They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, they sat down, and she said, "I don"t know that I"ve seen the moon so clear since we left Carlsbad." At the last word his heart gave a jump that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so that she could resume without interruption, "I"ve got something of yours, that you left at the Posthof. The girl that broke the dishes found it, and Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you." This did not account for Agatha"s having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a handkerchief from her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he seemed to find that her having it had necessarily followed. He tried to take it from her, but his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers, and he gasped, "Can"t you say now, what you wouldn"t say then?"
The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she apparently felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his. She whispered back, "Yes,"
and then she could not get out anything more till she entreated in a half-stifled voice, "Oh, don"t!"
"No, no!" he panted. "I won"t--I oughtn"t to have done it--I beg your pardon--I oughtn"t to have spoken,--even--I--"
She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still between laughing and crying, "I meant to make you. And now, if you"re ever sorry, or I"m ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly free to say that you"d never have spoken if you hadn"t seen that I wanted you to."
"But I didn"t see any such thing," he protested. "I spoke because I couldn"t help it any longer."
She laughed triumphantly. "Of course you think so! And that shows that you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you were too proud, or thought you hadn"t the right, or something. Weren"t you?" She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: "If you pretend, that you weren"t I shall never forgive you!"
"But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--"
"Isn"t that what I said?" She triumphed over him with another laugh, and cowered a little closer to him, if that could be.
They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among the garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched every point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of inexhaustible knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear delight of this encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with a present distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her refusal to be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant never to see her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to her. Another point was that she had not resented his coming back that last night, but had been proud and happy in it as proof of his love, and had always meant somehow to let him know that she was torched by his trusting her enough to come back while he was still under that cloud with Mr. Stoller. With further logic, purely of the heart, she acquitted him altogether of wrong in that affair, and alleged in proof, what Mr. Stoller had said of it to Mr. March. Burnamy owned that he knew what Stoller had said, but even in his present condition he could not accept fully her reading of that obscure pa.s.sage of his life. He preferred to put the question by, and perhaps neither of them cared anything about it except as it related to the fact that they were now each other"s forever.
They agreed that they must write to Mr. and Mrs. March at once; or at least, Agatha said, as soon as she had spoken to her father. At her mention of her father she was aware of a doubt, a fear, in Burnamy which expressed itself by scarcely more than a spiritual consciousness from his arm to the hands which she had clasped within it. "He has always appreciated you," she said courageously, "and I know he will see it in the right light."
She probably meant no more than to affirm her faith in her own ability finally to bring her father to a just mind concerning it; but Burnamy accepted her a.s.surance with buoyant hopefulness, and said he would see General Triscoe the first thing in the morning.
"No, I will see him," she said, "I wish to see him first; he will expect it of me. We had better go in, now," she added, but neither made any motion for the present to do so. On the contrary, they walked in the other direction, and it was an hour after Agatha declared their duty in the matter before they tried to fulfil it.
Then, indeed, after they returned to the hotel, she lost no time in going to her father beyond that which must be given to a long hand-pressure under the fresco of the five poets on the stairs landing, where her ways and Burnamy"s parted. She went into her own room, and softly opened the door into her father"s and listened.
"Well?" he said in a sort of challenging voice.
"Have you been asleep?" she asked.
"I"ve just blown out my light. What has kept you?"
She did not reply categorically. Standing there in the sheltering dark, she said, "Papa, I wasn"t very candid with you, this afternoon. I am engaged to Mr. Burnamy."
"Light the candle," said her father. "Or no," he added before she could do so. "Is it quite settled?"
"Quite," she answered in a voice that admitted of no doubt. "That is, as far as it can be, without you."
"Don"t be a hypocrite, Agatha," said the general. "And let me try to get to sleep. You know I don"t like it, and you know I can"t help it."
"Yes," the girl a.s.sented.
"Then go to bed," said the general concisely.
Agatha did not obey her father. She thought she ought to kiss him, but she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him a tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself into her own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the moonlight, with a smile that never left her lips.
When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much greater than some moths, moving before her window. She pulled the valves open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from above. She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great central truth of the universe:
"I love you. L. J. B."
She wrote under the tremendous inspiration:
"So do I. Don"t be silly. A. T."
She fastened the paper to the thread again, and gave it a little twitch.
She waited for the low note of laughter which did not fail to flutter down from above; then she threw herself upon the bed, and fell asleep.
It was not so late as she thought when she woke, and it seemed, at breakfast, that Burnamy had been up still earlier. Of the three involved in the anxiety of the night before General Triscoe was still respited from it by sleep, but he woke much more haggard than either of the young people. They, in fact, were not at all haggard; the worst was over, if bringing their engagement to his knowledge was the worst; the formality of asking his consent which Burnamy still had to go through was unpleasant, but after all it was a formality. Agatha told him everything that had pa.s.sed between herself and her father, and if it had not that cordiality on his part which they could have wished it was certainly not hopelessly discouraging.
They agreed at breakfast that Burnamy had better have it over as quickly as possible, and he waited only till August came down with the general"s tray before going up to his room. The young fellow did not feel more at his ease than the elder meant he should in taking the chair to which the general waved him from where he lay in bed; and there was no talk wasted upon the weather between them.
"I suppose I know what you have come for, Mr. Burnamy," said General Triscoe in a tone which was rather judicial than otherwise, "and I suppose you know why you have come." The words certainly opened the way for Burnamy, but he hesitated so long to take it that the general had abundant time to add, "I don"t pretend that this event is unexpected, but I should like to know what reason you have for thinking I should wish you to marry my daughter. I take it for granted that you are attached to each other, and we won"t waste time on that point. Not to beat about the bush, on the next point, let me ask at once what your means of supporting her are. How much did you earn on that newspaper in Chicago?"
"Fifteen hundred dollars," Burnamy answered, promptly enough.
"Did you earn anything more, say within the last year?"
"I got three hundred dollars advance copyright for a book I sold to a publisher." The glory had not yet faded from the fact in Burnamy"s mind.
"Eighteen hundred. What did you get for your poem in March"s book?"
"That"s a very trifling matter: fifteen dollars."
"And your salary as private secretary to that man Stoller?"
"Thirty dollars a week, and my expenses. But I wouldn"t take that, General Triscoe," said Burnamy.
General Triscoe, from his "lit de justice", pa.s.sed this point in silence.
"Have you any one dependent on you?"
"My mother; I take care of my mother," answered Burnamy, proudly.
"Since you have broken with Stoller, what are your prospects?"
"I have none."
"Then you don"t expect to support my daughter; you expect to live upon her means."
"I expect to do nothing of the kind!" cried Burnamy. "I should be ashamed--I should feel disgraced--I should--I don"t ask you--I don"t ask her till I have the means to support her--"
"If you were very fortunate," continued the general, unmoved by the young fellow"s pain, and unperturbed by the fact that he had himself lived upon his wife"s means as long as she lived, and then upon his daughter"s, "if you went back to Stoller--"
"I wouldn"t go back to him. I don"t say he"s knowingly a rascal, but he"s ignorantly a rascal, and he proposed a rascally thing to me. I behaved badly to him, and I"d give anything to undo the wrong I let him do himself; but I"ll never go back to him."
"If you went back, on your old salary," the general persisted pitilessly, "you would be very fortunate if you brought your earnings up to twenty-five hundred a year."
"Yes--"
"And how far do you think that would go in supporting my daughter on the scale she is used to? I don"t speak of your mother, who has the first claim upon you."