"Stoller? No! To her father"s liking it."
"Ah, that"s quite as hard. What makes you think she accepted him at all?"
"What do you think she was crying about?"
"Well, I have supposed that ladies occasionally shed tears of pity. If she accepted him conditionally she would have to tell her father about it." Mrs. March gave him a glance of silent contempt, and he hastened to atone for his stupidity. "Perhaps she"s told him on the instalment plan.
She may have begun by confessing that Burnamy had been in Carlsbad. Poor old fellow, I wish we were going to find him in Ansbach! He could make things very smooth for us."
"Well, you needn"t flatter yourself that you"ll find him in Ansbach. I"m sure I don"t know where he is."
"You might write to Miss Triscoe and ask."
"I think I shall wait for Miss Triscoe to write to me," she said, with dignity.
"Yes, she certainly owes you that much, after all your suffering for her.
I"ve asked the banker in Nuremberg to forward our letters to the poste restante in Ansbach. Isn"t it good to see the crows again, after those ravens around Carlsbad?"
She joined him in looking at the mild autumnal landscape through the open window. The afternoon was fair and warm, and in the level fields bodies of soldiers were at work with picks and spades, getting the ground ready for the military manoeuvres; they disturbed among the stubble foraging parties of crows, which rose from time to time with cries of indignant protest. She said, with a smile for the crows, "Yes. And I"m thankful that I"ve got nothing on my conscience, whatever happens," she added in dismissal of the subject of Burnamy.
"I"m thankful too, my dear. I"d much rather have things on my own. I"m more used to that, and I believe I feel less remorse than when you"re to blame."
They might have been carried near this point by those telepathic influences which have as yet been so imperfectly studied. It was only that morning, after the lapse of a week since Burnamy"s furtive reappearance in Carlsbad, that Miss Triscoe spoke to her father about it, and she had at that moment a longing for support and counsel that might well have made its mystical appeal to Mrs. March.
She spoke at last because she could put it off no longer, rather than because the right time had come. She began as they sat at breakfast.
"Papa, there is something that I have got to tell you. It is something that you ought to know; but I have put off telling you because--"
She hesitated for the reason, and "Well!" said her father, looking up at her from his second cup of coffee. "What is it?"
Then she answered, "Mr. Burnamy has been here."
"In Carlsbad? When was he here?"
"The night of the Emperor"s birthday. He came into the box when you were behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd."
"Well?"
"I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you."
"Did she say you ought to wait a week?" He gave way to an irascibility which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, "Why did he come back?"
"He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris." The girl had the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked steadily at her father, and added: "He said he came back because he couldn"t help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that."
Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him since?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"I don"t know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must tell you about it."
The case was less simple than it would once have been for General Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for her happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his own interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put his paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to extremes concerning him.
"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion." The general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not wish me to "whitewash" him to you. He didn"t think he had done right; he didn"t excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the stand-point of a gentleman."
The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?"
"I don"t believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--"
"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted.
"--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy does."
"I doubt it. At any rate, I understood March quite differently."
"She says that he thinks he behaved very n.o.bly afterwards when Mr.
Stoller wanted him to help him put a false complexion on it; that it was all the more difficult for him to do right then, because of his remorse for what he had done before." As she spoke on she had become more eager.
"There"s something in that," the general admitted, with a candor that he made the most of both to himself and to her. "But I should like to know what Stoller had to say of it all. Is there anything," he inquired, "any reason why I need be more explicit about it, just now?"
"N--no. Only, I thought--He thinks so much of your opinion that--if--"
"Oh, he can very well afford to wait. If he values my opinion so highly he can give me time to make up my mind."
"Of course--"
"And I"m not responsible," the general continued, significantly, "for the delay altogether. If you had told me this before--Now, I don"t know whether Stoller is still in town."
He was not behaving openly with her; but she had not behaved openly with him. She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered him. If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could delay and make sure. The accepted theory of such matters is that people know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them.
But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often act contrary to their convictions and impulses. If the statistics were accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were dissipated by the play of meteorological chances.
When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would step round to Pupp"s and see if Stoller were still there. But on the way he stepped up to Mrs. Adding"s hotel on the hill, and he came back, after an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report rather casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before. By this time the fact seemed not to concern Agatha herself very vitally.
He asked if the Marches had left any address with her, and she answered that they had not. They were going to spend a few days in Nuremberg, and then push on to Holland for Mr. March"s after-cure. There was no relevance in his question unless it intimated his belief that she was in confidential correspondence with Mrs. March, and she met this by saying that she was going to write her in care of their bankers; she asked whether he wished to send any word.
"No. I understand," he intimated, "that there is nothing at all in the nature of a--a--an understanding, then, with--"
"No, nothing."
"Hm!" The general waited a moment. Then he ventured, "Do you care to say--do you wish me to know--how he took it?"
The tears came into the girl"s eyes, but she governed herself to say, "He--he was disappointed."
"He had no right to be disappointed."
It was a question, and she answered: "He thought he had. He said--that he wouldn"t--trouble me any more."
The general did not ask at once, "And you don"t know where he is now--you haven"t heard anything from him since?"
Agatha flashed through her tears, "Papa!"