"It"s our duty to worry," he insisted.
At the hotel the portier gave them four letters. There was one from each of their children: one very buoyant, not to say boisterous, from the daughter, celebrating her happiness in her husband, and the loveliness of Chicago as a summer city ("You would think she was born out there!"
sighed her mother); and one from the son, boasting his well-being in spite of the heat they were having ("And just think how cool it is here!"
his mother upbraided herself), and the prosperity of "Every Other Week".
There was a line from Fulkerson, praising the boy"s editorial instinct, and ironically proposing March"s resignation in his favor.
"I do believe we could stay all winter, just as well as not," said Mrs.
March, proudly. "What does "Burnamy say?"
"How do you know it"s from him?"
"Because you"ve been keeping your hand on it! Give it here."
"When I"ve read it."
The letter was dated at Ansbach, in Germany, and dealt, except for some messages of affection to Mrs. March, with a scheme for a paper which Burnamy wished to write on Kaspar Hauser, if March thought he could use it in "Every Other Week". He had come upon a book about that hapless foundling in Nuremberg, and after looking up all his traces there he had gone on to Ansbach, where Kaspar Hauser met his death so pathetically.
Burnamy said he could not give any notion of the enchantment of Nuremberg; but he besought March, if he was going to the Tyrol for his after-cure, not to fail staying a day or so in the wonderful place. He thought March would enjoy Ansbach too, in its way.
"And, not a word--not a syllable--about Miss Triscoe!" cried Mrs. March.
"Shall you take his paper?"
"It would be serving him right, if I refused it, wouldn"t it?"
They never knew what it cost Burnamy to keep her name out of his letter, or by what an effort of the will he forbade himself even to tell of his parting interview with Stoller. He had recovered from his remorse for letting Stoller give himself away; he was still sorry for that, but he no longer suffered; yet he had not reached the psychological moment when he could celebrate his final virtue in the matter. He was glad he had been able to hold out against the temptation to retrieve himself by another wrong; but he was humbly glad, and he felt that until happier chance brought him and his friends together he must leave them to their merciful conjectures. He was young, and he took the chance, with an aching heart.
If he had been older, he might not have taken it.
XLI.
The birthday of the Emperor comes conveniently, in late August, in the good weather which is pretty sure to fall then, if ever in the Austrian summer. For a week past, at Carlsbad, the workmen had been building a scaffolding for the illumination in the woods on a height overlooking the town, and making un.o.btrusive preparations at points within it.
The day was important as the last of March"s cure, and its pleasures began for him by a renewal of his acquaintance in its first kindliness with the Eltwins. He had met them so seldom that at one time he thought they must have gone away, but now after his first cup he saw the quiet, sad old pair, sitting together on a bench in the Stadt Park, and he asked leave to sit down with them till it was time for the next. Eltwin said that this was their last day, too; and explained that his wife always came with him to the springs, while he took the waters.
"Well," he apologized, "we"re all that"s left, and I suppose we like to keep together." He paused, and at the look in March"s face he suddenly went on. "I haven"t been well for three or four years; but I always fought against coming out here, when the doctors wanted me to. I said I couldn"t leave home; and, I don"t suppose I ever should. But my home left me."
As he spoke his wife shrank tenderly near him, and March saw her steal her withered hand into his.
"We"d had a large family, but they"d all died off, with one thing or another, and here in the spring we lost our last daughter. Seemed perfectly well, and all at once she died; heart-failure, they called it.
It broke me up, and mother, here, got at me to go. And so we"re here."
His voice trembled; and his eyes softened; then they flashed up, and March heard him add, in a tone that astonished him less when he looked round and saw General Triscoe advancing toward them, "I don"t know what it is always makes me want to kick that man."
The general lifted his hat to their group, and hoped that Mrs. Eltwin was well, and Major Eltwin better. He did not notice their replies, but said to March, "The ladies are waiting for you in Pupp"s readingroom, to go with them to the Posthof for breakfast."
"Aren"t you going, too?" asked March.
"No, thank you," said the general, as if it were much finer not; "I shall breakfast at our pension." He strolled off with the air of a man who has done more than his duty.
"I don"t suppose I ought to feel that way," said Eltwin, with a remorse which March suspected a reproachful pressure of his wife"s hand had prompted in him. "I reckon he means well."
"Well, I don"t know," March said, with a candor he could not wholly excuse.
On his way to the hotel he fancied mocking his wife for her interest in the romantic woes of her lovers, in a world where there was such real pathos as these poor old people"s; but in the company of Miss Triscoe he could not give himself this pleasure. He tried to amuse her on the way from Pupp"s, with the doubt he always felt in pa.s.sing the Cafe Sans-Souci, whether he should live to reach the Posthof where he meant to breakfast. She said, "Poor Mr. March!" and laughed inattentively; when he went on to philosophize the commonness of the spa.r.s.e company always observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean situation between Pupp"s and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and his wife frowned at him.
The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; a poor remnant of the midsummer mult.i.tudes trailed itself along to the various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like sere foliage as it moved.
At the Posthof the "schone" Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of July. She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in a sunny spot in the gallery. "You are tired of Carlsbad?" she said caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her.
"Not of the Posthof," said the girl, listlessly.
"Posthof, and very little Lili?" She showed, with one forefinger on another, how very little she was.
Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have scolded her, and I have made her give it to me."
She took from under her ap.r.o.n a man"s handkerchief, which she offered to Mrs. March. It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L. J. B.
But, "Whose can it be?" they asked each other.
"Why, Burnamy"s," said March; and Lili"s eyes danced. "Give it here!"
His wife caught it farther away. "No, I"m going to see whose it is, first; if it"s his, I"ll send it to him myself."
She tried to put it into the pocket which was not in her dress by sliding it down her lap; then she handed it to the girl, who took it with a careless air, but kept it after a like failure to pocket it.
Mrs. March had come out in her India-rubber sandals, but for once in Carlsbad the weather was too dry for them, and she had taken them off and was holding them in her lap. They fell to the ground when she now rose from breakfast, and she stooped to pick them up. Miss Triscoe was too quick for her.
"Oh, let me carry them for you!" she entreated, and after a tender struggle she succeed in enslaving herself to them, and went away wearing them through the heel-bands like manacles on her wrist. She was not the kind of girl to offer such pretty devotions, and Mrs. March was not the kind of woman to suffer them; but they played the comedy through, and let March go off for his last hill-climb with the promise to meet him in the Stadt Park when he came to the Kurhaus for his last mineral bath.
Mrs. March in the mean time went about some final shopping, and invited the girl"s advice with a fondness which did not prevent her rejecting it in every case, with Miss Triscoe"s eager approval. In the Stadt Park they sat down and talked; from time to time Mrs. March made polite feints of recovering her sandals, but the girl kept them with increased effusion.
When they rose, and strolled away from the bench where they had been sitting, they seemed to be followed. They looked round and saw no one more alarming than a very severe-looking old gentleman, whose hat brim in spite of his severity was limp with much lifting, as all Austrian hat brims are. He touched it, and saying haughtily in German, "Something left lying," pa.s.sed on.
They stared at each other; then, as women do, they glanced down at their skirts to see if there was anything amiss with them, and Miss Triscoe perceived her hands empty of Mrs. March"s sandals and of Burnamy"s handkerchief.
"Oh, I put it in one of the toes!" she lamented, and she fled back to their bench, alarming in her course the fears of a gendarme for the public security, and putting a baby in its nurse"s arms into such doubts of its personal safety that it burst into a desolate cry. She laughed breathlessly as she rejoined Mrs. March. "That comes of having no pocket; I didn"t suppose I could forget your sandals, Mrs. March! Wasn"t it absurd?"
"It"s one of those things," Mrs. March said to her husband afterwards, "that they can always laugh over together."
"They? And what about Burnamy"s behavior to Stoller?"
"Oh, I don"t call that anything but what will come right. Of course he can make it up to him somehow. And I regard his refusal to do wrong when Stoller wanted him to as quite wiping out the first offence."
"Well, my dear, you have burnt your ships behind you. My only hope is that when we leave here tomorrow, her pessimistic papa"s poison will neutralize yours somehow."
XLII.