After waiting a little for the displeasure to clear away from my face, Tedham smiled as if in humorous appreciation, and I perceived, as nothing else could have shown me so well, that he was still the old Tedham. There was an offer of propitiation in this smile, too, and I did not like that, either; but I was touched when I saw a certain hope die out of his eye at the failure of his appeal to me.
"Who told you I was here?" I asked, more kindly. "Did you see Mrs.
March?"
"No, I think it must have been your children. I found them in front of your house, and I asked them for you, without going to the door."
"Oh," I said, and I hid the disappointment I felt that he had not seen my wife; for I should have liked such a leading as her behavior toward him would have given me for my own. I was sure she would have known him at once, and would not have told him where to find me, if she had not wished me to be friendly with him.
"I am glad to see you," I said, in the absence of this leading; and then I did not know what else to say. Tedham seemed to me to be looking very well, but I could not notify this fact to him, in the circ.u.mstances; he even looked very handsome; he had aged becomingly, and a clean-shaven face suited him as well as the full beard he used to wear; but I could speak of these things as little as of his apparent health. I did not feel that I ought even to ask him what I could do for him. I did not want to have anything to do with him, and, besides, I have always regarded this formula as tantamount to saying that you cannot, or will not, do anything for the man you employ it upon.
The silence which ensued was awkward, but it was better than anything I could think of to say, and Tedham himself seemed to feel it so. He said, presently, "Thank you. I was sure you would not take my coming to you the wrong way. In fact I had no one else to come to--after I----" Tedham stopped, and then, "I don"t know," he went on, "whether you"ve kept run of me; I don"t suppose you have; I got out to-day at noon."
I could not say anything to that, either; there were very few openings for me, it appeared, in the conversation, which remained one-sided as before.
"I went to the cemetery," he continued. "I wanted to realize that those who had died were dead, it was all one thing as long as I was in there; everybody was dead; and then I came on to your house."
The house he meant was a place I had taken for the summer a little out of town, so that I could run in to business every day, and yet have my mornings and evenings in the country; the fall had been so mild that we were still eking out the summer there.
"How did you know where I was staying?" I asked, with a willingness to make any occasion serve for saying something.
Tedham hesitated. "Well, I stopped at the office in Boston on my way out, and inquired. I was sure n.o.body would know me there." He said this apologetically, as if he had been taking a liberty, and explained: "I wanted to see you very much, and I was afraid that if I let the day go by I should miss you somehow."
"Oh, all right," I said.
We had remained standing at the point where I had gone round to meet him, and it seemed, in the awkward silence that now followed, as if I were rooted there. I would very willingly have said something leading, for my own sake, if not for his, but I had nothing in mind but that I had better keep there, and so I waited for him to speak. I believed he was beating about the bush in his own thoughts, to find some indirect or sinuous way of getting at what he wanted to know, and that it was only because he failed that he asked bluntly, "March, do you know where my daughter is?"
"No, Tedham, I don"t," I said, and I was glad that I could say it both with honesty and with compa.s.sion. I was truly sorry for the man; in a way, I did pity him; at the same time I did not wish to be mixed up in his affairs; in washing my hands of them, I preferred that there should be no stain of falsehood left on them.
"Where is my sister-in-law?" he asked next, and now at least I could not censure him for indirection.
"I haven"t met her for several years," I answered. "I couldn"t say from my own knowledge where she was."
"But you haven"t heard of her leaving Somerville?"
"No, I haven"t."
"Do you ever meet her husband?"
"Yes, sometimes, on the street; but I think not lately; we don"t often meet."
"The last time you saw _her_, did she speak of me?"
"I don"t know--I believe--yes. It was a good many years ago."
"Was she changed toward me at all?"
This was a hard question to answer, but I thought I had better answer it with the exact truth. "No, she seemed to feel just the same as ever about it."
I do not believe Tedham cared for this, after all, though he made a show of having to collect himself before he went on. "Then you think my daughter is with her?"
"I didn"t say that. I don"t know anything about it."
"March," he urged, "don"t _you_ think I have a right to see my daughter?"
"That"s something I can"t enter into, Tedham."
"Good G.o.d!" said the man. "If you were in my place, wouldn"t you want to see her? You know how fond I used to be of her; and she is all that I have got left in the world."
I did indeed remember Tedham"s affection for his daughter, whom I remembered as in short frocks when I last saw them together. It was before my own door in town. Tedham had driven up in a smart buggy behind a slim sorrel, and I came out, at a sign he made me through the bow-window with his whip, and saw the little maid on the seat there beside him. They were both very well dressed, though still in mourning for the child"s mother, and the whole turnout was handsomely set up.
Tedham was then about thirty-five, and the child looked about nine. The color of her hair was the color of his fine brown beard, which had as yet no trace of gray in it; but the light in her eyes was another light, and her smile, which was of the same shape as his, was of another quality, as she leaned across him and gave me her pretty little gloved hand with a gay laugh. "I should think you would be afraid of such a fiery sorrel dragon as that," I said, in recognition of the colt"s lifting and twitching with impatience as we talked.
"Oh, I"m not afraid with papa!" she said, and she laughed again as he took her hand in one of his and covered it out of sight.
I recalled, now, looking at him there in the twilight of the woods, how happy they had both seemed that sunny afternoon in the city square, as they flashed away from my door and glanced back at me and smiled together. I went into the house and said to my wife with a formulation of the case which pleased me, "If there is anything in the world that Tedham likes better than to ride after a good horse, it is to ride after a good horse with that little girl of his." "Yes," said my wife, "but a good horse means a good deal of money; even when a little girl goes with it." "That is so," I a.s.sented, "but Tedham has made a lot lately in real estate, they say, and I don"t know what better he could do with his money; or, I don"t believe _he_ does." We said no more, but we both felt, with the ardor of young parents, that it was a great virtue, a saving virtue, in Tedham to love his little girl so much; I was afterward not always sure that it was. Still, when Tedham appealed to me now in the name of his love for her, he moved my heart, if not my reason, in his favor; those old superst.i.tions persist.
"Why, of course, you want to see her. But I couldn"t tell you where she is."
"You could find out for me."
"I don"t see how," I said; but I did see how, and I knew as well as he what his next approach would be. I felt strong against it, however, and I did not perceive the necessity of being short with him in a matter not involving my own security or comfort.
"I could find out where Hasketh is," he said, naming the husband of his sister-in-law; "but it would be of no use for me to go there. They wouldn"t see me." He put this like a question, but I chose to let it be its own answer, and he went on. "There is no one that I can ask to act for me in the matter but you, and I ask _you_, March, to go to my sister-in-law for me."
I shook my head. "That I can"t do, Tedham."
"Ah!" he urged, "what harm could it do you?"
"Look here, Tedham!" I said. "I don"t know why you feel authorized to come to me at all. It is useless your saying that there is no one else.
You know very well that the authorities, some of them--the chaplain--would go and see Mrs. Hasketh for you. He could have a great deal more influence with her than any one else could, if he felt like saying a good word for you. As far as I am concerned, you have expiated your offence fully; but I should think you yourself would see that you ought not to come to me with this request; or you ought to come to me last of all men."
"It is just because of that part of my offence which concerned you that I come to you. I knew how generous you were, and after you told me that you had no resentment--I acknowledge that it is indelicate, if you choose to look at it in that light, but a man like me can"t afford to let delicacy stand in his way. I don"t want to flatter you, or get you to do this thing for me on false pretences. But I thought that if you went to Mrs. Hasketh for me, she would remember that you had overlooked something, and she would be more disposed to--to--be considerate."
"I can"t do it, Tedham," I returned. "It would be of no use. Besides, I don"t like the errand. I"m not sure that I have any business to interfere. I am not sure that you have any right to disturb the shape that their lives have settled into. I"m sorry for you, I pity you with all my heart. But there are others to be considered as well as you.
And--simply, I can"t."
"How do you know," he entreated, "that my daughter wouldn"t be as glad to see me as I to see her?"
"I don"t know it. I don"t know anything about it. That"s the reason I can"t have anything to do with it. I can"t justify myself in meddling with what doesn"t concern me, and in what I"m not sure but I should do more harm than good. I must say good-night. It"s getting late, and they will be anxious about me at home." My heart smote me as I spoke the last word, which seemed a cruel recognition of Tedham"s homelessness. But I held out my hand to him for parting, and braced myself against my inward weakness.
He might well have failed to see my hand. At any rate he did not take it. He turned and started to walk out of the woods by my side. We came presently to some open fields. Beyond them was the road, and after we had climbed the first wall, and found ourselves in a somewhat lighter place, he began to speak again.
"I thought," he said, "that if you had forgiven me, I could take it as a sign that I had suffered enough to satisfy everybody."
"We needn"t dwell upon my share in the matter, Tedham," I answered, as kindly as I could. "That was entirely my own affair."
"You can"t think," he pursued, "how much your letter was to me. It came when I was in perfect despair--in those awful first days when it seemed as if I could _not_ bear it, and yet death itself would be no relief.
Oh, they don"t _know_ how much we suffer! If they did, they would forgive us anything, everything! Your letter was the first gleam of hope I had. I don"t know how you came to write it!"
"Why, of course, Tedham, I felt sorry for you--"