The Quality of Mercy. Howells William Dean

Er – good-morning, sir."

      He bowed himself away, and went into his store again, and Matt asked Wade, "Who in the world is that?"

      "He's a Mr. Gerrish – keeps the large store, there. Rather an unpleasant type."

      Matt smiled. "He had the effect of refusing to believe that anything so low as an accident could happen to a man of Northwick's business standing."

      "Something of that," Wade assented. "He worships Northwick on the altar of material success."

      Matt lifted his head and looked about. "I suppose the whole place is simply seething with curiosity."

      Just after they reached the side-street where Wade left him to go down to his church, he met Sue Northwick driving in her sleigh. She was alone, except for the groom impassive in the rumble.

      "Have you heard anything?" she asked, sharply.

      Matt repeated the dispatch from the operator at Wellwater.

      "I knew it was a mistake," she said, with a kind of resolute scorn. "It's perfectly ridiculous! Why should he have been there? I think there ought to be some way of punishing the newspapers for circulating false reports. I've been talking with the man who drove my father to the train yesterday morning, and he says he spoke lately of buying some horses at Springfield. He got several from a farm near there once. I'm going down to telegraph the farmer; I found his name among father's bills. Of course he's there. I've got the dispatch all written out."

      "Let me take it back to the station for you, Miss Northwick," said Matt.

      "No; get in with me here, and we'll drive down, and then I'll carry you back home. Or! Here, Dennis!" she said to the man in the rumble; and she handed him the telegram. "Take this to the telegraph-office, and tell them to send it up by Simpson the instant the answer comes."

      The Irishman said, "Yes, ma'am," and dropped from his perch with the paper in his hand.

      "Get in, Mr. Hilary," she said, and after he had mounted she skilfully backed the sleigh and turned the horses homeward. "If I hear nothing from my dispatch, or if I hear wrong, I am going up to Wellwater Junction myself, by the first train. I can't wait any longer. If it's the worst, I want to know the worst."

      Matt did not know what to say to her courage. So he said, "Alone?" to gain time.

      "Of course! At such a time, I would rather be alone."

      At the house Matt found Louise had gone to her room for a moment, and he said he would like to speak with her there.

      She was lying on the lounge, when he announced himself, and she said, "Come in," and explained, "I just came off a moment, to give my sympathies a little rest. And then, being up late so many nights this week. What have you heard?"

      "Nothing, practically. Louise, how long did you expect to stay?"

      "I don't know. I hadn't thought. As long as I'm needed, I suppose. Why? Must you go back?"

      "No – not exactly."

      "Not exactly? What are you driving at?"

      "Why, there's nothing to be found out by telegraphing. Some one must go up to the place where the accident happened. She sees that, and she wants to go. She can't realize at all what it means to go there. Suppose she could manage the journey, going alone, and all that; what could she do after she got there? How could she go and look up the place of the accident, and satisfy herself whether her father was – "

      "Matt!" shrieked his sister. "If you go on, you will drive me wild. She mustn't go; that's all there is of it. You mustn't think of letting her go." She sat up on the lounge in expression of her resolution on this point. "She must send somebody – some of their men. She mustn't go. It's too hideous!"

      "No," said Matt, thoughtfully. "I shall go."

      "You!"

      "Why not? I can be at the place by four or five in the morning, and I can ascertain all the facts, and be able to relieve this terrible suspense for her."

      "For both of them," suggested Louise. "It must be quite as bad for that poor, sick old maid."

      "Why, of course," said Matt, and he felt so much ashamed of having left her out of the account that he added, "I dare say it's even worse for her. She's seen enough of life to realize it more."

      "Sue was his favorite, though," Louise returned. "Of course you must go, Matt. You couldn't do less! It's magnificent of you. Have you told her, yet, that you would go?"

      "Not yet. I thought I would talk it over with you, first."

      "Oh, I approve of it. It's the only thing to do. And I had better stay here till you come back – "

      "Why, no; I'm not sure." He came a little nearer and dropped his voice. "You'd better know the whole trouble, Louise. There's great trouble for them whether he's dead or alive. There's something wrong in his accounts with the company, and if he was on that train he was running away to Canada to escape arrest."

      He could see that only partial intelligence of the case reached her.

      "Then if he's killed, it will all be hushed up. I see! It makes you hope he's killed."

      Matt gave a despairing groan. "If he's killed it makes it just so much the worse. The defalcation has to come out, any way."

      "When must it come out?"

      "A good many people know of it; and such things are hard to keep. It may come out – some rumor of it – in the morning papers. The question is whether you want to stay till they know it here; whether it would be wise, or useful."

      "Certainly not! I should want to kill anybody that was by when such a thing as that came out, and I should despise Sue Northwick if she let me get away alive. I must go at once!"

      She slid herself from the lounge, and ran to the glass, where she put up a coil of hair in the knot it had escaped from.

      "I had my doubts," Matt said, "about letting you come here, without telling you just what the matter was; but mother thought you would insist upon coming, any way, and that you would be embarrassed."

      "Oh, that was quite right," said Louise. "The great thing now is to get away."

      "I hope you won't let her suspect – "

      "Well, I think you can trust me for that, Matt," said Louise, turning round upon him, with a hairpin in her mouth, long enough to give him as sarcastic a glance as she could. If her present self-possession was a warrant of future performance, Matt thought he could trust her; but he was afraid Louise had not taken in the whole enormity of the fact; and he was right in this. As a crime, she did not then, or ever afterwards, fully imagine it. It may be doubted whether she conceived of it as other than a great trouble, and as something that ought always to be kept from her friend.

      Matt went down stairs and found Sue Northwick in the library.

      "I feel perfectly sure," she said, "that we shall hear of my father at Springfield. One of the horses he got there has gone lame, and it would be quite like him to stop and look up another in the place of it on the same farm."

      The logic of this theory did not strike Matt, but the girl held her head in such a strong way, she drew her short breaths with such a smoothness, she so visibly concealed her anxiety in the resolution to believe herself what she said that he could not refuse it the tribute of an apparent credence. "Yes, that certainly makes it seem probable."

      "At any rate," she said, "if I hear nothing from him there, or we get no news from Wellwater, I shall go there at once. I've made up my mind to that."

      "I shouldn't wish you to go alone, Sue," Adeline quavered. Her eyes were red, and her lips swollen as if she had been crying; and now the tears came with her words. "You could never get there alone in the world. Don't you remember, it took us all day to get to Wellwater the last time we went to Quebec?"

      Sue gave her sister a severe look, as if to quell her open fears at least, and Matt asked aimlessly, "Is it on the way to Quebec?"

      Sue picked up the railroad guide from the desk where she had left it. "Yes; it is, and it isn't."