Burnamy sat dumb; and his head which he had lifted indignantly when the question was of Stoller, began to sink.
The general went on. "You ask me to give you my daughter when you haven"t money enough to keep her in gowns; you ask me to give her to a stranger--"
"Not quite a stranger, General Triscoe," Burnamy protested. "You have known me for three months at least, and any one who knows me in Chicago will tell you--"
"A stranger, and worse than a stranger," the general continued, so pleased with the logical perfection of his position that he almost smiled, and certainly softened toward Burnamy. "It isn"t a question of liking you, Mr. Burnamy, but of knowing you; my daughter likes you; so do the Marches; so does everybody who has met you. I like you myself. You"ve done me personally a thousand kindnesses. But I know very little of you, in spite of our three months" acquaintance; and that little is--But you shall judge for yourself! You were in the confidential employ of a man who trusted you, and you let him betray himself."
"I did. I don"t excuse it. The thought of it burns like fire. But it wasn"t done maliciously; it wasn"t done falsely; it was done inconsiderately; and when it was done, it seemed irrevocable. But it wasn"t; I could have prevented, I could have stooped the mischief; and I didn"t! I can never outlive that."
"I know," said the general relentlessly, "that you have never attempted any defence. That has been to your credit with me. It inclined me to overlook your unwarranted course in writing to my daughter, when you told her you would never see her again. What did you expect me to think, after that, of your coming back to see her? Or didn"t you expect me to know it?"
"I expected you to know it; I knew she would tell you. But I don"t excuse that, either. It was acting a lie to come back. All I can say is that I had to see her again for one last time."
"And to make sure that it was to be the last time, you offered yourself to her."
"I couldn"t help doing that."
"I don"t say you could. I don"t judge the facts at all. I leave them altogether to you; and you shall say what a man in my position ought to say to such a man as you have shown yourself."
"No, I will say." The door into the adjoining room was flung open, and Agatha flashed in from it.
Her father looked coldly at her impa.s.sioned face. "Have you been listening?" he asked.
"I have been hearing--"
"Oh!" As nearly as a man could, in bed, General Triscoe shrugged.
"I suppose I had, a right to be in my own room. I couldn"t help hearing; and I was perfectly astonished at you, papa, the cruel way you went on, after all you"ve said about Mr. Stoller, and his getting no more than he deserved."
"That doesn"t justify me," Burnamy began, but she cut him short almost as severely as she--had dealt with her father.
"Yes, it does! It justifies you perfectly! And his wanting you to falsify the whole thing afterwards, more than justifies you."
Neither of the men attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to the other.
"And besides, if it didn"t justify you, what you have done yourself would; and your never denying it, or trying to excuse it, makes it the same as if you hadn"t done it, as far as you are concerned; and that is all I care for." Burnamy started, as if with the sense of having heard something like this before, and with surprise at hearing it now; and she flushed a little as she added tremulously, "And I should never, never blame you for it, after that; it"s only trying to wriggle out of things which I despise, and you"ve never done that. And he simply had to come back," she turned to her father, "and tell me himself just how it was.
And you said yourself, papa--or the same as said--that he had no right to suppose I was interested in his affairs unless he--unless--And I should never have forgiven him, if he hadn"t told me then that he that he had come back because he--felt the way he did. I consider that that exonerated him for breaking his word, completely. If he hadn"t broken his word I should have thought he had acted very cruelly and--and strangely.
And ever since then, he has behaved so n.o.bly, so honorably, so delicately, that I don"t believe he would ever have said anything again--if I hadn"t fairly forced him. Yes! Yes, I did!" she cried at a movement of remonstrance from Burnamy. "And I shall always be proud of you for it." Her father stared steadfastly at her, and he only lifted his eyebrows, for change of expression, when she went over to where Burnamy stood, and put her hand in his with a certain childlike impetuosity. "And as for the rest," she declared, "everything I have is his; just as everything of his would be mine if I had nothing. Or if he wishes to take me without anything, then he can have me so, and I sha"n"t be afraid but we can get along somehow." She added, "I have managed without a maid, ever since I left home, and poverty has no terrors for me!"
LXVIII.
General Triscoe submitted to defeat with the patience which soldiers learn. He did not submit amiably; that would have been out of character, and perhaps out of reason; but Burnamy and Agatha were both so amiable that they supplied good-humor for all. They flaunted their rapture in her father"s face as little as they could, but he may have found their serene satisfaction, their settled confidence in their fate, as hard to bear as a more boisterous happiness would have been.
It was agreed among them all that they were to return soon to America, and Burnamy was to find some sort of literary or journalistic employment in New York. She was much surer than he that this could be done with perfect ease; but they were of an equal mind that General Triscoe was not to be disturbed in any of his habits, or vexed in the tenor of his living; and until Burnamy was at least self-supporting there must be no talk of their being married.
The talk of their being engaged was quite enough for the time. It included complete and minute auto-biographies on both sides, reciprocal a.n.a.lyses of character, a scientifically exhaustive comparison of tastes, ideas and opinions; a profound study of their respective chins, noses, eyes, hands, heights, complexions, moles and freckles, with some account of their several friends.
In this occupation, which was profitably varied by the confession of what they had each thought and felt and dreamt concerning the other at every instant since they met, they pa.s.sed rapidly the days which the persistent anxiety of General Triscoe interposed before the date of their leaving Weimar for Paris, where it was arranged that they should spend a month before sailing for New York. Burnamy had a notion, which Agatha approved, of trying for something there on the New York-Paris Chronicle; and if he got it they might not go home at once. His gains from that paper had eked out his copyright from his book, and had almost paid his expenses in getting the material which he had contributed to it. They were not so great, however, but that his gold reserve was reduced to less than a hundred dollars, counting the silver coinages which had remained to him in crossing and recrossing frontiers. He was at times dimly conscious of his finances, but he buoyantly disregarded the facts, as incompatible with his status as Agatha"s betrothed, if not unworthy of his character as a lover in the abstract.
The afternoon before they were to leave Weimar, they spent mostly in the garden before the Grand-Ducal Museum, in a conference so important that when it came on to rain, at one moment, they put up Burnamy"s umbrella, and continued to sit under it rather than interrupt the proceedings even to let Agatha go back to the hotel and look after her father"s packing.
Her own had been finished before dinner, so as to leave her the whole afternoon for their conference, and to allow her father to remain in undisturbed possession of his room as long as possible.
What chiefly remained to be put into the general"s trunk were his coats and trousers, hanging in the closet, and August took these down, and carefully folded and packed them. Then, to make sure that nothing had been forgotten, Agatha put a chair into the closet when she came in, and stood on it to examine the shelf which stretched above the hooks.
There seemed at first to be nothing on it, and then there seemed to be something in the further corner, which when it was tiptoed for, proved to be a bouquet of flowers, not so faded as to seem very old; the blue satin ribbon which they were tied up with, and which hung down half a yard, was of entire freshness except far the dust of the shelf where it had lain.
Agatha backed out into the room with her find in her hand, and examined it near to, and then at arm"s length. August stood by with a pair of the general"s trousers lying across his outstretched hands, and as Agatha absently looked round at him, she caught a light of intelligence in his eyes which changed her whole psychological relation to the withered bouquet. Till then it had been a lifeless, meaningless bunch of flowers, which some one, for no motive, had tossed up on that dusty shelf in the closet. At August"s smile it became something else. Still she asked lightly enough, "Was ist loss, August?"
His smile deepened and broadened. "Fur die Andere," he explained.
Agatha demanded in English, "What do you mean by feardy ondery?"
"Oddaw lehdy."
"Other lady?" August nodded, rejoicing in big success, and Agatha closed the door into her own room, where the general had been put for the time so as to be spared the annoyance of the packing; then she sat down with her hands in her lap, and the bouquet in her hands. "Now, August," she said very calmly, "I want you to tell me-ich wunsche Sie zu mir sagen--what other lady--wa.s.s andere Dame--these flowers belonged to--diese Blumen gehorte zu. Verstehen Sie?"
August nodded brightly, and with German carefully adjusted to Agatha"s capacity, and with now and then a word or phrase of English, he conveyed that before she and her Herr Father had appeared, there had been in Weimar another American Fraulein with her Frau Mother; they had not indeed staid in that hotel, but had several times supped there with the young Herr Bornahmee, who was occupying that room before her Herr Father.
The young Herr had been much about with these American Damen, driving and walking with them, and sometimes dining or supping with them at their hotel, The Elephant. August had sometimes carried notes to them from the young Herr, and he had gone for the bouquet which the gracious Fraulein was holding, on the morning of the day that the American Damen left by the train for Hanover.
August was much helped and encouraged throughout by the friendly intelligence of the gracious Fraulein, who smiled radiantly in clearing up one dim point after another, and who now and then supplied the English a.n.a.logues which he sought in his effort to render his German more luminous.
At the end she returned to the work of packing, in which she directed him, and sometimes a.s.sisted him with her own hands, having put the bouquet on the mantel to leave herself free. She took it up again and carried it into her own room, when she went with August to summon her father back to his. She bade August say to the young Herr, if he saw him, that she was going to sup with her father, and August gave her message to Burnamy, whom he met on the stairs coming down as he was going up with their tray.
Agatha usually supped with her father, but that evening Burnamy was less able than usual to bear her absence in the hotel dining-room, and he went up to a cafe in the town for his supper. He did not stay long, and when he returned his heart gave a joyful lift at sight of Agatha looking out from her balcony, as if she were looking for him. He made her a gay flourishing bow, lifting his hat high, and she came down to meet him at the hotel door. She had her hat on and jacket over one arm and she joined him at once for the farewell walk he proposed in what they had agreed to call their garden.
She moved a little ahead of him, and when they reached the place where they always sat, she shifted her jacket to the other arm and uncovered the hand in which she had been carrying the withered bouquet. "Here is something I found in your closet, when I was getting papa"s things out."
"Why, what is it?" he asked innocently, as he took it from her.
"A bouquet, apparently," she answered, as he drew the long ribbons through his fingers, and looked at the flowers curiously, with his head aslant.
"Where did you get it?"
"On the shelf."
It seemed a long time before Burnamy said with a long sigh, as of final recollection, "Oh, yes," and then he said nothing; and they did not sit down, but stood looking at each other.
"Was it something you got for me, and forgot to give me?" she asked in a voice which would not have misled a woman, but which did its work with the young man.
He laughed and said, "Well, hardly! The general has been in the room ever since you came."
"Oh, yes. Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?"
Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, "No, I flung it up there I had forgotten all about it."