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.