The Quality of Mercy

"Or, your father can, for him. Matt has not the crime of being a capitalist on his conscience. His idea seems to be to get Suzette to live here on the farm with him."

"I don't believe she'd be satisfied with that," said Louise. "But could she bear to face the world? Wouldn't she always be thinking what people thought?"

"I felt that I ought to suggest that to Matt; though, really, when it comes to the practical side of the matter, people wouldn't care much what her father had been – that is, society people wouldn't, as society people. She would have the education and the traditions of a lady, and she would have Matt's name. It's nonsense to suppose there wouldn't be talk; but I don't believe there would be anything that couldn't be lived down. The fact is," said Mrs. Hilary, giving her daughter the advantage of a species of soliloquy, "I think we ought to be glad Matt has let us off so easily. I've been afraid that he would end by marrying some farmer's daughter, and bringing somebody into the family who would say 'Want to know,' and 'How?' and 'What-say?' through her nose. Suzette is indefinitely better than that, no matter what her father is. But I must confess that it was a shock when Matt told me they were engaged."

"Why, were you surprised, mamma?" said Louise. "I thought all along that it would come to that. I knew in the first place, Matt's sympathy would be roused, and you know that's the strongest thing in him. And then, Suzette is a beautiful girl. She's perfectly regal; and she's just Matt's opposite, every way; and, of course he would be taken with her. I'm not a bit surprised. Why it's the most natural thing in the world."

"It might be very much worse," sighed Mrs. Hilary. "As soon as he has seen your father, we must announce it, and face it out with people. Fortunately, it's summer; and a great many have gone abroad this year."

Louise began to laugh. "Even Mr. Northwick is abroad."

"Yes, and I hope he'll stay there," said Mrs. Hilary, wincing.

"It would be quite like Matt, wouldn't it, to have him brought home in chains, long enough to give away the bride?"

"Louise!" said her mother.

Louise began to cry. "Oh, you think it's nothing," she said stormily, "for Matt to marry a girl whose father ran away with other people's money; but a man who has fought his way honestly is disgraceful, no matter how gifted he is, because he hasn't the traditions of a society man – "

"I won't condescend to answer your unjust nonsense, my dear," said Mrs. Hilary. "I will merely ask you if you wish to marry Mr. Maxwell – "

"I will take care of myself!" cried the girl, in open, if not definite rebellion. She flung from the room, and ran upstairs to her chamber, which looked across at the chamber where Maxwell's light was burning. She dropped on her knees beside the window, and bowed herself to the light, that swam on her tears, a golden mist, and pitied and entreated it, and remained there, till the lamp was suddenly quenched, and the moon possessed itself of the night in unbroken splendor.

After breakfast, which she made late the next morning, she found Maxwell waiting for her on the piazza.

"Are you going over to the camp?" she asked.

"I was, after I had said good-by," he answered.

"Oh, we're not going for several hours yet. We shall take the noon train, mamma's decided." She possessed herself of the cushion, stuffed with spruce sprays, that lay on the piazza-steps, and added, "I will go over with you." They had hitherto made some pretence, one to the other, for being together at the camp; but this morning neither feigned any reason for it. Louise stopped, when she found he was not keeping up with her, and turned to him, and waited for him to reach her. "I wanted to speak with you, Mr. Maxwell, and I expect you to be very patient and tractable." She said this very authoritatively; she ended by asking, "Will you?"

"It depends upon what it is. I am always docile if I like a thing."

"Well, you ought to like this."

"Oh, that's different. That's often infuriating."

They went on, and then paused at the low stone wall between the pasture and the pines.

"Before I say it, you must promise to take it in the right way," she said.

He asked, teasingly, "Why do you think I won't?"

"Because – because I wish you to so much!"

"And am I such a contrary-minded person that you can't trust me to behave myself, under ordinary provocation?"

"You may think the provocation is extraordinary."

"Well, let's see." He got himself over the wall, and allowed her to scramble after him.

She asked herself whether, if he had the traditions of a society man, he would have done that; but somehow, when she looked at his dreamy face, rapt in remote thought that beautified it from afar, she did not care for his neglect of small attentions. She said to herself that if a woman could be the companion of his thoughts that would be enough; she did not go into the details of arranging association with thoughts so far off as Maxwell's; she did not ask herself whether it would be easy or possible. She put the cushion into the hammock for a pillow, but he chose to sit beside her on the bench between the pine-tree boles, and the hammock swayed empty in the light breeze that woke the sea-song of the boughs over them.

"I don't know exactly how to begin," she said, after a little silence.

"If you'll tell me what you want to say," he suggested, "I'll begin for you."

"No, thank you, I'll begin myself. Do you remember, the other day, when we were here, and were talking of the difference in peoples' pride?"

"Purse pride and poverty pride? Yes, I remember that."

"I didn't like what you said, then; or, rather, what you were."

"Have you begun now? Why didn't you?"

"Because – because you seemed very worldly."

"And do you object to the world? I didn't make it," said Maxwell, with his scornful smile. "But I've no criticisms of the Creator to offer. I take the world as I find it, and as soon as I get a little stronger, I'm going back to it. But I thought you were rather worldly yourself, Miss Hilary."

"I don't know. I don't believe I am, very. Don't you think the kind of life Matt's trying to live is better?"

"Your brother is the best man I ever knew – "

"Oh, isn't he? Magnificent!"

"But life means business. Even literary life, as I understand it, means business."

"And can't you think – can't you wish – for anything better than the life that means business?" she asked, she almost entreated. "Why should you ever wish to go back to the world? If you could live in the country away from society, and all its vanity and vexation of spirit, why wouldn't you rather lead a literary life that didn't mean business?"

"But how? Are you proposing a public subscription, or a fairy godmother?" asked Maxwell.

"No; merely the golden age. I'm just supposing the case," said Louise. "You were born in Arcady, you know," she added, with a wistful smile.

"Arcady is a good place to emigrate from," said Maxwell, with a smile that was not wistful. "It's like Vermont, where I was born, too. And if I owned the whole of Arcady, I should have no use for it till I had seen what the world had to offer. Then I might like it for a few months in the summer."

"Yes," she sighed faintly, and suddenly she rose, and said, "I must go and put the finishing touches. Good-by, Mr. Maxwell" – she mechanically gave him her hand. "I hope you will soon be well enough to get back to the world again."

"Thank you," he said, in surprise. "But the great trial you were going to make of my patience, my docility – "

She caught away her hand. "Oh, that wasn't anything. I've decided not. Good-by! Don't go through the empty form of coming back to the house with me. I'll take your adieus to mamma." She put the cushion into the hammock. "You had better stay and try to get a nap, and gather strength for the battle of life as fast as you can."

She spoke so gayly and lightly, that Maxwell, with all his subtlety, felt no other mood in her. He did not even notice, till afterwards, that she had said nothing about their meeting again. He got into the hammock, and after a while he drowsed, with a delicious, poetic sense of her capricious charm, as she drifted back to the farmhouse, over the sloping meadow. He visioned a future in which fame had given him courage to tell her his love.

Mrs. Hilary knew from her daughter's face that something had happened; but she knew also that it was not what she dreaded.

PART THIRD

I

Matt Hilary saw Pinney, and easily got at the truth of his hopes and possibilities concerning Northwick. He found that the reporter really expected to do little more than to find his man, and make a newspaper sensation out of his discovery. He was willing to forego this in the interest of Northwick's family, if it could be made worth his while; he said he had always sympathized with his family, and Mrs. Pinney had, and he would be glad to be of use to them. He was so far from conceiving that his account of the defalcation in the Events could have been displeasing to them, that he bore them none of an offender's malice. He referred to his masterpiece in proof of his interest, and he promptly agreed with Matt as to the terms of his visit to Canada, and its object.

It was, in fact, the more practicable, because, since he had written to Maxwell, there had been a change in his plans and expectations. Pinney was disappointed in the Events' people; they had not seen his proposed excursion as he had; the failure of Northwick's letter, as an enterprise, had dashed their interest in him; and they did not care to invest in Pinney's scheme, even so far as to guarantee his expenses. This disgusted Pinney, and turned his thoughts strongly toward another calling. It was not altogether strange to him; he had already done some minor pieces of amateur detective work, and acquitted himself with gratifying success; and he had lately seen a private detective, who attested his appreciation of Pinney's skill by offering him a partnership. His wife was not in favor of his undertaking the work, though she could not deny that he had some distinct qualification for it. The air of confidence which he diffused about him unconsciously, and which often served him so well in newspaper life, was in itself the most valuable property that a detective could have. She said this, and she did not object to the profession itself, except for the dangers that she believed it involved. She did not wish Pinney to incur these, and she would not be laughed out of her fears when he told her that there were lines of detective work that were not half so dangerous, in the long run, as that of a reporter subject to assignment. She only answered that she would much rather he kept along on the newspaper. But this offer to look up Northwick in behalf of his family, was a different affair. That would give them a chance for their outing in Canada, and pay them better than any newspaper enterprise. They agreed to this, and upon how much good it would do the baby, and they imagined how Mrs. Pinney should stay quietly at Quebec, while Pinney went about, looking up his man, if that was necessary.

"And then," he said, "if I find him, and all goes well, and I can get him to come home with me by moral suasion, I can butter my bread on both sides. There's a reward out for him; and I guess I will just qualify as a detective before we start, so as to be prepared for emergencies – "

"Lorenzo Pinney!" screamed his wife. "Don't you think of such a wicked thing! So dishonorable!"

"How wicked? How dishonorable?" demanded Pinney.

"I'm ashamed to have to tell you, if you don't see; and I won't. But if you go as a detective, go as a detective; and if you go as their friend, to help them and serve them, then go that way. But don't you try to carry water on both shoulders. If you do, I won't stir a step with you; so there!"

"Ah!" said Pinney, "I understand. I didn't catch on, at first. Well, you needn't be afraid of my mixing drinks. I'll just use the old fellow for practice. Very likely he may lead to something else in the defaulter line. You won't object to that?"

"No; I won't object to that."

They had the light preparations of young housekeepers to make, and they were off to the field of Pinney's work in a very few days after he had seen Matt, and told him that he would talk it over with his wife. At Quebec he found board for his family at the same hotel where Northwick had stopped in the winter, but it had kept no recognizable trace of him in the name of Warwick on its register. Pinney passed a week of search in the city, where he had to carry on his investigations with an eye not only to Northwick's discovery, but to his concealment as well. If he could find him he must hide him from the pursuit of others, and he went about his work in the journalistic rather than the legal way. He had not wholly "severed his connection," as the newspaper phrase is, with the Events. He had a fast and loose relation with it, pending a closer tie with his friend, the detective, which authorized him to keep its name on his card; and he was soon friends with all the gentlemen of the local press. They did not understand, in their old-fashioned, quiet ideal of newspaper work, the vigor with which Pinney proposed to enjoy the leisure of his vacation in exploiting all the journalistic material relating to the financial exiles resident in their city. But they had a sort of local pride in their presence, and with their help Pinney came to know all that was to be known of them. The colony was not large, but it had its differences, its distinctions, which the citizens were very well aware of. There are defaulters and defaulters, and the blame is not in all cases the same, nor the breeding of the offenders. Pinney learned that there were defaulters who were in society, and not merely because they were defaulters for large sums and were of good social standing at home, but because there were circumstances that attenuated their offence in the eyes of the people of their city of refuge; they judged them by their known intentions and their exigencies, as the justice they had fled from could not judge them. There were other defaulters of a different type and condition, whose status followed them: embezzlers who had deliberately planned their misdeeds, and who had fallen from no domestic dignity in their exclusion from respectable association abroad. These Pinney saw in their walks about the town; and he was not too proud, for the purposes of art, to make their acquaintance, and to study in their vacancy and solitude the dulness and weariness of exile. They did not consort together, but held aloof from one another, and professed to be ignorant each of the affairs of the rest. Pinney sympathized in tone if not in sentiment with them, but he did not lure them to the confidence he so often enjoyed; they proved to be men of reticent temper; when frankly invited to speak of their history and their hopes in the interest of the reputations they had left behind them, they said they had no statement to make.

It was not from them that Pinney could hope to learn anything of the man he was seeking; Northwick was not of their order, morally or socially, and from the polite circles where the more elect of the exiles moved, Pinney was himself excluded by the habits of his life and by the choice of the people who formed those circles. This seemed to Pinney rather comical, and it might have led him to say some satirical things of the local society, if it had been in him to say bitter things at all. As it was, it amused his inexhaustible amiability that an honest man like himself should not be admitted to the company of even the swellest defaulters when he was willing to seek it. He regretted that it should be so, mainly because Northwick could have been heard of among them, if at all; and when all his other efforts to trace him at Quebec failed, he did not linger there. In fact he had not expected to find him there, but he had begun his search at that point, because he must stop there on his way to Rimouski, where Northwick's letter to the Events was posted. This postmark was the only real clue he had; but he left no stone unturned at Quebec, lest Northwick should be under it. By the time he came to the end of his endeavors, Mrs. Pinney and the baby were on such friendly terms with the landlady of the hotel where they were staying, that Pinney felt as easy at parting from them as he could ever hope to feel. His soft heart of husband and father was torn at leaving them behind; but he did not think it well to take them with him, not knowing what Rimouski might be like, or how long he might be kept remote from an English-speaking, or English-practising, doctor. He got a passage down the river on one of the steamers for Liverpool; and with many vows, in compliance with his wife's charges, that he would not let the vessel by any chance carry him on to Europe, he rent himself away. She wagged the baby's hand at him from the window where she stood to watch him getting into the calash, and the vision of her there shone in his tears, as the calash dashed wildly down Mountain Hill Street, and whirled him through the Lower Town on to the steamer's landing. He went to his stateroom as soon as he got aboard, that he might give free course to his heartache, and form resolutions to be morally worthy of getting back alive to them, and of finding them well. He would, if he could, have given up his whole enterprise; and he was only supported in it by remembering what she had said in praise of its object. She had said that if he could be the means of finding their father for those two poor women, she should think it the greatest thing that ever was; and more to be glad of than if he could restore him to his creditors. Pinney had laughed at this womanish view of it; he had said that in either case it would be business, and nothing else; but now his heart warmed with acceptance of it as the only right view. He pledged himself to it in anticipative requital of the Providence that was to bring them all together again, alive and well; good as he had felt himself to be, when he thought of the love in which he and his wife were bound, he had never experienced so deep and thorough a sense of desert as in this moment. He must succeed, if only to crown so meritorious a marriage with the glory of success and found it in lasting prosperity.

II

These emotions still filled Pinney to the throat when at last he left his cabin and went forward to the smoking-room, where he found a number of veteran voyagers enjoying their cigars over the cards which they had already drawn against the tedium of the ocean passage. Some were not playing, but merely smoking and talking, with glasses of clear, pale straw-colored liquid before them. In a group of these the principal speaker seemed to be an American; the two men who chorused him were Canadians; they laughed and applauded with enjoyment of what was national as well as what was individual in his talk.

"Well, I never saw a man as mad as old Oiseau when he told about that fellow, and how he tried to start him out every day to visit his soap-mine in the 'ill, as he called it, and how the fellow would slip out of it, day after day, week after week, till at last Oiseau got tired, and gave him the bounce when the first boat came up in the spring. He tried to make him believe it would be good for his health, to go out prospecting with him, let alone making his everlasting fortune; but it was no good; and all the time Oiseau was afraid he would fall into my hands and invest with me. 'I make you a present of 'im, Mr. Markham,' says he. 'I 'ave no more use for him, if you find him.'"

One of the Canadians said, "I don't suppose he really had anything to invest."

"Why, yes, that was the curious thing about it; he had a belt full of thousand-dollar bills round him. They found it when he was sick; and old Oiseau was so afraid that something would happen to him, and he would be suspected of it, that he nursed him like a brother till he got well, and as soon as he was able to get away he bounced him."

"And what do you suppose was the matter with him, that he wouldn't even go to look at Oiseau's soap-mine?"

"Well," said the American, closing his eyes for the better enjoyment of the analysis, and giving a long, slow pull at his cigar, "there might have been any one of several things. My idea is that he was a defaulter, and the thousand-dollar bills – there were forty or fifty of them, Oiseau says – were part of the money he got away with. Then, very likely he had no faith in Oiseau – knew it was probably a soap-mine, and was just putting him off till he could get away himself. Or, maybe his fever left him a little cracked, and he didn't know exactly what he was about. Then, again, if my theory of what the man was is true, I think that kind of fellow gets a twist simply from what he's done. A good many of them must bring money away with them, and there are business openings everywhere; but you never hear of their going into anything over here."

"That is odd," said the Canadian.

"Or would be if it were not so common. It's the rule here, and I don't know an exception. The defaulter never does anything with his money, except live on it. Meigs, who built those railroads on the Andes, is the only one who ever showed enterprise; and I never understood that it was a private enterprise with him. Anyway, the American defaulter who goes to Canada never makes any effort to grow up with the country. He simply rests on his laurels, or else employs his little savings to negotiate a safe return. No, sir; there's something in defalcation that saps a man's business energies, and I don't suppose that old fellow would have been able to invest in Oiseau's gold mine if it had opened at his feet, and he could have seen the sovereigns ready coined in it. He just couldn't. I can understand that state of mind, though I don't pretend to respect it. I can imagine just how the man trembled to go into some speculation, and didn't dare to. Must have been an old hand at it, too. But it seems as if the money he steals becomes sacred to a man when he gets away with it, and he can't risk it."

"I rather think you could have overcome his scruples, Markham, if you could have got at him," said the Canadian.

"Perhaps," Markham assented. "But I guess I can do better with our stock in England."

Pinney had let his cigar go out, in his excitement. He asked Markham for a light, though there were plenty of matches, and Markham accepted the request as an overture to his acquaintance.

"Brother Yank?" he suggested.

"Boston."

"Going over?"

"Only to Rimouski. You don't happen to know the name of that defaulter, do you?"

"No; I don't," said Markham.

"I had an idea I knew who it was," said Pinney.

Markham looked sharply at him. "After somebody in Rimouski?"

"Well, not just in that sense, exactly, if you mean as a detective. But I'm a newspaper man, and this is my holiday, and I'm working up a little article about our financiers in exile while I'm resting. My name's Pinney."

"Markham can fill you up with the latest facts," said the Canadian, going out; "and he's got a gold mine that beats Oiseau's hollow. But don't trust him too far. I know him; he's a partner of mine."

"That accounts for me," said Markham, with the tolerant light of a much-joked joker in his eyes. With Pinney alone he ceased to talk the American which seemed to please his Canadian friend, and was willing soberly to tell all he knew about Oiseau's capitalist, whom he merely conjectured to be a defaulter. He said the man called himself Warwick, and professed to be from Chicago; and then Pinney recalled the name and address in the register of his Quebec hotel, and the date, which was about that of Northwick's escape. "But I never dreamt of his using half of his real name," and he told Markham what the real name was; and then he thought it safe to trust him with the nature of his special mission concerning Northwick.

"Is there any place on board where a man could go and kick himself?" he asked.

"Do it here as well as anywhere," said Markham, breaking his cigar-ash off. But Pinney's alluring confidence, and his simple-hearted acknowledgment of his lack of perspicacity had told upon him; he felt the fascinating need of helping Pinney, which Pinney was able to inspire in those who respected him least, and he said, "There was a priest who knew this man when he was at Haha Bay, and I believe he has a parish now – yes, he has! I remember Oiseau told me – at Rimouski. You'd better look him up."