Chapter 4 No.4

In which Thaddeus uses the term "Moral Justification"

In the early days of Squire Map's seclusion he had not yet made the hermit of himself that Hagar was familiar with later. Men have said that he never went outside the village after the fall of '58, at least never to Hamilton. The grooves where his bitterness ran plainly deepened as the stream wore them year by year; possibly the gradual noting how his withdrawal made no empty place among busy men, how feigning friends who had turned enemies and rebellious sons went their way and prospered, helped to widen and darken the shadow of his misanthropy. He had been a lawyer, a politician, and made his stir in his day. In 1860 he was a gray, grim gentleman in a long coat and tall, black hat, with a caverned, bony face and large frame, whom it was not considered wisdom to address without good reason, but who was seen often enough about the village.

And it was not so strange as to startle Widow Bourn in her halcyon calm when he knocked at her door one afternoon, and entered, doffing his tall hat.

"I hope I don't disturb you, Mrs. Bourn." The widow signified her unruffled comfort and hoped he would sit down.

"With your permission, I will do so."

Followed a pause while the widow pursued her knitting, and the squire's reddish, bushy eyebrows drooped and gathered, while he studied a patch of sunlight on the floor.

"I recollect that my son Morgan and your daughter Nellie were once quite inseparable, a companionship regarded as singular, considering the difference in ages, not common between a young man, approximately, and a child. It was, however, I believe, a fact."

"Morgan was always fond of Nellie."

The widow hoped secretly that, whatever he intended to say, he would continue to put it in the form of statements with which it was no trouble to agree.

"I am told he has been here of late-in fact, frequently."

That also was true. The widow wondered why people were afraid of Squire Map. He was a very comfortable person to talk with.

"Sickness or misfortune is not, if I understand his character, a thing that ordinarily interests my son Morgan. I need not point out to you that young people of a certain age are apt to give much attention to the subject of marriage."

The widow felt a twinge of discomfort. It was but slight. She objected that Nellie was young, hardly more than a child.

"In apprehension of the future, then, Mrs. Bourn, I have to say that I doubt whether any young woman will find the happiness that is due her in such an intimate relation with my son Morgan. I more than doubt it."

The widow dropped her knitting and stared helplessly.

"That is perhaps all I have to say, Mrs. Bourn. I apprehend something of the character of your daughter Nellie. Her good looks are remarkable, her disposition and intelligence even more interesting. That may not be my only motive in coming here. Whatever the motive, I beg you to believe the warning is entirely candid."

The widow felt herself in the shadow of a vague distress, painfully called upon to say something appropriate. She murmured that Nellie was going to live with her uncle that winter. The squire raised his hedge of eyebrows suddenly.

"In Hamilton?"

With her uncle Thaddeus, the elder brother of Simon. He had taken so much interest in Nellie.

The squire mused. Yes. Could Mrs. Bourn, if Mr. Thaddeus Bourn again visited Hagar, contrive to suggest to him personally that his former friend, Gerald Map, remembered him with pleasure and would be under obligation to Mr. Bourn if he, Mr. Thaddeus Bourn, would call upon him, Gerald Map?

The squire then took his leave. He came upon Morgan himself crossing the green with his gun and hunting-dog. They faced each other and stopped. Mr. Paulus from the post-office below the hill observed them.

"Resemblin'," he remarked, "two rams that's goin' to butt lightnin' out of themselves in a minute."

"You still visit Hagar, then?" said the squire, his voice muttering thunder.

"Quite often."

The trick of the gathered eyebrows was curiously common to both. The squire took his time.

"You intend to marry Miss Helen Bourn?"

"I've been figuring on that for seven years. You haven't found me changing my mind. I intend to do it."

"I intend to prevent it, Morgan."

"In Nellie's interest, sir?"

"I regard it as in her interest."

"I mean, is that your interest in it?"

"I shall not say."

"I didn't feel encouraged to think it was an interest in me. But it's natural to ask."

"Quite natural."

The squire walked a few steps, stopped and looked back, his eyebrows drooping over their melancholy caves. "I take no interest in your success in any direction. I shall be measurably interested in your failures. Whenever you have a failure to report, and are inclined to report it personally, I shall be glad to see you."

"That's an odd offer, sir." Morgan swung his gun over his shoulder. "I never saw any real need of a row, and I don't yet. And I don't pretend to understand the mixture now."

The squire went his way without answering. Morgan looked after him, then at his hunting-dog sniffing among the heaps of fallen leaves, at Windless Mountain, and found nothing suggestive. He walked slowly towards the Bourn house.

Ordinarily a man spent his time better in understanding his own purposes than the purposes of other men. On the whole, they were more easily thrust aside than understood. That was Morgan's settled conviction or characteristic. He did not mean to make an exception in favor of the squire. At the same time, "take an interest in your failures" had an odd sound, and inviting him to come and report them was a bit cool, if he only wanted to gloat over them. Hardly in "dad's" style, anyway. "Gloating" was a futile occupation. The way the squire had taken that row had been futile enough. But the question was whether he could really do anything to make a nuisance of himself. It not appearing how he could, Morgan concluded to shake off the subject, quickened his pace, and whistled to his dog.

Mr. Paulus remarked, despondently, from his philosophic distance, "I most thought they'd do some buttin'."

His despondency led to reminiscence. "Seems to me folks ain't so lively as when I was a boy. The town's runnin' down."

He stood in his shirt-sleeves, though there was a bleakness in the wind that hinted of December. The bare branches of the maples creaked, and the dead leaves fled up the road in a whirl of dust.

* * *

It was late in December when Thaddeus came to Hagar again, a Hagar of gray, frozen roads, little patches of dry, drifted snow, and nights falling early. Mr. Paulus sat by a lamp in the rear of the half-lit store, out of sorts with rheumatism and by reason of human nature. It was five o'clock. Thaddeus entered with an air of happy secrecy, planted himself, white-skinned, wrinkled, smiling, before Mr. Paulus's red-and-round-faced gloom.

"Pete, I've been to see Gerald Map. Upon my word! Singular interview, which I shall not tell you anything about."

"Ain't no need," grumbled Mr. Paulus. "Been agreein' on your epitaphs, an' it's about time. Like to make epitaphs for all the danged fools in town myself, an' fit the corpses to the dates."

Thaddeus sat down carefully, and wiped his glasses with snowy handkerchief, leaning forward to the light; adjusted them, leaned back, and rubbed his hands softly.

"Pete, when you've made up your mind about something, it's a satisfaction to happen on-a-unexpectedly-a moral justification of it. It really is."

"Don't want one. Wouldn't have no use for it. After those folks'd seen their epitaphs I'd writ 'em, if they didn't do what was decent-"

"A-I was referring," Thaddeus insinuated, "to myself."

"You were!" Mr. Paulus reflected, dropped his eyelid, and grew a shade more cheerful. "Moral justification! Well-I caught Cummings's boy stealin' plug tobacco th' other day. An' he said he wanted it for Halligan. Guess he did. Likely Halligan give him three cents for a five-cent plug. He looked the picture of virtue, anyhow; said he never chawed: he wa'n't up to no such viciousness. Moral justification! It's a good thing."

Thaddeus smiled absently, pursed his lips, and was silent.

"Pete," he said at last, "how does green paint feel?"

Mr. Paulus's gloom faded away, and his interest, his love of life, came gently back.

"Wet," he said, thoughtfully. "Gets stiff after dryin'."

"Ah," murmured Thaddeus, "exactly."

* * *

A few days later Helen and Thaddeus took their way down the Wyantenaug Valley to Hamilton, and left Hagar to the wintry hills and Widow Bourn to her own manner of content.