Chapter 7

"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 assent 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 Japanese 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 butter I ever put a knife to, if I _do_ say so. It's just as good and sweet as butter 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 butter," said the young man with friendly irony.

"You know the Northwick butter?" 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 butter, 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. Northwick."

"Then I suppose he's just gone up to Ponkwasset about the trouble there."

"Labor trouble?"

"I guess so."

The woman called toward an open door at the end of the room, "William!" and a man in his shirt sleeves showed himself. "You heard of any labor trouble to Mr. Northwick's mills?"

"No, I don't believe there is any," said the man. He came forward inquiringly to the table where his wife was standing by the _Events_' young man.

"Well, I'm sorry," said the young man, "but it shows that I haven't lost so much in missing Mr. Northwick, after all. I came up here from Boston to interview him for our paper about the labor troubles."

"I want to know!" said the hostess. "You an editor?"

"Well, I'm a reporter--same thing," the young man answered. "Perhaps you've got some troubles of your own here in your shops?"

"No," said the host, "I guess everybody's pretty well satisfied here in Hatboro'." He was tempted to talk by the air of confidence which the _Events_' young man somehow diffused about him, but his native Yankee caution prevailed, and he did not take the lead offered him.

"Well," said the young man, "I noticed one of your citizens over at the drug store that seemed to be pretty happy."

"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife."

"Who _is_ Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the _Events_' man.

"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the old Hatboro' Putneys, here."

"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?"

"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man perceived that he had struck a false note.

"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a month on a strict prohibition basis."

The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well, I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband."

"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go ahead of him, well, not in _this_ town," said the husband.

"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes him so down on Mr. Northwick?"

"Well, I dunno," said the host, "_what_ it is. He's always been so. I presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is anything else."

"Why, what kind of a man _is_ Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason."

"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never did have much to do with the place, before."

"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?"

"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered.

His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to."

"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose slippers require constant attention?"

"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far forth as that goes. He's about the most popular minister, especially with the workin' folks, since Mr. Peck."

"Who was Mr. Peck?"

"Well, he was the one that was run over by the cars at the depot here two or three years back. Why, this house was started on his idea. Sort of co-operation at first; we run it for the Social Union."

"And the co-operation petered out," said the reporter making a note. "Always does; and then you took it, and began to make money. Standard history of co-operation."

"I guess we ain't gettin' rich any too fast," said the hostess, dryly.

"Well, you will if you use the Northwick butter. What's the reason he isn't popular here when he is here? Must spend a good deal of money on that big place of his; and give work."

"Mr. Putney says it's corruptin' to have such a rich man in the neighborhood; and he does more harm than good with his money." The hostess threw out the notion as if it were something she had never been quite able to accept herself, and would like to see its effect upon a man of the reporter's wide observation. "_He_ thinks Hatboro' was better off before there was a single hat-shop or shoe-shop in the place."

"And the law offices had it all to themselves," said the young man; and he laughed. "Well, it was a halcyon period. What sort of a man is Mr. Northwick, personally?"

The woman referred the question to her husband, who pondered it a moment. "Well, he's a kind of a close-mouthed man. He's never had anything to do with the Hatboro' folks much. But I never heard anything against him. I guess he's a pretty good man."

"Wouldn't be likely to mention it round a great deal if he _was_ going to Canada. Heigh? Well, I'm sorry I can't see Mr. Northwick, after all. With these strikes in the mills everywhere, he must have some light to throw on the labor question generally. Poor boy, himself, I believe?"

"I don't believe his daughters could remember when," said the hostess, sarcastically.

"That's so? Well, we are apt to lose our memory for dates as we get on in the world, especially the ladies. Ponkwasset isn't on the direct line of this road, is it?" He asked this of the host, as if it followed.

"No, you got to change at Springfield, and take the Union and Dominion road there. Then it's on a branch."

"Well, I guess I shall have to run up and see Mr. Northwick, there. _What_ did you say the young man's name was that's keeping the Northwick family here this winter?" He turned suddenly to the hostess, putting up his note-book, and throwing a silver dollar on the table to be changed. "Married man myself, you know."

"I guess I hain't mentioned any names," said the woman in high glee. Her husband went back to the kitchen, and she took the dollar away to a desk in the corner of the room, and brought back the change.

"Who'd be a good person to talk with about the labor situation here?" the young man asked, in pocketing his money.

"I d' know as I could hardly tell," said the hostess thoughtfully. "There's Colonel Marvin, he's got the largest shoe-shop; and some the hat-shop folks, most any of 'em would do. And then there's Mr. Wilmington that owns the stocking mills; him or Mr. Jack Wilmington, either one'd be good. Mr. Jack'd be the best, I guess. Or I don't suppose there's anybuddy in the place 'd know more, if they'd a mind to talk, than Mrs. Wilmington; unless it was Mis' Docter Morrell."

"Is Mr. Jack their son?" asked the reporter.

"Land! Why she ain't a day older, if she's that. He's their nephew."

"Oh, I see: second wife. Then _he's_ the young man, heigh!"

The hostess looked at the reporter with admiration. "Well, you do beat the witch. If he hain't, I guess he might 'a' b'en."

The reporter said he guessed he would take another piece of that pie, and some more coffee if she had it, and before he had finished them he had been allowed to understand that if it was not for his being Mrs. Wilmington's nephew Mr. Jack would have been Miss Northwick's husband long ago; and that the love lost between the two ladies was not worth crying for.

The reporter, who had fallen into his present calling by a series of accidents not necessarily of final result in it, did not use arts so much as instincts in its exercise. He liked to talk of himself and his own surroundings, and he found that few men, and no women could resist the lure thrown out by his sincere expansiveness. He now commended himself to the hostess by the philosophical view he took of the popular belief that Mrs. Wilmington was keeping her nephew from marrying any one else so as to marry him herself when her husband died. He said that if you were an old man and you married a young woman he guessed that was what you had got to expect. This gave him occasion to enlarge upon the happiness to be found only in the married state if you were fitly mated, and on his own exceptional good fortune in it.

He was in the full flow of an animated confidence relating to the flat he had just taken and furnished in Boston, when the door opened, and the pale young man whom Louise Hilary had noticed at the station, came in.

The reporter broke off with a laugh of greeting. "Hello, Maxwell! You onto it, too?"

"Onto what?" said the other, with none of the reporter's effusion.

"This labor-trouble business," said the reporter, with a wink for him alone.

"Pshaw, Pinney! You'd grow a bush for the pleasure of beating about it." Maxwell hung his hat on a hook above the table, but sat down fronting Pinney with his overcoat on; it was a well-worn overcoat, irredeemably shabby at the buttonholes. "I'd like some tea," he said to the hostess, "some English breakfast tea, if you have it; and a little toast." He rested his elbows on the table, and took his head between his hands, and pressed his fingers against his temples.

"Headache?" asked Pinney, with the jocose sympathy men show one another's sufferings, as if they could be joked away. "Better take something substantial. Nothing like ham and eggs for a headache."

The other unfolded his paper napkin. "Have you got anything worth while?"

"Lots of public opinion and local color," said Pinney. "Have you?"

"I've been half crazy with this headache. I suppose we brought most of the news with us," he suggested.

"Well, I don't know about that," said Pinney.

"I do. You got your tip straight from headquarters. I know all about it, Pinney, so you might as well save time, on that point, if time's an object with you. They don't seem to know anything here; but the consensus in Hatboro' is that he was running away."

"The what is?" asked Pinney.

"The consensus."

"Anything like the United States Census?"

"It isn't spelt like it."

Pinney made a note of it. "I'll get a head-line out of that. I take my own wherever I find it, as George Washington said."

"Your own, you thief!" said Maxwell, with sardonic amusement. "You don't know what the word means."

"I can make a pretty good guess, thank you," said Pinney, putting up his book.

"Do you want to trade?" Maxwell asked, after his tea came, and he had revived himself with a sip or two.

"Any scoops?" asked Pinney, warily. "Anything exclusive?"

"Oh, come!" said Maxwell. "No, I haven't; and neither have you. What do you make mysteries for? I've been over the whole ground, and so have you. There are no scoops in it."

"I think there's a scoop if you want to work it," said Pinney, darkly.

Maxwell received the vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a detective--in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, like a man of small appetite and invalid digestion.

"I suppose you've interviewed the family?" suggested Pinney.

"No," said Maxwell, gloomily, "there are some things that even a space-man can't do."

"You ought to go back on a salary," said Pinney, with compassion and superiority. "You'll ruin yourself trying to fill space, if you stick at trifles."

"Such as going and asking a man's family whether they think he was burnt up in a railroad accident, and trying to make copy out of their emotions? Thank you, I prefer ruin. If that's your scoop, you're welcome to it."

"They're not obliged to see you," urged Pinney. "You send in your name and--"

"They shut the door in your face, if they have the presence of mind."

"Well! What do you care if they do? It's all in the way of business, anyhow. It's not a personal thing."

"A snub's a pretty personal thing, Pinney. The reporter doesn't mind it, but it makes the man's face burn."

"Oh, very well! If you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for a reporter. When are you going to Boston?"

"Six, fifteen. I've got a scoop of my own."

"What is it?" asked Pinney, incredulously.

"Come round in the morning, and I'll tell you."

"Perhaps I'll go in with you, after all. I'll just step out into the cold air, and see if I can harden my cheek for that interview. Your diffidence is infectious, Maxwell."

XIV.

Pinney was really somewhat dashed by Maxwell's attitude, both because it appealed to the more delicate and generous self, which he was obliged to pocket so often in the course of business, and because it made him suspect that Maxwell had already interviewed Northwick's family. They would be forewarned, in that case, and would, of course, refuse to see him. But he felt that as a space-man, with the privilege of filling all the space he chose with this defalcation, his duty to his family required him to use every means for making copy.

He encouraged himself by thinking of his wife, and what she was probably doing at that moment in their flat in Boston, and he was feeling fairly well when he asked for Miss Northwick at the door of the great wooden palace. He had time to take in its characteristics, before James, the inside-man, opened the door and scanned him for a moment with a sort of baffled intelligence. To the experience of the inside-man his appearance gave no proof that he was or was not an agent, a peddler in disguise, or a genteel mendicant of the sort he was used to detecting and deterring.

"I don't know, sir, I'll go and see." He let rather than invited Pinney in, and in his absence, the representative of the _Events_ made note of the interior, both of the hall which he had been allowed to enter, and of the library, where he found himself upon his own responsibility. The inside-man discovered him there with his back to the fire, when he returned with his card still in his hand.

"Miss Northwick thinks it's her father you wish to see. He's not at home."

"Yes, I knew that. I did wish to see Mr. Northwick, and I asked to see Miss Northwick because I knew he wasn't at home."

"Oh!" The man disappeared, and after another interval Adeline came in. She showed the trepidation she felt at finding herself in the presence of an interviewer.

"Will you sit down?" she said, timidly, and she glanced at the card which she had brought back this time. It bore the name of Lorenzo A. Pinney, and in the left hand corner the words _Representing the Boston Events_. Mr. Pinney made haste to reassure her by a very respectful and business-like straightforwardness of manner; he did not forbid it a certain shade of authority.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Miss Northwick. I hoped to have some conversation with you in regard to this--this rumor--accident. Can you tell me just when Mr. Northwick left home?"

"He went up to the Mills, yesterday morning, quite early," said Adeline. She was in the rise of hope which she and Suzette both felt from the mere fact that Matt Hilary was on the way to hunt the horrible rumor to its source; it seemed to her that he must extinguish it there. She wanted to tell this friendly-looking reporter so; but she would not do this without Suzette's authority. Suzette had been scolding her for not telling her what was in the paper as soon as she read it in the morning; and they were both so far respited for the moment from their fear, as to have had some words back and forth about the propriety of seeing this reporter at all. Adeline was on her most prudent behavior.

"Did you expect him back soon when he left?" Pinney asked respectfully.

"Oh, no; he said he wouldn't be back for some days."

"It's several hours to Ponkwasset, I believe?" suggested Pinney.

"Yes, three or four. There _is_ one train, at half-past-twelve, I think," said Miss Northwick, with a glance at the clock, "that takes you there in three hours."

"The early train doesn't connect right through, then?"

"No; my father would have to wait over at Springfield. He doesn't often take the early train; and so we thought, when we found he wasn't at the Mills, that he had stopped over a day at Springfield to buy some horses from a farmer there. But we've just heard that he didn't. He may have run down to New York; he often has business there. We don't place any reliance on that story"--she gasped the rest out--"about--that accident."

"Of course not," said Pinney with real sympathy. "It's just one of those flying rumors--they get the names all mixed up, those country operators."

"They spelled the name two ways in different papers," said Adeline. "Father had no earthly business up that way; and he always telegraphs."

"I believe the Mills are on the line of the Union and Dominion Road, are they not?" Pinney fell into the formal style of his printed questionings.

"Yes, they are. Father could get the Northern express at Springfield, and drive over from Ponkwasset Junction; the express doesn't stop at the Falls."

"I see. Well, I won't trouble you any farther, Miss Northwick. I hope you'll find out it's all a mistake about--"

"Oh, I know it is!" said Adeline. "A gentleman--a friend of ours--has just gone up to Wellwater to see about it."

"Oh, well, that's good," said Pinney. "Then you'll soon have good news. I suppose you've telegraphed?"

"We couldn't get anything by telegraph. That is the reason he went."

It seemed to Pinney that she wished to tell him who went; but she did not tell him; and after waiting for a moment in vain, he rose and said, "Well, I must be getting back to Boston. I should have been up here to see your father about these labor troubles night before last, if I'd taken my wife's advice. I always miss it when I don't," he said, smiling.

There is no reason why a man should acquire merit with other women by seeming subject to his wife or dependent upon her; but he does. They take it as a sort of tribute to themselves, or to the abstract woman; their respect for that man rises; they begin to honor him; their hearts warm to him. Pinney's devotion to his wife had already been of great use to him, on several occasions, in creating an atmosphere of trust about him. He really could not keep her out of his talk for more than five minutes at a time; all topics led up to her sooner or later.

When he now rose to go, Miss Northwick said, "I'm sorry my father isn't at home, and I'm sorry I can't give you any information about the troubles."

"Oh, I shall go to the Mills, to-morrow," he interrupted cheerily. Her relenting emboldened him to say, "You must have a beautiful place, here, in summer, Miss Northwick."