"In Carlsbad? When was he here?"
"The night of the Emperor's birthday. He came into the box when you were
behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd."
"Well?"
"I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you."
"Did she say you ought to wait a week?" He gave way to an irascibility
which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, "Why did he come
back?"
"He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris." The girl had
the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked
steadily at her father, and added: "He said he came back because he
couldn't help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no
right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and
Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that."
Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave
the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with
a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him
since?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must
tell you about it."
The case was less simple than it would once have been for General
Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for her
happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his own
interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put his
paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with
himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him
without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather
have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very
prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom
she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to
extremes concerning him.
"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it
was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion." The
general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not
wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; he
didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the
stand-point of a gentleman."
The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How
do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?"
"I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--"
"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted.
"--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy
does."
"I doubt it. At any rate, I understood March quite differently."
"She says that he thinks he behaved very nobly afterwards when Mr.
Stoller wanted him to help him put a false complexion on it; that it was
all the more difficult for him to do right then, because of his remorse
for what he had done before." As she spoke on she had become more eager.
"There's something in that," the general admitted, with a candor that he
made the most of both to himself and to her. "But I should like to know
what Stoller had to say of it all. Is there anything," he inquired, "any
reason why I need be more explicit about it, just now?"
"N--no. Only, I thought--He thinks so much of your opinion that--if--"
"Oh, he can very well afford to wait. If he values my opinion so highly
he can give me time to make up my mind."
"Of course--"
"And I'm not responsible," the general continued, significantly, "for the
delay altogether. If you had told me this before--Now, I don't know
whether Stoller is still in town."
He was not behaving openly with her; but she had not behaved openly with
him. She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from
his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller
rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered
him. If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or
wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could
delay and make sure. The accepted theory of such matters is that people
know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them.
But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often act
contrary to their convictions and impulses. If the statistics were
accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in
a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were
dissipated by the play of meteorological chances.
When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would
step round to Pupp's and see if Stoller were still there. But on the way
he stepped up to Mrs. Adding's hotel on the hill, and he came back, after
an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report rather
casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before. By this time the
fact seemed not to concern Agatha herself very vitally.
He asked if the Marches had left any address with her, and she answered
that they had not. They were going to spend a few days in Nuremberg, and
then push on to Holland for Mr. March's after-cure. There was no
relevance in his question unless it intimated his belief that she was in
confidential correspondence with Mrs. March, and she met this by saying
that she was going to write her in care of their bankers; she asked
whether he wished to send any word.
"No. I understand," he intimated, "that there is nothing at all in the
nature of a--a--an understanding, then, with--"
"No, nothing."
"Hm!" The general waited a moment. Then he ventured, "Do you care to
say--do you wish me to know--how he took it?"
The tears came into the girl's eyes, but she governed herself to say,
"He--he was disappointed."
"He had no right to be disappointed."
It was a question, and she answered: "He thought he had. He said--that he
wouldn't--trouble me any more."
The general did not ask at once, "And you don't know where he is now--you
haven't heard anything from him since?"