"Well, from his wanting you to give his message to the general in the plural--"
"Don"t laugh! It"s wicked to laugh! It"s heartless!" she cried, hysterically. "What will he do, poor fellow?"
"I"ve an idea that he will light on his feet, somehow. But, at any rate, he"s doing the right thing in going to own up to Stoller."
"Oh, Stoller! I care nothing for Stoller! Don"t speak to me of Stoller!"
Burnamy fond the Bird of Prey, as he no longer had the heart to call him, walking up and down in his room like an eagle caught in a trap. He erected his crest fiercely enough, though, when the young fellow came in at his loudly shouted, "Herein!"
"What do you want?" he demanded, brutally.
This simplified Burnamy"s task, while it made it more loathsome. He answered not much less brutally, "I want to tell you that I think I used you badly, that I let you betray yourself, that I feel myself to blame."
He could have added, "Curse you!" without change of tone.
Stoller sneered in a derision that showed his lower teeth like a dog"s when he snarls. "You want to get back!"
"No," said Burnamy, mildly, and with increasing sadness as he spoke. "I don"t want to get back. Nothing would induce me. I"m going away on the first train."
"Well, you"re not!" shouted Stoller. "You"ve lied me into this--"
"Look out!" Burnamy turned white.
"Didn"t you lie me into it, if you let me fool myself, as you say?"
Stoller pursued, and Burnamy felt himself weaken through his wrath.
"Well, then, you got to lie me out of it. I been going over the d.a.m.n thing, all night--and you can do it for me. I know you can do it," he gave way in a plea that was almost a whimper. "Look here! You see if you can"t. I"ll make it all right with you. I"ll pay you whatever you think is right--whatever you say."
"Oh!" said Burnamy, in otherwise unutterable disgust.
"You kin," Stoller went on, breaking down more and more into his adopted Hoosier, in the stress of his anxiety. "I know you kin, Mr. Burnamy." He pushed the paper containing his letter into Burnamy"s hands, and pointed out a succession of marked pa.s.sages. "There! And here! And this place!
Don"t you see how you could make out that it meant something else, or was just ironical?" He went on to prove how the text might be given the complexion he wished, and Burnamy saw that he had really thought it not impossibly out. "I can"t put it in writing as well as you; but I"ve done all the work, and all you"ve got to do is to give it some of them turns of yours. I"ll cable the fellows in our office to say I"ve been misrepresented, and that my correction is coming. We"ll get it into shape here together, and then I"ll cable that. I don"t care for the money. And I"ll get our counting-room to see this scoundrel"--he picked up the paper that had had fun with him--"and fix him all right, so that he"ll ask for a suspension of public opinion, and--You see, don"t you?"
The thing did appeal to Burnamy. If it could be done, it would enable him to make Stoller the reparation he longed to make him more than anything else in the world. But he heard himself saying, very gently, almost tenderly, "It might be done, Mr. Stoller. But I couldn"t do it. It wouldn"t be honest--for me."
"Yah!" yelled Stoller, and he crushed the paper into a wad and flung it into Burnamy"s face. "Honest, you d.a.m.n humbug! You let me in for this, when you knew I didn"t mean it, and now you won"t help me out because it a"n"t honest! Get out of my room, and get out quick before I--"
He hurled himself toward Burnamy, who straightened himself, with "If you dare!" He knew that he was right in refusing; but he knew that Stoller was right, too, and that he had not meant the logic of what he had said in his letter, and of what Burnamy had let him imply. He braved Stoller"s onset, and he left his presence untouched, but feeling as little a moral hero as he well could.
x.x.xVIII.
General Triscoe woke in the bad humor of an elderly man after a day"s pleasure, and in the self-reproach of a pessimist who has lost his point of view for a time, and has to work back to it. He began at the belated breakfast with his daughter when she said, after kissing him gayly, in the small two-seated bower where they breakfasted at their hotel when they did not go to the Posthof, "Didn"t you have a nice time, yesterday, papa?"
She sank into the chair opposite, and beamed at him across the little iron table, as she lifted the pot to pour out his coffee.
"What do you call a nice time?" he temporized, not quite able to resist her gayety.
"Well, the kind of time I had."
"Did you get rheumatism from sitting on the gra.s.s? I took cold in that old church, and the tea at that restaurant must have been brewed in a bra.s.s kettle. I suffered all night from it. And that a.s.s from Illinois--"
"Oh, poor papa! I couldn"t go with Mr. Stoller alone, but I might have gone in the two-spanner with him and let you have Mr. or Mrs. March in the one-spanner."
"I don"t know. Their interest in each other isn"t so interesting to other people as they seem to think."
"Do you feel that way really, papa? Don"t you like their being so much in love still?"
"At their time of life? Thank you it"s bad enough in young people."
The girl did not answer; she appeared altogether occupied in pouring out her father"s coffee.
He tasted it, and then he drank pretty well all of it; but he said, as he put his cup down, "I don"t know what they make this stuff of. I wish I had a cup of good, honest American coffee."
"Oh, there"s nothing like American food!" said his daughter, with so much conciliation that he looked up sharply.
But whatever he might have been going to say was at least postponed by the approach of a serving-maid, who brought a note to his daughter. She blushed a little at sight of it, and then tore it open and read:
"I am going away from Carlsbad, for a fault of my own which forbids me to look you in the face. If you wish to know the worst of me, ask Mrs.
March. I have no heart to tell you."
Agatha read these mystifying words of Burnamy"s several times over in a silent absorption with them which left her father to look after himself, and he had poured out a second cup of coffee with his own hand, and was reaching for the bread beside her before she came slowly back to a sense of his presence.
"Oh, excuse me, papa," she said, and she gave him the b.u.t.ter. "Here"s a very strange letter from Mr. Burnamy, which I think you"d better see."
She held the note across the table to him, and watched his face as he read it.
After he had read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on the back. Then he looked up and asked: "What do you suppose he"s been doing?"
"I don"t believe he"s been doing anything. It"s something that Mr.
Stoller"s been doing to him."
"I shouldn"t infer that from his own words. What makes you think the trouble is with Stoller?"
"He said--he said yesterday--something about being glad to be through with him, because he disliked him so much he was always afraid of wronging him. And that proves that now Mr. Stoller has made him believe that he"s done wrong, and has worked upon him till he does believe it."
"It proves nothing of the kind," said the general, recurring to the note.
After reading it again, he looked keenly at her: "Am I to understand that you have given him the right to suppose you would want to know the worst--or the best of him?"
The girl"s eyes fell, and she pushed her knife against her plate. She began: "No--"
"Then confound his impudence!" the general broke out. "What business has he to write to you at all about this?"
"Because he couldn"t go away without it!" she returned; and she met her father"s eye courageously. "He had a right to think we were his friends; and if he has done wrong, or is in disgrace any way, isn"t it manly of him to wish to tell us first himself?"
Her father could not say that it was not. But he could and did say, very sceptically: "Stuff! Now, see here, Agatha: what are you going to do?"
"I"m going to see Mrs. March, and then--"