I do not know why I should have chosen to take this simple fact as proof
of an abiding want of straight-forwardness in Tedham's nature. I do not
know why I should have expected him to change, or why I should have felt
authorized at that moment to renew his punishment for it. I certainly
had said and thought very often that he had been punished enough, and
more than enough. In fact, his punishment, like all the other
punishments that I have witnessed in life, seemed to me wholly out of
proportion to the offence; it seemed monstrous, atrocious, and when I
got to talking of it I used to become so warm that my wife would warn me
people would think I wanted to do something like Tedham myself if I went
on in that way about him. Yet here I was, at my very first encounter
with the man, after his long expiation had ended, willing to add at
least a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as I
can analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reason
and experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out of
him, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befalls
the light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but it
does not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sage
reflection, but I failed to apply it to the case before me now.
After waiting a little for the displeasure to clear away from my face,
Tedham smiled as if in humorous appreciation, and I perceived, as
nothing else could have shown me so well, that he was still the old
Tedham. There was an offer of propitiation in this smile, too, and I did
not like that, either; but I was touched when I saw a certain hope die
out of his eye at the failure of his appeal to me.
"Who told you I was here?" I asked, more kindly. "Did you see Mrs.
March?"
"No, I think it must have been your children. I found them in front of
your house, and I asked them for you, without going to the door."
"Oh," I said, and I hid the disappointment I felt that he had not seen
my wife; for I should have liked such a leading as her behavior toward
him would have given me for my own. I was sure she would have known him
at once, and would not have told him where to find me, if she had not
wished me to be friendly with him.
"I am glad to see you," I said, in the absence of this leading; and then
I did not know what else to say. Tedham seemed to me to be looking very
well, but I could not notify this fact to him, in the circumstances; he
even looked very handsome; he had aged becomingly, and a clean-shaven
face suited him as well as the full beard he used to wear; but I could
speak of these things as little as of his apparent health. I did not
feel that I ought even to ask him what I could do for him. I did not
want to have anything to do with him, and, besides, I have always
regarded this formula as tantamount to saying that you cannot, or will
not, do anything for the man you employ it upon.
The silence which ensued was awkward, but it was better than anything I
could think of to say, and Tedham himself seemed to feel it so. He said,
presently, "Thank you. I was sure you would not take my coming to you
the wrong way. In fact I had no one else to come to--after I----" Tedham
stopped, and then, "I don't know," he went on, "whether you've kept run
of me; I don't suppose you have; I got out to-day at noon."
I could not say anything to that, either; there were very few openings
for me, it appeared, in the conversation, which remained one-sided as
before.
"I went to the cemetery," he continued. "I wanted to realize that those
who had died were dead, it was all one thing as long as I was in there;
everybody was dead; and then I came on to your house."
The house he meant was a place I had taken for the summer a little out
of town, so that I could run in to business every day, and yet have my
mornings and evenings in the country; the fall had been so mild that we
were still eking out the summer there.
"How did you know where I was staying?" I asked, with a willingness to
make any occasion serve for saying something.
Tedham hesitated. "Well, I stopped at the office in Boston on my way
out, and inquired. I was sure nobody would know me there." He said this
apologetically, as if he had been taking a liberty, and explained: "I
wanted to see you very much, and I was afraid that if I let the day go
by I should miss you somehow."
"Oh, all right," I said.
We had remained standing at the point where I had gone round to meet
him, and it seemed, in the awkward silence that now followed, as if I
were rooted there. I would very willingly have said something leading,
for my own sake, if not for his, but I had nothing in mind but that I
had better keep there, and so I waited for him to speak. I believed he
was beating about the bush in his own thoughts, to find some indirect or
sinuous way of getting at what he wanted to know, and that it was only
because he failed that he asked bluntly, "March, do you know where my
daughter is?"
"No, Tedham, I don't," I said, and I was glad that I could say it both
with honesty and with compassion. I was truly sorry for the man; in a
way, I did pity him; at the same time I did not wish to be mixed up in
his affairs; in washing my hands of them, I preferred that there should
be no stain of falsehood left on them.
"Where is my sister-in-law?" he asked next, and now at least I could not
censure him for indirection.
"I haven't met her for several years," I answered. "I couldn't say from
my own knowledge where she was."
"But you haven't heard of her leaving Somerville?"
"No, I haven't."
"Do you ever meet her husband?"
"Yes, sometimes, on the street; but I think not lately; we don't often
meet."
"The last time you saw _her_, did she speak of me?"
"I don't know--I believe--yes. It was a good many years ago."
"Was she changed toward me at all?"
This was a hard question to answer, but I thought I had better answer it
with the exact truth. "No, she seemed to feel just the same as ever
about it."
I do not believe Tedham cared for this, after all, though he made a show
of having to collect himself before he went on. "Then you think my
daughter is with her?"
"I didn't say that. I don't know anything about it."
"March," he urged, "don't _you_ think I have a right to see my
daughter?"
"That's something I can't enter into, Tedham."
"Good God!" said the man. "If you were in my place, wouldn't you want to
see her? You know how fond I used to be of her; and she is all that I
have got left in the world."
I did indeed remember Tedham's affection for his daughter, whom I
remembered as in short frocks when I last saw them together. It was
before my own door in town. Tedham had driven up in a smart buggy behind
a slim sorrel, and I came out, at a sign he made me through the
bow-window with his whip, and saw the little maid on the seat there
beside him. They were both very well dressed, though still in mourning
for the child's mother, and the whole turnout was handsomely set up.
Tedham was then about thirty-five, and the child looked about nine. The
color of her hair was the color of his fine brown beard, which had as
yet no trace of gray in it; but the light in her eyes was another light,
and her smile, which was of the same shape as his, was of another
quality, as she leaned across him and gave me her pretty little gloved
hand with a gay laugh. "I should think you would be afraid of such a
fiery sorrel dragon as that," I said, in recognition of the colt's
lifting and twitching with impatience as we talked.
"Oh, I'm not afraid with papa!" she said, and she laughed again as he
took her hand in one of his and covered it out of sight.
I recalled, now, looking at him there in the twilight of the woods, how
happy they had both seemed that sunny afternoon in the city square, as
they flashed away from my door and glanced back at me and smiled
together. I went into the house and said to my wife with a formulation
of the case which pleased me, "If there is anything in the world that
Tedham likes better than to ride after a good horse, it is to ride after
a good horse with that little girl of his." "Yes," said my wife, "but a
good horse means a good deal of money; even when a little girl goes with
it." "That is so," I assented, "but Tedham has made a lot lately in real
estate, they say, and I don't know what better he could do with his
money; or, I don't believe _he_ does." We said no more, but we both
felt, with the ardor of young parents, that it was a great virtue, a
saving virtue, in Tedham to love his little girl so much; I was
afterward not always sure that it was. Still, when Tedham appealed to me
now in the name of his love for her, he moved my heart, if not my
reason, in his favor; those old superstitions persist.
"Why, of course, you want to see her. But I couldn't tell you where she
is."
"You could find out for me."
"I don't see how," I said; but I did see how, and I knew as well as he
what his next approach would be. I felt strong against it, however, and
I did not perceive the necessity of being short with him in a matter not
involving my own security or comfort.
"I could find out where Hasketh is," he said, naming the husband of his
sister-in-law; "but it would be of no use for me to go there. They
wouldn't see me." He put this like a question, but I chose to let it be
its own answer, and he went on. "There is no one that I can ask to act
for me in the matter but you, and I ask _you_, March, to go to my
sister-in-law for me."