VII.

The next day was one of those lax Mondays which come before the Tuesdays

and Wednesdays when business has girded itself up for the week, and I

got home from the office rather earlier than usual. My wife met me with,

"Why, what has happened?"

"Nothing," I said; "I had a sort of presentiment that something had

happened here."

"Well, nothing at all has happened, and you have had your presentiment

for your pains, if that's what you hurried home for."

I justified myself as well as I could, and I added, "That wretched

Tedham has been in my mind all day. I think he has made a ridiculous

mistake. As if he could stop the harm by taking himself off! The harm

goes on independently of him; it is hardly his harm any more."

"That is the way it has seemed to me, too, all day," said my wife. "You

don't suppose he has been out of my mind either? I wish we had never had

anything to do with him."

A husband likes to abuse his victory, when he has his wife quite at his

mercy, but the case was so entirely in my favor that for once I forbore.

I could see that she was suffering for having put into Tedham's head the

notion which had resulted in this error, and I considered that she was

probably suffering enough. Besides, I was afraid that if I said anything

it would bring out the fact that I had myself intimated the question

again which his course had answered so mistakenly. I could well imagine

that she was grateful for my forbearance, and I left her to this

admirable state of mind while I went off to put myself a little in shape

after my day's work and my journey out of town. I kept thinking how

perfectly right in the affair Tedham's simple, selfish instinct had

been, and how our several consciences had darkened counsel; that quaint

Tuscan proverb came into ray mind: _Lascia fare Iddio, ch' è un buon

vecchio_. We had not been willing to let God alone, or to trust his

leading; we had thought to improve on his management of the case, and to

invent a principle for poor Tedham that should be better for him to act

upon than the love of his child, which God had put into the man's heart,

and which was probably the best thing that had ever been there. Well, we

had got our come-uppings, as the country people say, and however we

might reason it away we had made ourselves responsible for the event.

There came a ring at the door that made my own heart jump into my mouth.

I knew it was Tedham come back again, and I was still in the throes of

buttoning on my collar when my wife burst into my room. I smiled round

at her as gayly as I could with the collar-buttoning grimace on my face.

"All right, I'll be down in a minute. You just go and talk to him

till--"

"_Him_?" she gasped back; and I have never been quite sure of her syntax

to this day. "_Them!_ It's Mr. and Mrs. Hasketh, and some young lady! I

saw them through the window coming up the walk."

"Good Lord! You don't suppose it's Tedham's daughter?"

"How do I know? Oh, how _could_ you be dressing at a time like this!"

It did seem to me rather heinous, and I did not try to defend myself,

even when she added, from her access of nervousness, in something like a

whimper, "It seems to me you're _always_ dressing, Basil!"

"I'll be right with you, my dear," I answered, penitently; and, in fact,

by the time the maid brought up the Haskeths' cards I was ready to go

down. We certainly needed each other's support, and I do not know but we

descended the stairs hand in hand, and entered the parlor leaning upon

each other's shoulders. The Haskeths, who were much more deeply

concerned, were not apparently so much moved. We shook hands with them,

and then Mrs. Hasketh said to us in succession, "My niece, Mrs. March;

Mr. March, my niece."

The young girl had risen, and stood veiled before us, and a sort of

heart-breaking appeal expressed itself in the gentle droop of her

figure, which did the whole office of her hidden face. The Haskeths were

dressed, as became their years, in a composite fashion of no particular

period; but I noticed at once, with the fondness I have for what is

pretty in the modes, that Miss Tedham wore one of the latest costumes,

and that she was not only a young girl, but a young lady, with all that

belongs to the outward seeming of one of the gentlest of the kind. It

struck me as the more monstrous, therefore, that she should be involved

in the coil of her father's inexpiable offence, which entangled her

whether he stayed or whether he went. It was well enough that the

Haskeths should still be made miserable through him; it belonged to

their years and experience; they would soon end, at any rate, and it did

not matter whether their remnant of life was dark or bright. But this

child had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and

looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation that

we feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who have

died. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not to have been.

I thought that my wife, in the effusion of sympathy, would have perhaps

taken the girl in her arms; but probably she knew that the dropped veil

was a sign that there was to be no embracing. She put out her hand, and

the girl took it with her gloved hand; but though the outward forms of

their greeting were so cold, I fancied an instant understanding and

kindness between them.

"My niece," Mrs. Hasketh explained, when we were all seated, "came home

this afternoon, instead of this morning, when we expected her."

My wife said, "Oh, yes," and after a moment, a very painful moment, in

which I think we all tried to imagine something that would delay the

real business, Mrs. Hasketh began again.

"Mrs. March," she said, in a low voice, and with a curious, apologetic

kind of embarrassment, "we have come--Fay wanted we should come and ask

if you knew about her father--"

"Why, didn't he come to you last night?" my wife began.

"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Hasketh, in a crest-fallen sort, "But we

thought--we thought--you might know where he was. And Fay--Did he tell

you what he was going to do?"

"Yes," my wife gasped back.

The young girl put aside her veil in turning to my wife, and showed a

face which had all the ill-starred beauty of poor Tedham, with something

more in it that she never got from that handsome reprobate--conscience,

soul--whatever we choose to call a certain effluence of heaven which

blesses us with rest and faith whenever we behold it in any human

countenance. She was very young-looking, and her voice had a wistful

innocence.

"Do you think my father will be here again to-night? Oh, I must see him!"

I perceived that my wife could not speak, and I said, to gain time,

"Why, I've been expecting him to come in at any moment;" and this was

true enough.

"I guess he's not very far off," said old Hasketh. "I don't believe but

what he'll turn up." Within the comfort these words were outwardly

intended to convey to the anxious child, I felt an inner contempt of

Tedham, a tacit doubt of the man's nature, which was more to me than the

explicit faith in his return. For some reason Hasketh had not trusted

Tedham's decision, and he might very well have done this without

impugning anything but the weakness of his will.

My wife now joined our side, apparently because it was the only theory

of the case that could be openly urged. "Oh, yes, I am sure. In fact he

promised my husband to let him know later where he was. Didn't you

understand him so, my dear?"

I had not understood him precisely to this effect, but I answered, "Yes,

certainly," and we began to reassure one another more and more. We

talked on and on to one another, but all the time we talked at the young

girl, or for her encouragement; but I suppose the rest felt as I did,

that we were talking provisionally, or without any stable ground of

conviction. For my part, though I indulged that contempt of Tedham, I

still had a lurking fear that the wretch had finally and forever

disappeared, and I had a vision, very disagreeable and definite, of

Tedham lying face downward in the pool of the old cockpit and shone on

by the stars in the hushed circle of the woods. Simultaneously I heard

his daughter saying, "I can't understand why he shouldn't have come to

us, or should have put it off. He couldn't think I didn't wish to see

him." And now I looked at my wife aghast, for I perceived that the

Haskeths must have lacked the courage to tell her that her father had

decided himself not to see her again, and that they had brought her to

us that we might stay her with some hopes, false or true, of meeting him

soon. "I don't know what they mean," she went on, appealing from them to

us, "by saying that it might be better if I never saw him again!"

"I don't say that any more, child," said Mrs. Hasketh, with affecting

humility. "I'm sure there isn't any one in the whole world that I would

bless the sight of half as much."

"I could have come before, if I'd known where he was; or, if I had only

known, I might have been here Saturday!" She broke into a piteous

lamentation, with tears and sobs that wrung my heart and made me feel

like one of a conspiracy of monsters. "But he couldn't--he

couldn't--have thought I didn't _want_ to see him!"

It was a very trying moment for us all, and I think that if we had, any

of us, had our choice, we should have preferred to be in her place

rather than our own. We miserably did what we could to comfort her, and

we at last silenced her with I do not know what pretences. The affair

was quite too much for me, and I made a feint of having heard the

children calling me, and I went out into the hall. I felt that there was

a sort of indecency in my witnessing that poor young thing's emotion;

women might see it, but a man ought not. Perhaps old Hasketh felt the

same; he followed me out, and when we were beyond hearing, even if he

had spoken aloud, he dropped his voice to a thick murmur and said, "This

has all been a mistake. We have had to get out of it with the girl the

best we could; and we don't dare to let her know that Tedham isn't

coming back any more. You noticed from what she said that my wife tried

to make believe it might be well if he didn't; but she had to drop

_that_; it set the girl wild. She hasn't got anything but the one idea:

that she and her father belong to each other, and that they must be

together for the rest of their lives. A curious thing about it is," and

Hasketh sank his voice still lower to say this, "that she thinks that if

he's taken the punishment that was put upon him he has atoned for what

he did; and if any one tries to make him suffer more he does worse than

Tedham did, and he's flying in the face of Providence. Perhaps it's so.

I'm afraid," Hasketh continued, with the satisfaction men take in

blaming their wives under the cover of sympathy, "that Mrs. Hasketh is

going to feel it more and more, as time goes on, unless Tedham turns up.

I was never in favor of trying to have the child forget him, or be

separated from him in any way. That kind of thing can't be made to work,

and I don't suppose, when you come to boil it down, that it's

essentially right. This universe, I take it, isn't an accident in any

particular, and if she's his daughter it's because she was meant to be,

and to bear and share with him. You see it was a great mistake not to

prepare the child for it sooner, and tell her just when Tedham would be

out, so that if she wanted to see him she could. She thinks she ought to

have been there at the prison waiting to speak to him the first one. I

thought it was a mistake to have her away, and I guess that's the way

Mrs. Hasketh looks at it herself, now."

A stir of garments made itself heard from the parlor at last, and we

knew the ladies had risen. In a loud voice Hasketh began to say that

they had a carriage down at the gate, and I said they had better let me

show them the way down; and as my wife followed the others into the

hall, I pulled open the outer door for them. On the threshold stood a

man about to ring, who let his hand drop from the bell-pull. "Why,

Tedham!" I shouted, joyfully.

The light from the hall-lamp struck full on his face; we all

involuntarily shrank back, except the girl, who looked, not at the man

before her, but first at her aunt and then at her uncle, timorously, and

murmured some inaudible question. They did not answer, and now Tedham

and his daughter looked at each other, with what feeling no one can ever

fully say.