"Patience? Folly! Stupidity! They ought to be together every instant! Do they suppose that life is full of such chances? Do they think that fate has nothing to do but--"
She stopped for a fit climax, and he suggested, "Hang round and wait on them?"
"Yes! It"s their one chance in a life-time, probably."
"Then you"ve quite decided that they"re in love?" He sank comfortably back, and put up his weary legs on the chair"s extension with the conviction that love had no such joy as that to offer.
"I"ve decided that they"re intensely interested in each other."
"Then what more can we ask of them? And why do you care what they do or don"t do with their chance? Why do you wish their love well, if it"s that? Is marriage such a very certain good?"
"It isn"t all that it might be, but it"s all that there is. What would our lives have been without it?" she retorted.
"Oh, we should have got on. It"s such a tremendous risk that we, ought to go round begging people to think twice, to count a hundred, or a nonillion, before they fall in love to the marrying-point. I don"t mind their flirting; that amuses them; but marrying is a different thing. I doubt if Papa Triscoe would take kindly to the notion of a son-in-law he hadn"t selected himself, and his daughter doesn"t strike me as a young lady who has any wisdom to throw away on a choice. She has her little charm; her little gift of beauty, of grace, of spirit, and the other things that go with her age and s.e.x; but what could she do for a fellow like Burnamy, who has his way to make, who has the ladder of fame to climb, with an old mother at the bottom of it to look after? You wouldn"t want him to have an eye on Miss Triscoe"s money, even if she had money, and I doubt if she has much. It"s all very pretty to have a girl like her fascinated with a youth of his simple traditions; though Burnamy isn"t altogether pastoral in his ideals, and he looks forward to a place in the very world she belongs to. I don"t think it"s for us to promote the affair."
"Well, perhaps you"re right," she sighed. "I will let them alone from this out. Thank goodness, I shall not have them under my eyes very long."
"Oh, I don"t think there"s any harm done yet," said her husband, with a laugh.
At dinner there seemed so little harm of the kind he meant that she suffered from an illogical disappointment. The young people got through the meal with no talk that seemed inductive; Burnamy left the table first, and Miss Triscoe bore his going without apparent discouragement; she kept on chatting with March till his wife took him away to their chairs on deck.
There were a few more ships in sight than there were in mid-ocean; but the late twilight thickened over the North Sea quite like the night after they left New York, except that it was colder; and their hearts turned to their children, who had been in abeyance for the week past, with a remorseful pang. "Well," she said, "I wish we were going to be in New York to-morrow, instead of Hamburg."
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" he protested. "Not so bad as that, my dear. This is the last night, and it"s hard to manage, as the last night always is. I suppose the last night on earth--"
"Basil!" she implored.
"Well, I won"t, then. But what I want is to see a Dutch lugger. I"ve never seen a Dutch lugger, and--"
She suddenly pressed his arm, and in obedience to the signal he was silent; though it seemed afterwards that he ought to have gone on talking as if he did not see Burnamy and Miss Triscoe swinging slowly by. They were walking close together, and she was leaning forward and looking up into his face while he talked.
"Now," Mrs. March whispered, long after they were out of hearing, "let us go instantly. I wouldn"t for worlds have them see us here when they get found again. They would feel that they had to stop and speak, and that would spoil everything. Come!"
XVII.
Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss Triscoe"s prompting. He had not to wait long.
"And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?"
"Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public."
"How could you tell that they were-taking?"
"They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them."
"And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?"
"I don"t believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn"t think much of them; but he knows I can write shorthand, and put things into shape."
"What things?"
"Oh--ideas. He has a notion of trying to come forward in politics.
He owns shares in everything but the United States Senate--gas, electricity, railroads, aldermen, newspapers--and now he would like some Senate. That"s what I think."
She did not quite understand, and she was far from knowing that this cynic humor expressed a deadlier pessimism than her father"s fiercest accusals of the country. "How fascinating it is!" she said, innocently.
"And I suppose they all envy your coming out?"
"In the office?"
"Yes. I should envy, them--staying."
Burnamy laughed. "I don"t believe they envy me. It won"t be all roses for me--they know that. But they know that I can take care of myself if it isn"t." He remembered something one of his friends in the office had said of the painful surprise the Bird of Prey would feel if he ever tried his beak on him in the belief that he was soft.
She abruptly left the mere personal question. "And which would you rather write: poems or those kind of sketches?"
"I don"t know," said Burnamy, willing to talk of himself on any terms.
"I suppose that prose is the thing for our time, rather more; but there are things you can"t say in prose. I used to write a great deal of verse in college; but I didn"t have much luck with editors till Mr. March took this little piece for "Every Other Week"."
"Little? I thought it was a long poem!"
Burnamy laughed at the notion. "It"s only eight lines."
"Oh!" said the girl. "What is it about?"
He yielded to the temptation with a weakness which he found incredible in a person of his make. "I can repeat it if you won"t give me away to Mrs. March."
"Oh, no indeed! He said the lines over to her very simply and well. They are beautiful--beautiful!"
"Do you think so?" he gasped, in his joy at her praise.
"Yes, lovely. Do you know, you are the first literary man--the only literary man--I ever talked with. They must go out--somewhere! Papa must meet them at his clubs. But I never do; and so I"m making the most of you."
"You can"t make too much of me, Miss Triscoe," said Burnamy.
She would not mind his mocking. "That day you spoke about "The Maiden Knight", don"t you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that way. I didn"t know you were an author then."
"Well, I"m not much of an author now," he said, cynically, to retrieve his folly in repeating his poem to her.
"Oh, that will do for you to say. But I know what Mrs. March thinks."
He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; "Every Other Week" was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs.
March"s interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know just how much she thought of him as a writer? "Did she like the poem."
Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about the poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs.
March"s liking for Burnamy. "But it wouldn"t do to tell you all she said!" This was not what he hoped, but he was richly content when she returned to his personal history. "And you didn"t know any one when, you went up to Chicago from--"