Hills of the Shatemuc Part 100

"The only hope of relief would be in the equity courts."

"How there?" said Rufus.

Winthrop hesitated.

"A plea of fraud -- alleging that Mr. Haye has overreached you, putting off upon you goods which he _knew_ to be worthless."

"To be sure he did!" said Rufus. "Knew it as well as he does now. It was nothing but a fraud. An outrageous fraud!"

Winthrop made no answer, and the brothers paused again, each in his meditations. Winnie, pa.s.sing her eyes from one to the other, thought Winthrop looked as if his were very grave.

"I depend upon you, Governor," the elder brother said more quietly.

"To do what?"

"Why! --" said Rufus firing again, -- "to do whatever is necessary to relieve me! Who should do it?"

"I wish you could get somebody else, Will," said the other.

"I am sorry I cannot!" said Rufus. "If I had the money I would pay it and submit to be trodden upon -- I would rather take it some ways than some others -- but unhappily necessity is laid upon me. I _cannot_ pay, and I am unwilling to go to jail, and I _must_ ask you to help me, painful as it is."

Winthrop was silent, grave and calm as usual; but Winnie's heart ached to see _how_ grave his eye was. Did she read it right? He was silent still; and so was Rufus, though watching for him to speak.

"Well!" said Rufus at last getting up with a start, "I will relieve you! I am sorry I troubled you needlessly -- I shall know better than to do it again! --"

He was rus.h.i.+ng off, but before he reached the door Winthrop had planted himself in front of it.

"Stand out of my way."

"I am not in it. Go back, Will."

"I won't, if you please. -- I'll thank you to let me open the door."

"I will not. Go back to your seat, Rufus -- I want to speak to you."

"I was under the impression you did _not_," said Rufus, standing still. "I waited for you to speak."

"It is safe to conclude that when a man makes you wait, he has something to say."

"You are more certain of it when he lets you know what it is,"

said Rufus.

"Provided he knows first himself."

"How long does it take _you_ to find out what you have to say?"

said Rufus, returning to his ordinary manner and his seat at once. The fire seemed to have thrown itself off in that last jet of flame.

"I sometimes find I have too much; and then there is apt to be a little delay of choice."

"A delay to choose? -- or a choice of delay?" said Rufus.

"Sometimes one and sometimes the other."

One or the other seemed still in force with Winthrop's present matter of speech, for he came before the fire and stood mending it, and said nothing.

"Winthrop," said Rufus gravely, "have you any _particular_ reason to decline doing this business for me?"

Winthrop hesitated slightly, and then came forth one of those same "no's," that Winnie knew by heart.

"Have you any particular reason to dislike it?"

"Yes. They were my friends once."

"But is your friends.h.i.+p for them stronger than for anybody else?"

"It does not stand in the way of my duty to you, Will."

"Your _duty_ to me, --" said the other.

"Yes. I cannot in this instance call it pleasure."

It was the turn of Rufus to hesitate; for the face of his brother expressed an absence of pleasure that to him, in the circ.u.mstances, was remarkable.

"Then you do not refuse to undertake this job for me?"

"I will do what I can," said Winthrop, working at a large forestick on the fire. How Winnie wished he would let it alone, and place himself so that she could see him.

"And don't you think there is good prospect of our succeeding?"

"If Chancery don't give it you, I'll take it to the Court of Errors," said Winthrop, arranging the log to his satisfaction, and then putting the rest of the fire in order.

"I'm sorry to give you trouble, Governor," his brother said thoughtfully.

"I'm sorry you've got it to give, Will."

But Rufus went on looking into the fire, and seeming to get deeper into the depths of something less bright as he looked.

"After all I am much the most to be pitied," he began. "I thought to-day, Governor -- I did not know what would become of me!"

"I can tell you that beforehand," said his brother. "You will become, exactly, what you choose to make yourself."

"That is what you always say," returned Rufus a little cynically.

"That is what I have found in my own practice," said Winthrop.

He put up the tongs and took his old seat by Winnie. Rufus looked still into the fire.

"I am thrown out of this employment now," he said; -- "I am disgusted with it -- and if I were not, there is no way for me to follow it with advantage."

"I am not sorry for that, Will. I never liked it for you, nor you for it."