Chapter 11

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 impassioned 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 nobly, 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 analyses 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 passed 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--wass 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 analogues 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 assisted 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."

"And you wish me to forget about it, too?" Agatha asked in a gayety of tone that still deceived him.

"It would only be fair. You made me," he rejoined, and there was something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been glad to do it.

But she governed herself against the temptation and said, "Women are not good at forgetting, at least till they know what."

"Oh, I'll tell you, if you want to know," he said with a laugh, and at the words she--sank provisionally in their accustomed seat. He sat down beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again. "Why, it's nothing. Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left. But I decided I wouldn't, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet."

"May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?"

"Well, she and her mother--I had been with them a good deal, and I thought it would be civil."

"And why did you decide not to be civil?"

"I didn't want it to look like more than civility."

"Were they here long?"

"About a week. They left just after the Marches came."

Agatha seemed not to heed the answer she had exacted. She sat reclined in the corner of the seat, with her head drooping. After an interval which was long to Burnamy she began to pull at a ring on the third finger of her left hand, absently, as if she did not know what she was doing; but when she had got it off she held it towards Burnamy and said quietly, "I think you had better have this again," and then she rose and moved slowly and weakly away.

He had taken the ring mechanically from her, and he stood a moment bewildered; then he pressed after her.

"Agatha, do you--you don't mean--"

"Yes," she said, without looking round at his face, which she knew was close to her shoulder. "It's over. It isn't what you've done. It's what you are. I believed in you, in spite of what you did to that man--and your coming back when you said you wouldn't--and--But I see now that what you did was you; it was your nature; and I can't believe in you any more."

"Agatha!" he implored. "You're not going to be so unjust! There was nothing between you and me when that girl was here! I had a right to--"

"Not if you really cared for me! Do you think I would have flirted with any one so soon, if I had cared for you as you pretended you did for me that night in Carlsbad? Oh, I don't say you're false. But you're fickle--"

"But I'm not fickle! From the first moment I saw you, I never cared for any one but you!"

"You have strange ways of showing your devotion. Well, say you are not fickle. Say, that I'm fickle. I am. I have changed my mind. I see that it would never do. I leave you free to follow all the turning and twisting of your fancy." She spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly, and she gave him no chance to get out the words that seemed to choke him. She began to run, but at the door of the hotel she stopped and waited till he came stupidly up. "I have a favor to ask, Mr. Burnamy. I beg you will not see me again, if you can help it before we go to-morrow. My father and I are indebted to you for too many kindnesses, and you mustn't take any more trouble on our account. August can see us off in the morning."

She nodded quickly, and was gone in-doors while he was yet struggling with his doubt of the reality of what had all so swiftly happened.

General Triscoe was still ignorant of any change in the status to which he had reconciled himself with so much difficulty, when he came down to get into the omnibus for the train. Till then he had been too proud to ask what had become of Burnamy, though he had wondered, but now he looked about and said impatiently, "I hope that young man isn't going to keep us waiting."

Agatha was pale and worn with sleeplessness, but she said firmly, "He isn't going, papa. I will tell you in the train. August will see to the tickets and the baggage."

August conspired with the traeger to get them a first-class compartment to themselves. But even with the advantages of this seclusion Agatha's confidences to her father were not full. She told her father that her engagement was broken for reasons that did not mean anything very wrong in Mr. Burnamy but that convinced her they could never be happy together. As she did not give the reasons, he found a natural difficulty in accepting them, and there was something in the situation which appealed strongly to his contrary-mindedness. Partly from this, partly from his sense of injury in being obliged so soon to adjust himself to new conditions, and partly from his comfortable feeling of security from an engagement to which his assent had been forced, he said, "I hope you're not making a mistake."

"Oh, no," she answered, and she attested her conviction by a burst of sobbing that lasted well on the way to the first stop of the train.

LXIX.

It would have been always twice as easy to go direct from Berlin to the Hague through Hanover; but the Marches decided to go by Frankfort and the Rhine, because they wished to revisit the famous river, which they remembered from their youth, and because they wished to stop at Dusseldorf, where Heinrich Heine was born. Without this Mrs. March, who kept her husband up to his early passion for the poet with a feeling that she was defending him from age in it, said that their silver wedding journey would not be complete; and he began himself to think that it would be interesting.

They took a sleeping-car for Frankfort and they woke early as people do in sleeping-cars everywhere. March dressed and went out for a cup of the same coffee of which sleeping-car buffets have the awful secret in Europe as well as America, and for a glimpse of the twilight landscape. One gray little town, towered and steepled and red-roofed within its mediaeval walls, looked as if it would have been warmer in something more. There was a heavy dew, if not a light frost, over all, and in places a pale fog began to lift from the low hills. Then the sun rose without dispersing the cold, which was afterwards so severe in their room at the Russischer Hof in Frankfort that in spite of the steam-radiators they sat shivering in all their wraps till breakfast-time.

There was no steam on in the radiators, of course; when they implored the portier for at least a lamp to warm their hands by he turned on all the electric lights without raising the temperature in the slightest degree. Amidst these modern comforts they were so miserable that they vowed each other to shun, as long as they were in Germany, or at least while the summer lasted, all hotels which were steam-heated and electric-lighted. They heated themselves somewhat with their wrath, and over their breakfast they relented so far as to suffer themselves a certain interest in the troops of all arms beginning to pass the hotel. They were fragments of the great parade, which had ended the day before, and they were now drifting back to their several quarters of the empire. Many of them were very picturesque, and they had for the boys and girls running before and beside them, the charm which armies and circus processions have for children everywhere. But their passage filled with cruel anxiety a large old dog whom his master had left harnessed to a milk-cart before the hotel door; from time to time he lifted up his voice, and called to the absentee with hoarse, deep barks that almost shook him from his feet.

The day continued blue and bright and cold, and the Marches gave the morning to a rapid survey of the city, glad that it was at least not wet. What afterwards chiefly remained to them was the impression of an old town as quaint almost and as Gothic as old Hamburg, and a new town, handsome and regular, and, in the sudden arrest of some streets, apparently overbuilt. The modern architectural taste was of course Parisian; there is no other taste for the Germans; but in the prevailing absence of statues there was a relief from the most oppressive characteristic of the imperial capital which was a positive delight. Some sort of monument to the national victory over France there must have been; but it must have been unusually inoffensive, for it left no record of itself in the travellers' consciousness. They were aware of gardened squares and avenues, bordered by stately dwellings, of dignified civic edifices, and of a vast and splendid railroad station, such as the state builds even in minor European cities, but such as our paternal corporations have not yet given us anywhere in America. They went to the Zoological Garden, where they heard the customary Kalmucks at their public prayers behind a high board fence; and as pilgrims from the most plutrocratic country in the world March insisted that they must pay their devoirs at the shrine of the Rothschilds, whose natal banking-house they revered from the outside.