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.