"Ah, yes: I didn't tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had come on
with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the
Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family party;
and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with him and
his girls."
Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He did
not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess having
told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed on
recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in morals,
that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. "I have a message for
you from Mr. Stoller."
"For me?" Burnamy gasped.
"I've been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn't expected to see
you. But it's simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want me
to know--that he doesn't hold you accountable in the way he did. He's
thought it all over, and he's decided that he had no right to expect you
to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of
knowledge. As he said, he doesn't choose to plead the baby act. He says
that you're all right, and your place on the paper is open to you."
Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for
instant response. "I think he's wrong," he said, so harshly that the
people at the next table looked round. "His feeling as he does has
nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn't let me out."
March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, "I think
you're quite right, as to that. But there's such a thing as forgiveness,
you know. It doesn't change the nature of what you've done; but as far as
the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it."
"Yes, I understand that. But I can't accept his forgiveness if I hate
him."
"But perhaps you won't always hate him. Some day you may have a chance to
do him a good turn. It's rather banale; but there doesn't seem any other
way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to get
that poem?"
When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had put
it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some
coffee, and he asked March to join him in the dining-room where they had
stood talking.
"No, thank you," said the elder, "I don't propose sitting up all night,
and you'll excuse me if I go to bed now. It's a little informal to leave
a guest--"
"You're not leaving a guest! I'm at home here. I'm staying in this hotel
too."
March said, "Oh!" and then he added abruptly, "Good-night," and went up
stairs under the fresco of the five poets.
"Whom were you talking with below?" asked Mrs. March through the door
opening into his room from hers.
"Burnamy," he answered from within. "He's staying in this house. He let
me know just as I was going to turn him out for the night. It's one of
those little uncandors of his that throw suspicion on his honesty in
great things."
"Oh! Then you've been telling him," she said, with a mental bound high
above and far beyond the point.
"Everything."
"About Stoller, too?"
"About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and
General Triscoe--and Agatha."
"Very well. That's what I call shabby. Don't ever talk to me again about
the inconsistencies of women. But now there's something perfectly
fearful."
"What is it?"
"A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find
rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn't well, and
they're coming. And I've telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you
say?"