"Oh, did you, did you?" He began to cry, and as we hurried along over the fields, he sobbed with the wrenching, rending sobs of a man. "I _knew_ you did, and I believe it was G.o.d himself that put it into your heart to write me that letter and take off that much of the blame from me. I said to myself that if I ever lived through it, I would try to tell you how much you had done for me. I don"t blame you for refusing to do what I"ve asked you now. I can see how you may think it isn"t best, and I thank you all the same for that letter. I"ve got it here." He took a letter out of his breast-pocket, and showed it to me. "It isn"t the first time I"ve cried over it."
I did not say anything, for my heart was in my throat, and we stumbled along in silence till we climbed the last wall, and stood on the sidewalk that skirted the suburban highway. There, under the street-lamp, we stopped a moment, and it was he who now offered me his hand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by," and moved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He was shambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. "Tedham!" I called after him.
"Well?" he answered, and he halted instantly; he had evidently known what I would do as well as I had.
We reapproached each other, and when we were again under the lamp I asked, a little awkwardly, "Are you in need of money, Tedham?"
"I"ve got my ten years" wages with me," he said, with a lightness that must have come from his reviving hope in me. He drew his hand out of his pocket, and showed me the few dollars with which the State inhumanly turns society"s outcasts back into the world again.
"Oh, that won"t do." I said. "You must let me lend you something."
"Thank you," he said, with perfect simplicity. "But you know I can"t tell when I shall be able to pay you."
"Oh, that"s all right." I gave him a ten-dollar note which I had loose in my pocket; it was one that my wife had told me to get changed at the grocery near the station, and I had walked off to the old temple, or the old c.o.c.kpit, and forgotten about it.
Tedham took the note, but he said, holding it in his hand, "I would a million times rather you would let me go home with you and see Mrs.
March a moment."
"I can"t do that, Tedham," I answered, not unkindly, I hope. "I know what you mean, and I a.s.sure you that it wouldn"t be the least use. It"s because I feel so sure that my wife wouldn"t like my going to see Mrs.
Hasketh, that I--"
"Yes, I know that," said Tedham. "That is the reason why I should like to see Mrs. March. I believe that if I could see her, I could convince her."
"She wouldn"t see you, my dear fellow," said I, strangely finding myself on these caressing terms with him. "She entirely approved of what I did, the letter I wrote you, but I don"t believe she will ever feel just as I do about it. Women are different, you know."
"Yes," he said, drawing a long, quivering breath.
We stood there, helpless to part. He did not offer to leave me, and I could not find it in my heart to abandon him. After a most painful time, he drew another long breath, and asked, "Would you be willing to let me take the chances?"
"Why, Tedham," I began, weakly; and upon that he began walking with me again.
III.
I went to my wife"s room, after I reached the house, and faced her with considerable trepidation. I had to begin rather far off, but I certainly began in a way to lead up to the fact. "Isabel," I said, "Tedham is out at last." I had it on my tongue to say poor Tedham, but I suppressed the qualification in actual speech as likely to prove unavailing, or worse.
"Is that what kept you!" she demanded, instantly. "Have you seen him?"
"Yes," I admitted. I added, "Though I am afraid I was rather late, anyway."
"I knew it was he, the moment you spoke," she said, rising on the lounge where she had been lying, and sitting up on it; with the book she had been reading shut on her thumb, she faced me across the table where her lamp stood. "I had a presentiment when the children said there was some strange-looking man here, asking for you, and that they had told him where to find you. I couldn"t help feeling a little uneasy about it.
What did he want with you, Basil?"
"Well, he wanted to know where his daughter was."
"You didn"t tell him!"
"I didn"t know. Then he wanted me to go to Mrs. Hasketh and find out."
"You didn"t say you would?"
"I said most decidedly I wouldn"t," I returned, and I recalled my severity to Tedham in refusing his prayer with more satisfaction than it had given me at the time. "I told him that I had no business to interfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me to meddle with the course things had taken." I was aware of weakening my case as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of a downright and relentless refusal.
"I don"t see why you felt called upon to make excuses to him, Basil. His impudence in coming to you, of all men, is perfectly intolerable. I suppose it was that sentimental letter you wrote him."
"You didn"t think it sentimental at the time, my dear. You approved of it."
"I didn"t approve of it, Basil; but if you felt so strongly that you ought to do it, I felt that I ought to let you. I have never interfered with your sense of duty, and I never will. But I am glad that you didn"t feel it your duty to that wretch to go and make more trouble on his account. He has made quite enough already; and it wasn"t his fault that you were not tried and convicted in his place."
"There wasn"t the slightest danger of that--"
"He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on your wife and children."
"Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don"t think--I never thought--that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest on me. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began, so as to gain time to get out to Canada."
My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affection dangerously near contempt. "You are a very forgiving man, Basil," she said, and I looked down sheepishly. "Well, at any rate, you have had the sense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that he came straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you to believe that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else."
"Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, and after he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you must know, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a good horse, with a pocketful of some one else"s money, in a handsome suit of clothes, and a game-and-fish dinner at Tafft"s in immediate prospect, and you couldn"t see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and the Tedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shaved and wears his hair cut rather close."
"Basil!"
"Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changed inwardly?"
"He must have suffered."
"But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain material accessories of Tedham"s have changed. But why should that change Tedham?
Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some hints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if I hadn"t hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and he wants to see her, poor wretch."
"I suppose he does!" sighed my wife.
"He would hardly take no for an answer from me, when I said I wouldn"t go to the Haskeths for him; and when I fairly shook him off, he wanted me to ask you to go."
"And what did you say?" she asked, not at all with the resentment I had counted upon equally with the possible pathos; you never can tell in the least how any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the reason why men do not trust women more.
"I told him that it would not be the smallest use to ask you; that you had forgiven that old affair as well as I had, but that women were different, and that I knew you wouldn"t even see him."
"Well, Basil, I don"t know what right you had to put me in that odious light," said my wife.
"Why, good heavens! _Would_ you have seen him?"
"I don"t know whether I would or not. That"s neither here nor there. I don"t think it was very nice of you to shift the whole responsibility on me."
"How did I do that? It seems to me that I kept the whole responsibility myself."
"Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, then?"
"We walked along a little farther, and then--"