"Mr. Stoller?" Burnamy faintly echoed.
"Yes; he was there to give his daughters a holiday during the manoeuvres; and they made the most of it. He wanted us to go to the parade with his family but we declined. The twins were pretty nearly the death of General Triscoe."
Again Burnamy echoed him. "General Triscoe?"
"Ah, yes: I didn"t tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had come on with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party; and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and his girls."
Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He did not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess having told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed on recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in morals, that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. "I have a message for you from Mr. Stoller."
"For me?" Burnamy gasped.
"I"ve been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn"t expected to see you. But it"s simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want me to know--that he doesn"t hold you accountable in the way he did. He"s thought it all over, and he"s decided that he had no right to expect you to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of knowledge. As he said, he doesn"t choose to plead the baby act. He says that you"re all right, and your place on the paper is open to you."
Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for instant response. "I think he"s wrong," he said, so harshly that the people at the next table looked round. "His feeling as he does has nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn"t let me out."
March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, "I think you"re quite right, as to that. But there"s such a thing as forgiveness, you know. It doesn"t change the nature of what you"ve done; but as far as the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it."
"Yes, I understand that. But I can"t accept his forgiveness if I hate him."
"But perhaps you won"t always hate him. Some day you may have a chance to do him a good turn. It"s rather ba.n.a.le; but there doesn"t seem any other way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to get that poem?"
When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had put it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some coffee, and he asked March to join him in the dining-room where they had stood talking.
"No, thank you," said the elder, "I don"t propose sitting up all night, and you"ll excuse me if I go to bed now. It"s a little informal to leave a guest--"
"You"re not leaving a guest! I"m at home here. I"m staying in this hotel too."
March said, "Oh!" and then he added abruptly, "Good-night," and went up stairs under the fresco of the five poets.
"Whom were you talking with below?" asked Mrs. March through the door opening into his room from hers.
"Burnamy," he answered from within. "He"s staying in this house. He let me know just as I was going to turn him out for the night. It"s one of those little uncandors of his that throw suspicion on his honesty in great things."
"Oh! Then you"ve been telling him," she said, with a mental bound high above and far beyond the point.
"Everything."
"About Stoller, too?"
"About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and General Triscoe--and Agatha."
"Very well. That"s what I call shabby. Don"t ever talk to me again about the inconsistencies of women. But now there"s something perfectly fearful."
"What is it?"
"A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn"t well, and they"re coming. And I"ve telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you say?"
LXII.
They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not resign herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider it providential. This touched the lingering superst.i.tion in which she had been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government of the universe. As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered that they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that they could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an inferior degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see him in the evening and tell him everything, so that she should know just how to act when she saw him in the morning. If he could plausibly account for the renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he seemed generally worthy apart from that, she could forgive him.
It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence. While they talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with Miss Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for Berlin, as they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama where one has everything one"s own way, to prove that she could not without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to prevent Miss Triscoe"s coming with her father to the same hotel where Burnamy was staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had not known he was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come, and that in the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was not obliged to suppose that his presence would be embarra.s.sing.
March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and as soon as he got himself away she came to business, breaking altogether from the inner drama with Miss Triscoe and devoting herself to Burnamy.
They had already got so far as to have mentioned the meeting with the Triscoes in Wurzburg, and she said: "Did Mr. March tell you they were coming here? Or, no! We hadn"t heard then. Yes, they are coming to-morrow. They may be going to stay some time. She talked of Weimar when we first spoke of Germany on the ship." Burnamy said nothing, and she suddenly added, with a sharp glance, "They wanted us to get them rooms, and we advised their coming to this house." He started very satisfactorily, and "Do you think they would be comfortable, here?" she pursued.
"Oh, yes, very. They can have my room; it"s southeast; I shall be going into other quarters." She did not say anything; and "Mrs. March," he began again, "what is the use of my beating about the bush? You must know what I went back to Carlsbad for, that night--"
"No one ever told--"
"Well, you must have made a pretty good guess. But it was a failure. I ought to have failed, and I did. She said that unless her father liked it--And apparently he hasn"t liked it." Burnamy smiled ruefully.
"How do you know? She didn"t know where you were!"
"She could have got word to me if she had had good news for me. They"ve forwarded other letters from Pupp"s. But it"s all right; I had no business to go back to Carlsbad. Of course you didn"t know I was in this house when you told them to come; and I must clear out. I had better clear out of Weimar, too."
"No, I don"t think so; I have no right to pry into your affairs, but--"
"Oh, they"re wide enough open!"
"And you may have changed your mind. I thought you might, when I saw you yesterday at Belvedere--"
"I was only trying to make bad worse."
"Then I think the situation has changed entirely through what Mr. Stoller said to Mr. March."
"I can"t see how it has. I committed an act of shabby treachery, and I"m as much to blame as if he still wanted to punish me for it."
"Did Mr. March say that to you?"
"No; I said that to Mr. March; and he couldn"t answer it, and you can"t.
You"re very good, and very kind, but you can"t answer it."
"I can answer it very well," she boasted, but she could find nothing better to say than, "It"s your duty to her to see her and let her know."
"Doesn"t she know already?"
"She has a right to know it from you. I think you are morbid, Mr.
Burnamy. You know very well I didn"t like your doing that to Mr. Stoller.
I didn"t say so at the time, because you seemed to feel it enough yourself. But I did like your owning up to it," and here Mrs. March thought it time to trot out her borrowed battle-horse again. "My husband always says that if a person owns up to an error, fully and faithfully, as you"ve always done, they make it the same in its consequences to them as if it had never been done."
"Does Mr. March say that?" asked Burnamy with a relenting smile.
"Indeed he does!"
Burnamy hesitated; then he asked, gloomily again: