The effect of a thing is never quite what we have forecast.  Mrs. Hilary heard Matt’s confession without apparently anything of his tumult in making it.  Women, after all, dwell mainly in the region of the affections; even the most worldly women have their likes and dislikes, and the question of the sort Matt had sprung upon his mother, is first a personal question with them.  She was not a very worldly woman; but she liked her place in the world, and she preferred conformity and similarity; the people she was born of and bred with, were the nicest kind of people, and she did not see how any one could differ from them to advantage.  Their ideas were the best, or they would not have had them; she, herself, did not wish to have other ideas.  But her family was more, far more, to her than her world was.  She knew that in his time her husband had not had the ideas of her world concerning slavery, but she had always contrived to honor the ideas of both.  Since her son had begun to disagree with her world concerning what he called the industrial slavery, she contrived, without the sense of inconsistency, to suffer him and yet remain with the world.  She represented in her maternal tolerance, the principle actuating the church, which includes the facts as fast as they accomplish themselves, without changing any point of doctrine.

“Then you mean, Matt,” she asked, “that you are going to marry her?”

“Yes,” said Matt, “that is what I mean,” and then, something in his mother’s way of taking it nettled him on Sue’s behalf.  “But I don’t know that my marrying her necessarily followed from my asking her.  I expected her to refuse me.”

“Men always do; I don’t know why,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “But in this case I can’t imagine it.”

“Can’t imagine it? I can imagine it!” Matt retorted; but his mother did not seem to notice his resentment.

“Then, if it’s quite settled, you don’t wish me to say anything?”

“I wish you to say everything, mother — all that you feel and think — about her, and the whole affair.  But I don’t wish you to think — I can’t let you think — that she has ever, by one look or word, allowed me to suppose that my offer would be welcome.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “She would be too proud for that.  But I’ve no doubt it was welcome.”  Matt fretted in silence, but he allowed his mother to go on.  “She is a very proud girl, and I’ve no doubt that what she’s been through has intensified her pride.”

“I don’t suppose she’s perfect,” said Matt.  “I’m not perfect, myself.  But I don’t conceal her faults from myself any more than I do my own.  I know she’s proud.  I don’t admire pride; but I suppose that with her it can’t be helped.”

“I don’t know that I object to it,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “It doesn’t always imply hardness; it goes with very good things, sometimes.  That hauteur of hers is very effective.  I’ve seen it carry her through with people who might have been disposed to look down on her for some reasons.”

“I shouldn’t value it, for that,” Matt interrupted.

“No.  But she made it serve her instead of her want of those family connections that every one else has — ”

“She will have all of ours, I hope, mother!” Matt broke in, with a smile; but his mother would not be diverted from the point she was making.

“And that it always seemed so odd she shouldn’t have.  I’m sure that to see her come into a room, you would think half Boston, or all the princes of the blood, were her cousins.  She’s certainly a magnificent creature.”

Matt differed with his mother from the ground up, in all her worldly reasons for admiring Suzette, but her praises filled his heart to overflowing.  Tears stood in his eyes, and his voice trembled: 

“She is — she is — angelically!”

“Well, not just that type, perhaps,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “But she is a good girl.  No one can help respecting her; and I think she’s even more to be respected for yielding to that poor old maid sister of hers about their property, than for wishing to give it up.”

“Yes,” Matt breathed gratefully.

“But there, there is the real skeleton, Matt!  Suzette would grace the highest position.  But her father!  What will people say?”

“Need we mind that, mother?”

“Not, perhaps, so much, if things had remained as they were — if he had never been heard from again.  But that letter of his!  And what will he do next?  He may come home, and offer to stand his trial!”

“I would respect him for that!” cried Matt passionately.

“Matt!”

“It isn’t a thing I should urge him to do.  He may not have the strength for it.  But if he had, it would be the best thing he could do, and I should be glad to stand by him!”

“And drag us all through the mire?  Surely, my son, whatever you feel about your mother and sister, you can’t wish your poor father to suffer anything more on that wretch’s account?”

“Wish?  No.  And heaven knows how deeply anxious I am about the effect my engagement may have on father.  I’m afraid it will embarrass him — compromise him, even — ”

“As to that, I can’t say,” said Mrs. Hilary.  “You and he ought to know best.  One thing is certain.  There won’t be any opposition on his part or mine, my son, that you won’t see yourself is reasonable — ”

“Oh, I am sure of that, mother!  And I can’t tell you how deeply I feel — ”

“Your father appreciates Suzette as fully as I do; but I don’t believe he could stand any more Quixotism from you, Matt, and if you intend to make your marriage a preliminary to getting your father-in-law into State’s prison, you may be very sure your father won’t approve of your marriage.”

Matt laughed at the humor of the proposition, which his mother did not perceive so keenly.

“I don’t intend that, exactly.”

“And I’m satisfied, as it is, he won’t be easy about it till the thing is hushed up, or dies out of itself, if it’s let alone.”

“But father can’t let it alone!” said Matt.  “It’s his duty to follow it up at every opportunity.  I don’t want you to deceive yourself about the matter.  I want you to understand just how it will be.  I have tried to face it squarely, and I know how it looks.  I shall try to make Suzette see it as I do, and I’m sure she will.  I don’t think her father is guiltier than a great many other people who haven’t been found out.  But he has been found out, and he ought, for the sake of the community, to be willing to bear the penalty the law inflicts.  That is his only hope, his salvation, his duty.  Father’s duty is to make him bear it whether he’s willing or not.  It’s a much more odious duty — ”

“I don’t understand you, Matt, saying your father’s part is more odious than a self-confessed defaulter’s.”

“No, I don’t say — ”

“Then I think you’d better go to your father, and reconcile your duty with his, if you can.  I wash my hands of the affair.  It seems to me, though, that you’ve quite lost your head.  The world will look very differently, I can assure you, at a woman whose father died in Canada, nobody could remember just why, from what it will on one whose father was sent to State’s prison for taking money that didn’t belong to him.”

Matt flung up his arms; “Oh, the world, the world!  I won’t let the world enter!  I will never let Suzette face its mean and cruel prejudices.  She will come here to the farm with me, and we will live down the memory of what she has innocently suffered, and we will let the world go its way.”

“And don’t you think the world will follow you here?  Don’t you suppose it is here, ready to welcome you home with all those prejudices you hope you can shun?  Every old gossip of the neighborhood will point Suzette out, as the daughter of a man who is serving his term in jail for fraud.  The great world forgets, but this little world around you here would remember it as long as either of you lived.  No; the day you marry Suzette Northwick, you must make up your mind to follow her father into exile, or else to share his shame with her at home.”

“I’ve made up my mind to share that shame at home.  I never could ask her to run from it.”

“Then for pity’s sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is.  Or, if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he dies.  Good-night.”

Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead.  He thought he had solved one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in dazzling illusions.

The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew how to present it.  His mother had not only promised not to speak to his father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.

But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of meeting it could have done.  He asked if it were something that Matt had done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment.  Then he said, “I shall have to take some action about it.”

“How, action?”

“Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes known — and you wish it to be known, of course — ”

“Of course!”

“It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to Northwick.”

“Northwick?”

“As president of the Board, I’m ex officio his enemy and persecutor.  It wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be decent, for me to continue that after it was known that you were going to marry his daughter.  It wouldn’t be possible.  I must resign, I must withdraw from the Board altogether.  I haven’t the stuff in me to do my official duty at such a cost; so I’d better give up my office, and get rid of my duty.”

“That will be a great sacrifice for you, father,” said Matt.

“It won’t bring me to want, exactly, if you mean money-wise.”

“I didn’t mean money-wise.  But I know you’ve always enjoyed the position so much.”

Hilary laughed uneasily.  “Well, it hasn’t been a bed of roses since we discovered Northwick’s obliquities — excuse me!”

Matt blushed.  “Oh, I know he’s oblique, as such things go.”

“In fact,” his father resumed, “I shall be glad to be out of it, and I don’t think there’ll be much opposition to my going out; I know that there’s a growing feeling against me in the Board.  I have tried to carry water on both shoulders.  I’ve made the effort honestly; but the effect hasn’t been good.  I couldn’t keep my heart out of it; from the very first I pitied that poor devil’s children so that I got him and gave him all the chance I could.”

“That was perfectly right.  It was the only business-like — ”

“It wasn’t business-like to hope that even if justice were defeated he might somehow, anyhow, escape the consequences of his crime; and I’m afraid this is what I’ve hoped, in spite of myself,” said Hilary.

This was so probably true that Matt could not help his father deny it.  He could only say, “I don’t believe you’ve ever allowed that hope to interfere with the strict performance of your duty, at any moment.”

“No; but I’ve had the hope; and others have had the suspicion that I’ve had it.  I’ve felt that; and I’m glad that it’s coming to an end.  I’m not ashamed of your choice, Matt; I’m proud of it.  The thing gave me a shock at first, because I had to face the part I must take.  But she’s all kinds of a splendid girl.  The Board knows what she wished to do, and why she hasn’t done it.  No one can help honoring her.  And I don’t believe people will think the less of any of us for your wanting to marry her.  But if they do, they may do it, and be damned.”

Hilary shook himself together with greater comfort than he had yet felt, upon this conclusion:  but he lapsed again after the long hand-pressure that he exchanged with his son.

“We must make it our business, now, to see that no man loses anything by that — We must get at him somehow.  Of course, they have no more notion where he is than we have.”

“No; not the least,” said Matt.  “I think it’s the uncertainty that’s preying upon Miss Northwick.”

“The man’s behaving like a confounded lunatic,” said Hilary.

The word reminded Matt of Putney, and he said, “That’s their lawyer’s theory of him — ”

“Oh, you’ve seen him, have you?  Odd chap.”

“Yes; I saw him when I was up there, after — after — at the request of Suzette.  I wished to talk with him about the scheme that Maxwell’s heard of from a brother reporter,” and Matt now unfolded Pinney’s plan to his father, and showed his letter.

Hilary looked from it at his son.  “You don’t mean that this is the blackguard who wrote that account of the defalcation in the Events?”

“Yes; the same fellow.  But as to blackguard — ”

“Well, then, Matt, I don’t see how we can employ him.  It seems to me it would be a kind of insult to those poor girls.”

“I had thought of that.  I felt that.  But after all, I don’t think he knew how much of a blackguard he was making of himself.  Maxwell says he wouldn’t know.  And besides, we can’t help ourselves.  If he doesn’t go for us, he will go for himself.  We must employ him.  He’s a species of condottiere; we can buy his allegiance with his service:  and we must forego the sentimental objection.  I’ve gone all over it, and that’s the only conclusion.”

Hilary fumed and rebelled; but he saw that they could not help themselves, that they could not do better.  He asked, “And what did their lawyer think of it?”

“He seemed to think we had better let it alone for the present; better wait and see if Mr. Northwick would not try to communicate with his family.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Hilary.  “If this fellow is such a fellow as you say, I don’t see why we shouldn’t make use of him at once.”

“Make use of him to get Mr. Northwick back?” said Matt.  “I think it would be well for him to come back, but voluntarily — ”

“Come back?” said Hilary, whose civic morality flew much lower than this.  “Nonsense!  And stir the whole filthy mess up in the courts?  I mean, make use of this fellow to find him, and enable us to find out just how much money he has left, and how much we have got to supply, in order to make up his shortage.”

Matt now perceived the extent of his father’s purpose, and on its plane he honored it.

“Father, you’re splendid!”

“Stuff!  I’m in a corner.  What else is there to do?  What less could we do?  What’s the money for, if it isn’t to — ” Hilary choked with the emotion that filled him at the sight of his son’s face.

Every father likes to have his grown-up son think him a good man; it is the sweetest thing that can come to him in life, far sweeter than a daughter’s faith in him; for a son knows whether his father is good or not.  At the bottom of his soul Hilary cared more for his son’s opinion than most fathers; Matt was a crank, but because he was a crank, Hilary valued his judgment as something ideal.

After a moment he asked, “Can this fellow be got at?”

“Oh, I imagine very readily.”

“What did Maxwell say about him, generally?”

“Generally, that he’s not at all a bad kind of fellow.  He’s a reporter by nature, and he’s a detective upon instinct.  He’s done some amateur detective work, as many reporters do — according to Maxwell’s account.  The two things run together — and he’s very shrewd and capable in his way.  He’s going into it as a speculation, and of course he wants it to be worth his while.  Maxwell says his expectation of newspaper promotion is mere brag; they know him too well to put him in any position of control.  He’s a mixture, like everybody else.  He’s devotedly fond of his wife, and he wants to give her and the baby a change of air — ”

“My idea,” Hilary interrupted, “would be not to wait for the Social Science Convention, but to send this — ”

“Pinney.”

“Pinney at once.  Will you see him?”

“If you have made up your mind.”

“I’ve made up my mind.  But handle the wretch carefully, and for heaven’s sake bind him by all that’s sacred — if there’s anything sacred to him — not to give the matter away.  Let him fix his price, and offer him a pension for his widow afterwards.”