"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."
"I like it all times of the year," she answered. "We've all been enjoying the winter so much; it's the first we've spent here for a long time." She felt a strange pleasure in saying this; her reference to their family life seemed to reassure her of its unbroken continuity, and to warrant her father's safety.
"Yes," said Pinney, "I knew you had let your house in town. I think my wife would feel about it just as you do; she's a great person for the country, and if it wasn't for my work on the paper, I guess I sh'd have to live there."
Miss Northwick took a mass of heavy-headed jacqueminot roses from the vase where they drooped above the mantel, and wrapping them in a paper from the desk, stiffly offered them to Pinney. "Won't you carry these to your wife?" she said. This was not only a recognition of Pinney's worth in being so fond of his wife, but a vague attempt at propitiation. She thought it might somehow soften the heart of the interviewer in him, and keep him from putting anything in the paper about her. She was afraid to ask him not to do so.
"Oh, thank you," said Pinney. "I didn't mean to – it's very kind of you – I assure you." He felt very queer to be remanded to the purely human basis in relation to these people, and he made haste to get away from that interview. He had nothing to blame himself for, and yet he now suddenly somehow felt to blame. In the light of the defaulter's home life, Northwick appeared his victim. Pinney was not going to punish him, he was merely going to publish him: but all the same, for that moment, it seemed to him that he was Northwick's persecutor, and was hunting him down, running him to earth. He wished that poor old girl had not given him those flowers; he did not feel that he could take them to his wife; on the way back to the station he stepped aside from the road and dropped them into the deep snow.
His wife met him at the door of their flat, eager to know what success he had; and at sight of her his spirits rose again, and he gave her an enthusiastic synopsis of what he had done.
She flung herself on his knees, where he sat, and embraced him. "Ren, you've done splendidly! And I know you'll beat the Abstract clear out of sight. Oh, Ren, Ren!" She threw her arms round his neck again, and the happy tears started to her eyes. "This will give you any place on the paper you choose to ask for! Oh, I'm the happiest girl in the world."
Pinney gave her a joyful hug. "Yes, it's all right. There are ninety-nine chances to one that he was going to Canada. There's a big default, running up into the hundred thousands, and they gave him a chance to make up his shortage – it's the old story. I've got just the setting I wanted for my facts, and now, as soon as Manton gives us the word to go ahead – "
"Wait till Manton gives the word!" cried Mrs. Pinney. "Well, you shall do no such thing, Ren. We won't wait a minute."
Pinney broke out into a laugh, and gave her another hug for her enthusiasm, and explained, between laughing at her and kissing her, why he had to wait; that if he used the matter before the detective authorized him, it would be the last tip he would ever get from Manton. "We shan't lose anything. I'm going to commence writing it out, now. I'm going to make it a work of art. Now, you go and get me some coffee, Hat. There isn't going to be any let up on this till it's all blocked out, any way; and I'm going to leave mighty few places to fill in, I can tell you." He pulled off his coat, and sat down at his desk.
His wife stopped him. "You'd better come out into the kitchen, and work on the table there. It's bigger than this desk."
"Don't know but I had," said Pinney. He gathered up his work and followed her out into the cosy little kitchen, where she cooked their simple meals, and they ate them. "Been living on tea since I been gone?" He pulled open the refrigerator built into the wall, and glanced into it. "Last night's dinner all there yet!"
"You know I don't care to eat when you're away, Ren," she said, with a pathetic little mouth.
Pinney kissed her and then he sat down to his work again; and when he was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him with a leniency which he would not otherwise have felt. He recognized a merit in this forbearance of his, and once, towards the end of his work, when he was taking a little rest, he said: "Reporters get as much abuse as plumbers; but if people only knew what we kept back, perhaps they would sing a different tune. Of course, it's a temptation to describe his daughter, poor old thing, and give the interview in full, but I don't quite like to. I've got to cut it down to the fact that she evidently hadn't the least idea of the defalcation, or why he was on the way to Canada. Might work a little pathos in with that, but I guess I mustn't!"
His wife pushed the manuscript away from her, and flung down the pen. "Well, Ren, if you go on talking in that way, you'll take the pleasure out of it for me; I can tell you that much. If I get to thinking of his family, I can't help you any more."
"Pshaw!" said Pinney. "The facts have got to come out, any way, and I guess they won't be handled half as mercifully anywhere else as I shall handle 'em." He put his arms round her, and pulled her tight up to him. "Your tender-heartedness is going to be the ruin of me yet, Hat. If it hadn't been for thinking how you'd have felt, I should gone right up to Wellwater, and looked up that accident, myself, on the ground. But I knew you'd go all to pieces, if I wasn't back at the time I said, and so I didn't go."
"Oh, what a story!" said the young wife, fondly, with her adoring eyes upon him. "I shouldn't have cared, I guess, if you'd never come back."
"Shouldn't you? How many per cent of that am I going to believe?" he asked, and he drew her to him again in a rapture with her pretty looks, and the love he saw in them.
Pinney was a handsome little fellow himself, with a gay give-and-take air that had always served him well with women, and that, as his wife often told him, had made her determine to have him the first time she saw him.
This was at the opening of the Promontory House, two summers before, when Pinney was assigned to write the affair up for the Events. She had got her first place as operator in the new hotel; and he brought in a despatch for her to send to Boston just as she was going to shut up the office for the night, and go in to see the dancing in the main dining-room, and perhaps be asked to dance herself by some of the clerks.
At the sound of a pencil tapping on the ledge of the little window in the cast-iron filagree wall of her den, she turned quickly round ready to cry with disappointment; but at sight of Pinney with his blue eyes, and his brown fringe of moustache curling closely in over his lip, under his short, straight nose, and a funny cleft in his chin, she felt more like laughing, somehow, as she had since told him a hundred times. He wrote back to her from Boston, on some pretended business; and they began to correspond, as they called it; and they were engaged before the summer was over. They had never yet tired of talking about that first meeting, or of talking about themselves and each other in any aspect. They found out, as soon as they were engaged, and that sort of social splendor which young people wear to each other's eyes had passed, that they were both rather simple and harmless folks, and they began to value each other as being good. This tendency only grew upon them with the greater intimacy of marriage. The chief reason for thinking that they were good was that they loved each other so much; she knew that he was good because he loved her; and he believed that he must have a great deal of good in him, if such a girl loved him so much. They thought it a virtue to exist solely for one another as they did; their mutual devotion seemed to them a form of unselfishness. They felt it a great merit to be frugal and industrious that they might prosper; they prospered solely to their own advantage, but the advantage of persons so deserving through their frugality and industry seemed a kind of altruism; it kept them in constant good humor with themselves, and content with each other. They had risked a great deal in getting married on Pinney's small salary, but apparently their courage had been rewarded, and they were not finally without the sense that their happiness had been achieved somehow in the public interest.
XV
Maxwell's headache went off after his cup of tea, but when he reached the house in Clover Street, where he had a room in the boarding-house his mother kept, he was so tired that he wanted to go to bed. He told her he was not tired; only disappointed with his afternoon's work.
"I didn't get very much. Why, of course, there was a lot of stuff lying round in the gutters that I can work up, if I have the stomach for it. You'll see it in Pinney's report, whether I do it or not. Pinney thinks it's all valuable material. I left him there interviewing the defaulter's family, and making material out of their misery. I couldn't do that."
"I shouldn't want you to, Brice," said his mother. "I couldn't bear to have you."
"Well, we're wrong, both of us, from one point of view," said the young fellow. "As Pinney says, it's business to do these things, and a business motive ought to purify and ennoble any performance. Pinney is getting to be a first-class reporter; he'll be a managing editor and an owner, and be refusing my work in less than ten years."
"I hope you'll be out of such work long before that," said the mother.
"I'm likely to be out of all kinds of work before that, if I keep on at this gait. Pinney hasn't got the slightest literary instinct: he's a wood-chopper, a stable-boy by nature; but he knows how to make copy, and he's sure to get on."
"Well, you don't want to get on in his way," the mother urged soothingly.
"Yes; but I've got to get on in his way while I'm trying to get on in my own. I've got to work eight hours at reporting for the privilege of working two at literature. That's how the world is built. The first thing is to earn your bread."
"Well, you do earn yours, my son – and no one works harder to earn it."
"Ah, but it's so damned dirty when I've earned it."
"Oh, my son!"
"Well, I won't swear at it. That's stupid, too; as stupid as all the rest." He rose from the chair he had dropped into, and went toward the door of the next room. "I must beautify my person with a clean collar and cuffs. I'm going down to make a call on the Back Bay, and I wish to leave a good impression with the fellow that shows me the door when he finds out who I am and what I want. I'm going to interview Mr. Hilary on the company's feelings towards their absconding treasurer. What a dose! He'll never know I hate it ten times as bad as he does. But it's my only chance for a scoop."
"I'm sure he'll receive you well, Brice. He must see that you're a gentleman."
"No, I'm not a gentleman, mother," the son interrupted harshly from the room where he was modifying his linen. "I'm not in that line of business. But I'm like most people in most other lines of business: I intend to be a gentleman as soon as I can afford it. I shall have to pocket myself as usual, when I interview Mr. Hilary. Perhaps he isn't a gentleman, either. There's some consolation in that. I should like to write an article some day on business methods and their compatibility with self-respect. But Mr. Ricker wouldn't print it."
"He's very kind to you, Brice."
"Yes, he's as kind as he dares to be. He's the oasis in the desert of my life; but the counting-room simoom comes along and dries him up, every now and then. Suppose I began my article by a study of the counting-room in independent journalism?"
Mrs. Maxwell had nothing to say to this suggestion, but much concerning the necessity of wearing the neck-muffler, which she found her son had not had on all day. She put it on for him now, and made him promise to put it on for himself when he left the house where he was going to call.
The man who came to the door told him that Mr. Hilary was not at home, but was expected shortly, and consented to let him come in and wait. He tried to classify Maxwell in deciding where to let him wait; his coat and hat looked like a chair in the hall; his pale, refined, rather haughty face, like the drawing-room. The man compromised on the library, and led him in there.
Louise rose upright on the lounge, where she had thrown herself, after dinner, to rest, in the dim light, and think over the day's strange experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that she remembered.
The serving-man said, "Oh, I didn't know you were here, Miss," and stood irresolute. "The gentleman wishes to see your father."
"Will you sit down?" she said to Maxwell. "My father will be in very soon, I think." She began to wonder whether she could edge along unobserved to where her shoes lay, and slip her feet into them. But for the present she remained where she was, and not merely because her shoes were off and she could not well get away, but because it was not in her nature not to wish every one to be happy and comfortable. She was as far as any woman can be from coquetry, but she could not see any manner of man without trying to please him. "I'm sorry he's isn't here," she said, and then, as there seemed nothing for him to answer, she ventured, "It's very cold out, isn't it?"
"It's grown colder since nightfall," said Maxwell.
He remembered her and she saw that he did, and this somehow promoted an illogical sense of acquaintance with him.
"It seems," she ventured farther, "very unusual weather for the beginning of February."
"Why, I don't know," said Maxwell, with rather more self-possession than she wished him to have, so soon. "I think we're apt to have very cold weather after the January thaw."
"That's true," said Louise, with inward wonder that she had not thought of it. His self-possession did not comport with his threadbare clothes any more than his neat accent and quiet tone comported with the proletarian character she had assigned him. She decided that he must be a walking-delegate, and that he had probably come on mischief from some of the workpeople in her father's employ; she had never seen a walking-delegate before, but she had heard much dispute between her father and brother as to his usefulness in society; and her decision gave Maxwell fresh interest in her mind. Before he knew who Louise was, he had made her represent the millionnaire's purse-pride, because he found her in Hilary's house, and because he had hated her for a swell, as much as a young man can hate a pretty woman, when he saw her walking up and down the platform at Hatboro'. He looked about the rich man's library with a scornful recognition of its luxury. His disdain, which was purely dramatic, and had no personal direction, began to scare Louise; she wanted to go away, but even if she could get to her shoes without his noticing, she could not get them on without making a scraping noise on the hard-wood floor. She did not know what to say next, and her heart warmed with gratitude to Maxwell when he said, with no great relevancy to what they had been saying, but with much to what he had in mind, "I don't think one realizes the winter, except in the country."
"Yes," she said, "one forgets how lovely it is out of town."
"And how dreary," he added.
"Oh, do you feel that?" she asked, and she said to herself, "We shall be debating whether summer is pleasanter than winter, if we keep on at this rate."
"Yes, I think so," said Maxwell. He looked at a picture over the mantel, to put himself at greater ease, and began to speak of it, of the color and drawing. She saw that he knew nothing of art, and felt only the literary quality of the picture, and she was trying compassionately to get the talk away from it, when she heard her father's step in the hall below.
Hilary gave a start of question, when he looked into the library, that brought Maxwell to his feet. "Mr. Hilary, I'm connected with the Daily Abstract, and I've come to see if you are willing to talk with me about this rumored accident to Mr. Northwick."
"No, sir! No, sir!" Hilary stormed back. "I don't know any more about the accident, than you do! I haven't a word to say about it. Not a word! Not a syllable! I hope that's enough?"
"Quite," said Maxwell, and with a slight bow to Louise, he went out.
"Oh, papa!" Louise moaned out, "how could you treat him so?"
"Treat him so? Why shouldn't I treat him so? Confound his impudence! What does he mean by thrusting himself in here and taking possession of my library? Why didn't he wait in the hall?"
"Patrick showed him in here. He saw that he was a gentleman!"
"Saw that he was a gentleman?"
"Yes, certainly. He is very cultivated. He's not – not a common reporter at all!" Louise's voice trembled with mortification for her father, and pity for Maxwell, as she adventured this assertion from no previous experience of reporters. It was shocking to feel that it was her father who had not been the gentleman. "You – you might have been a little kinder, papa; he wasn't at all obtrusive; and he only asked you whether you would say anything. He didn't persist."
"I didn't intend he should persist," said Hilary. His fire of straw always burnt itself out in the first blaze; it was uncomfortable to find himself at variance with his daughter, who was usually his fond and admiring ally; but he could not give up at once. "If you didn't like the way I treated him, why did you stay?" he demanded. "Was it necessary for you to entertain him till I came in? Did he ask for the family? What does it all mean?"
The tears came into her eyes, and she said with indignant resentment: "Patrick didn't know I was here when he brought him in; I'm sure I should have been glad to go, when you began raging at him, papa, if I could. It wasn't very pleasant to hear you. I won't come any more, if you don't want me to. I thought you liked me to be here. You said you did."
Her father blustered back: "Don't talk nonsense. You'll come, just as you always have. I suppose," he added, after a moment, in which Louise gathered up her shoes, and stood with them in one hand behind her, a tall figure of hurt affection and wounded pride, "I suppose I might have been a little smoother with the fellow, but I've had twenty reporters after me to-day, and between them, and you, and Matt, in all this bother, I hardly know what I'm about. Didn't Matt see that his going to Wellwater in behalf of Northwick's family must involve me more and more?"
"I don't see how he could help offering to go, when he found Suzette was going alone. He couldn't do less."
"Oh, do less!" said Hilary, with imperfectly sustained passion. He turned, to avoid looking at Louise, and his eyes fell on a strange-looking note-book on the table where Maxwell had sat. "What's this?"
He took it up, and Louise said, "He must have left it." And she thought, "Of course he will come back for it."
"Well, I must send it to him. And I'll – I'll write him a note," Hilary groaned.
Louise smiled eager forgiveness. "He seemed very intelligent, poor fellow, in some ways. Didn't you notice what a cultivated tone he had? It's shocking to think of his having to go about and interview people, and meet all kinds of rebuffs."
"I guess you'd better not waste too much sympathy on him," said Hilary, with some return to his grudge.
"Oh, I didn't mean you, papa," said Louise, sweetly.
The door-bell rang, and after some parley at the threshold, Patrick came up to say, "The gentleman that was just here thinks he left his note-book, he – "
Hilary did not let him get the words out; "Oh, yes, show him up! Here it is." He ran half down the stairs himself to meet Maxwell.