I went to my wife's room, after I reached the house, and faced her with
considerable trepidation. I had to begin rather far off, but I certainly
began in a way to lead up to the fact. "Isabel," I said, "Tedham is out
at last." I had it on my tongue to say poor Tedham, but I suppressed the
qualification in actual speech as likely to prove unavailing, or worse.
"Is that what kept you!" she demanded, instantly. "Have you seen him?"
"Yes," I admitted. I added, "Though I am afraid I was rather late,
anyway."
"I knew it was he, the moment you spoke," she said, rising on the lounge
where she had been lying, and sitting up on it; with the book she had
been reading shut on her thumb, she faced me across the table where her
lamp stood. "I had a presentiment when the children said there was some
strange-looking man here, asking for you, and that they had told him
where to find you. I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about it.
What did he want with you, Basil?"
"Well, he wanted to know where his daughter was."
"You didn't tell him!"
"I didn't know. Then he wanted me to go to Mrs. Hasketh and find out."
"You didn't say you would?"
"I said most decidedly I wouldn't," I returned, and I recalled my
severity to Tedham in refusing his prayer with more satisfaction than it
had given me at the time. "I told him that I had no business to
interfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me to
meddle with the course things had taken." I was aware of weakening my
case as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of a
downright and relentless refusal.
"I don't see why you felt called upon to make excuses to him, Basil. His
impudence in coming to you, of all men, is perfectly intolerable. I
suppose it was that sentimental letter you wrote him."
"You didn't think it sentimental at the time, my dear. You approved of
it."
"I didn't approve of it, Basil; but if you felt so strongly that you
ought to do it, I felt that I ought to let you. I have never interfered
with your sense of duty, and I never will. But I am glad that you didn't
feel it your duty to that wretch to go and make more trouble on his
account. He has made quite enough already; and it wasn't his fault that
you were not tried and convicted in his place."
"There wasn't the slightest danger of that--"
"He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on your
wife and children."
"Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don't
think--I never thought--that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest on
me. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began,
so as to gain time to get out to Canada."
My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affection
dangerously near contempt. "You are a very forgiving man, Basil," she
said, and I looked down sheepishly. "Well, at any rate, you have had the
sense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that he
came straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you to
believe that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else."
"Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, and
after he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you must
know, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a good
horse, with a pocketful of some one else's money, in a handsome suit of
clothes, and a game-and-fish dinner at Tafft's in immediate prospect,
and you couldn't see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and the
Tedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shaved
and wears his hair cut rather close."
"Basil!"
"Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changed
inwardly?"
"He must have suffered."
"But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain material
accessories of Tedham's have changed. But why should that change Tedham?
Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some
hints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if I
hadn't hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and he
wants to see her, poor wretch."
"I suppose he does!" sighed my wife.
"He would hardly take no for an answer from me, when I said I wouldn't
go to the Haskeths for him; and when I fairly shook him off, he wanted
me to ask you to go."
"And what did you say?" she asked, not at all with the resentment I had
counted upon equally with the possible pathos; you never can tell in the
least how any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the reason why
men do not trust women more.
"I told him that it would not be the smallest use to ask you; that you
had forgiven that old affair as well as I had, but that women were
different, and that I knew you wouldn't even see him."
"Well, Basil, I don't know what right you had to put me in that odious
light," said my wife.
"Why, good heavens! _Would_ you have seen him?"
"I don't know whether I would or not. That's neither here nor there. I
don't think it was very nice of you to shift the whole responsibility on
me."
"How did I do that? It seems to me that I kept the whole responsibility
myself."
"Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, then?"
"We walked along a little farther, and then--"
"Then, what? Where is the man?"
"He's down in the parlor," I answered hardily, in the voice of some one
else.
My wife stood up from the lounge, and I rose, too, for whatever penalty
she chose to inflict.
"Well, Basil, that is what I call a very cowardly thing."
"Yes, my dear, it is; I ought to have protected you against his appeal.
But you needn't see him. It's practically the same as if he had not come
here. I can send him away."
"And you call that practically the same! No, _I_ am the one that will
have to do the refusing now, and it is all off your shoulders. And you
knew I was not feeling very well, either! Basil, how could you?"
"I don't know. The abject creature drove me out of my senses. I suppose
that if I had respected him more, or believed in him more, I should have
had more strength to refuse him. But his limpness seemed to impart
itself to me, and I--I gave way. But really you needn't see him, Isabel.
I can tell him we have talked it over, and I concluded, entirely of
myself, that it was best for you not to meet him, and--"
"He would see through that in an instant. And if he is still the false
creature you think he is, we owe him the truth, more than any other kind
of man. You must understand _that_, Basil!"
"Then you are going to--"
"Don't speak to me, Basil, please," she said, and with an air of high
offence she swept out of the room, and out to the landing of the stairs.
There she hesitated a moment, and put her hand to her hair,
mechanically, to feel if it were in order, and then she went on
downstairs without further faltering. It was I who descended slowly, and
with many misgivings.