrested. Weak as she was from the sick-bed she had left to welcome him, she dressed herself carefully, so as to be ready for the worst; she was going to jail with him if they brought him back; she had made up her mind to that. From time to time she went out and looked up the road, to see if Elbridge was coming back alone, or whether the officers were bringing her father; she expected they would bring him first to his family; she did not know why. Suzette tried to keep her indoors; to make her lie down. She refused, with wild upbraidings. She declared that Suzette had never cared anything for her father; she had wanted to give their mother's property away, to please the Hilarys; and now that she was going to marry Matt Hilary, she was perfectly indifferent to everything else. She asked Suzette what had come over her.

Elbridge drove first to the stable and put up his horse, when he came back. Then he walked to the lodge to report.

"Is he safe? Did he get away? Where is he?" Adeline shrieked at him before he could get a word out.

"He's all right, Miss Northwick," Elbridge answered soothingly. "He's on his way back to Canady, again."

"Then I've driven him away!" she lamented. "I've hunted him out of his home, and I shall never see him any more. Send for him! Send for him! Bring him back, I tell you! Go right straight after him, and tell him I said to come back! What are you standing there for?"

She fell fainting. Elbridge helped Suzette carry her upstairs to her bed, and then ran to get his wife, to stay with them while he went for the doctor.

Matt Hilary had been spending the night at the rectory with Wade, and he walked out to take leave of Suzette once more before he went home. He found the doctor just driving away. "Miss Northwick seems not so well," said the doctor. "I'm very glad you happen to be here, on all accounts. I shall come again later in the day."

Matt turned from the shadow of mystery the doctor's manner left, and knocked at the door. It was opened by Suzette almost before he touched it.

"Come in," she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to quiet her, broke in upon their talk.

"Mr. Hilary," said Suzette, formally, "are you willing my father should come back, no matter what happens?"

"If he wishes to come back. You know what I have always said."

"And you would not care if they put him in prison?"

"I should care very much."

"You would be ashamed of me!"

"No! Never! What has it to do with you?"

"Then," she pursued, "he has come back. He has been here." She flashed all the fact upon him in vivid, rapid phrases, and he listened with an intelligent silence that stayed and comforted her as no words could have done. Before she had finished, his arms were round her, and she felt how inalienably faithful he was. "And now Adeline is raving to have him come back again, and stay. She thinks she drove him away; she will die if something can't be done. She says she would not let him stay because – because you would be ashamed of us. She says I would be ashamed – "

"Suzette! Sue!" Adeline called down from the chamber above, "don't you let Mr. Hilary go before I get there. I want to speak to him," and while they stared helplessly at each other, they heard her saying to Mrs. Newton, "Yes, I shall, too! I'm perfectly rested, now; and I shall go down. I should think I knew how I felt. I don't care what the doctor said; and if you try to stop me – " She came clattering down the stairs in the boots which she had pulled loosely on, and as soon as she showed her excited face at the door, she began; "I've thought out a plan, Mr. Hilary, and I want you should go and see Mr. Putney about it. You ask him if it won't do. They can get father let out on bail, when he comes back, and I can be his bail, and then, when there's a trial, they can take me instead of him. It won't matter to the court which they have, as long as they have somebody. Now, you go and ask Mr. Putney. I know he'll say so, for he's thought just as I have about father's case, all along. Will you go?"

"Will you go up and lie down again, Adeline, if Mr. Hilary will go?" Suzette asked, like one dealing with a capricious child.

"What do you all want me to lie down for?" Adeline turned upon her. "I'm perfectly well. And do you suppose I can rest, with such a thing on my mind? If you want me to rest, you'd better let him go and find out what Mr. Putney says. I think we'd better all go to Canada and bring father back with us. He isn't fit to travel alone or with strangers; he needs some one that understands his ways; and I'm going to him, just as soon as Mr. Putney approves of my plan, and I know he will. But I don't want Mr. Hilary to lose any time, now. I want to be in Quebec about as soon as father is. Will you go?"

"Yes, Miss Northwick," said Matt, taking her tremulous hand. "I'll go to Mr. Putney; and I'll see my father again; and whatever can be done to save your father any further suffering, or yourself – "

"I don't care for myself," she said, plucking her hand away. "I'm young and strong, and I can bear it. But it's father I'm so anxious about."

She began to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been to take the risks he had run in stealing back for a look upon the places and the faces so dear to him; his heart was heavy with pity for him. One might call him coward and egotist all one would; at the end remained the fact of a love which, if it could not endure heroically, was still a deep and strong affection, doubtless the deepest and strongest thing in the man's weak and shallow nature. It might be his truest inspiration, and if it prompted him to venture everything, and to abide by whatever might befall him, for the sake of being near those he loved, and enjoying the convict's wretched privilege of looking on them now and then, who should gainsay him?

Matt took Wade in on his way to Putney's office, to lay this question before him, and he answered it for him in the same breath: "Certainly no one less deeply concerned than the man's own flesh and blood could forbid him."

"I'm not sure," said Wade, "that even his own flesh and blood would have a supreme right there. It may be that love, and not duty, is the highest thing in life. Oh, I know how we reason it away, and say that true love is unselfish and can find its fruition in the very sacrifice of our impulses; and we are fond of calling our impulses blind, but God alone knows whether they are blind. The reasoned sacrifice may satisfy the higher soul, but what about the simple and primitive natures which it won't satisfy?"

For answer, Matt told how Northwick had come back, at the risk of arrest, for an hour with his children, and was found in the empty house that had been their home, and brought to them: how he had besought them to let him stay, but they had driven him back to his exile. Matt explained how he was on his way to the lawyer, at Adeline's frantic demand, to go all over the case again, and see if something could not be done to bring Northwick safely home. He had himself no hope of finding any loophole in the law, through which the fugitive could come and go; if he returned, Matt felt sure that he would be arrested and convicted, but he was not sure that this might not be the best thing for all. "You know," he said, "I've always believed that if he could voluntarily submit himself to the penalty of his offence, the penalty would be the greatest blessing for him on earth; the only blessing for his ruined life."

"Yes," Wade answered, "we have always thought alike about that, and perhaps this torment of longing for his home and children, may be the divine means of leading him to accept the only mercy possible with God for such a sufferer. If there were no one but him concerned, we could not hesitate in urging him to return. But the innocent who must endure the shame of his penalty with him – "

"They are ready for that. Would it be worse than what they have learned to endure?"

"Perhaps not. But I was not thinking of his children alone. You, yourself, Matt; your family – "

Matt threw up his arms impatiently, and made for the door. "There's no question of me. And if they could not endure their portion, – the mere annoyance of knowing the slight for them in the minds of vulgar people, – I should be ashamed of them."

"Well, you are right, Matt," said his friend. "God bless you and guide you!" added the priest.

The lawyer had not yet come to his office, and Matt went to find him at his house. Putney had just finished his breakfast, and they met at his gate, and he turned back indoors with Matt. "Well, you know what's happened, I see," he said, after the first glance at Matt's face.

"Yes, I know; and now what can be done? Are you sure we've considered every point? Isn't there some chance – "

Putney shook his head, and then bit off a piece of tobacco before he began to talk. "I've been over the whole case in my mind this morning, and I'm perfectly certain there isn't the shadow of a chance of his escaping trial if he gives himself up. That's what you mean, I suppose?"

"Yes; that's what I mean," said Matt, with a certain disappointment. He supposed he had nerved himself for the worst, but he found he had been willing to accept something short of it.

"At times I'm almost sorry he got off," said Putney. "If we could have kept him, and surrendered him to the law, I believe we could have staved off the trial, though we couldn't have prevented it, and I believe we could have kept him out of State's prison on the ground of insanity." Matt started impatiently. "Oh, I don't mean that it could be shown that he was of unsound mind when he used the company's funds and tampered with their books, though I have my own opinion about that. But I feel sure that he's of unsound mind at present: and I believe we could show it so clearly in court that the prosecution would find it impossible to convict. We could have him sent to the insane asylum, and that would be a creditable exit from the affair in the public eye; it would have a retroactive effect that would popularly acquit him of the charges against him."

Putney could not forego a mischievous enjoyment of Matt's obvious discomfort at this suggestion. His fierce eyes blazed; but he added seriously, "Why shouldn't he have the advantage of the truth, if that is the truth about him? And I believe it is. I think it could be honestly and satisfactorily proved from his history, ever since the defalcation came out, that his reason is affected. His whole conduct, so far as I know it, shows it; and I should like a chance to argue the case in court. And I feel pretty sure I shall, yet. I'm just as certain as I sit here that he will come back again. He can't keep away, and another time he may not fall into the hands of friends. It will be a good while before any rumor of last night's visit gets out; but it will get out at last, and then the detectives will be on the watch for him. Perhaps it will be just as well for us if he falls into their hands. If we produced him in court it might be more difficult to work the plea of insanity. But I do think the man's insane, and I should go into the case with a full and thorough persuasion on that point. Did he tell them where to find him in Canada?"

"He promised to let them know."

"I doubt if he does," said Putney. "He means to try coming back again. The secrecy he's kept as to his whereabouts – the perfectly needless and motiveless secrecy, as far as his children are concerned – would be a strong point in favor of the theory of insanity. Yes, sir; I believe the thing could be done; and I should like to do it. If the pressure of our life produces insanity of the homicidal and suicidal type, there's no reason why it shouldn't produce insanity of the defalcational type. The conditions tend to produce it in a proportion that is simply incalculable, and I think it's time that jurisprudence recognized the fact of such a mental disease, say, as defalcomania. If the fight for money and material success goes on, with the opportunities that the accumulation of vast sums in a few hands afford, what is to be the end?"

Matt had no heart for the question of metaphysics or of economics, whichever it was, that would have attracted him in another mood. He went back to Suzette and addressed himself with her to the task of quieting her sister. Adeline would be satisfied with nothing less than the assurance that Putney agreed with her that her father would be acquitted if he merely came back and gave himself up; she had changed to this notion in Matt's absence, and with the mental reservation which he permitted himself he was able to give the assurance she asked. Then at last she consented to go to bed, and wait for the doctor's coming, before she began her preparations for joining her father in Canada. She did not relinquish that purpose; she felt sure that he never could get home without her; and Suzette must come, too.

IX

The fourth morning, when Pinney went down into the hotel office at Quebec, after a trying night with his sick child and its anxious mother, he found Northwick sitting there. He seemed to Pinney a part of the troubled dream he had waked from.

"Well, where under the sun, moon and stars have you been?" he demanded, taking the chance that this phantasm might be flesh and blood.

A gleam of gratified slyness lit up the haggardness of Northwick's face. "I've been at home – at Hatboro'."

"Come off!" said Pinney, astounded out of the last remnant of deference he had tried to keep for Northwick. He stood looking incredulously at him a moment. "Come in to breakfast, and tell me about it. If I could only have it for a scoop – "

Northwick ate with wolfish greed, and as the victuals refreshed and fortified him, he came out with his story, slowly, bit by bit. Pinney listened with mute admiration. "Well, sir," he said, "it's the biggest thing I ever heard of." But his face darkened. "I suppose you know it leaves me out in the cold. I came up here," he explained, "as the agent of your friends, to find you, and I did find you. But if you've gone and given the whole thing away, I can't ask anything for my services."

Northwick seemed interested, and even touched, by the hardship he had worked to Pinney. "They don't know where I am, now," he suggested.

"Are you willing I should take charge of the case from this on?" asked Pinney.

"Yes. Only – don't leave me," said Northwick, with tremulous dependence.

"You may be sure I won't let you out of my sight again," said Pinney. He took a telegraphic blank from his breast pocket, and addressed it to Matt Hilary: "Our friend here all right with me at Murdock's Hotel." He counted the words to see that there were no more than ten; then he called a waiter, and sent the despatch to the office. "Tell 'em to pay it, and set it down against me. Tell 'em to rush it."

Pinney showed himself only less devoted to Northwick than to his own wife and child. His walks and talks were all with him; and as the baby got better he gave himself more and more to the intimacy established with him; and Northwick seemed to grow more and more reliant on Pinney's filial cares. Mrs. Pinney shared these, as far as the baby would permit; and she made the silent refugee at home with her. She had her opinion of his daughters, who did not come to him, now that they knew where he was; but she concealed it from him, and helped him answer Suzette's letters when he said he was not feeling quite well enough to write himself. Adeline did not write; Suzette always said she was not quite well, but was getting better. Then in one of Suzette's letters there came a tardy confession that Adeline was confined to her bed. She was tormented with the thought of having driven him away, and Suzette said she wished her to write and tell him to come back, or to let them come to him. She asked him to express some wish in the matter, so that she could show his answer to Adeline. Suzette wrote that Mr. Hilary had come over from his farm, and was staying at Elbridge Newton's, to be constantly near them; and in fact, Matt was with them when Adeline suddenly died; they had not thought her dangerously sick, till the very day of her death, when she began to sink rapidly.

In the letter that brought this news, Suzette said that if they had dreamed of present danger they would have sent for their father to come back at any hazard, and she lamented that they had all been so blind. The Newtons would stay with her, till she could join him in Quebec; or, if he wished to return, she and Matt were both of the same mind about it. They were ready for any event; but Matt felt that he ought to know there was no hope of his escaping a trial if he returned, and that he ought to be left perfectly free to decide. Adeline would be laid beside her mother.

The old man broke into a feeble whimper as Mrs. Pinney read him the last words. Pinney, walking softly up and down with the baby in his arms, whimpered too.

"I believe he could be got off, if he went back," he said to his wife, in a burst of sympathy, when Northwick had taken his letter away to his own room.

The belief, generous in itself, began to mix with self-interest in Pinney's soul. He conscientiously forbore to urge Northwick to return, but he could not help portraying the flattering possibilities of such a course. Before they parted for Pinney's own return, he confided his ambition for the future to Northwick, and as delicately as he could he suggested that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion. Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his hand at the last moment.

Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances, recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent. If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity, it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances which he really was.