Their Silver Wedding Journey

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He had left Kenby with the others, and now, after his wife had talked
herself tired of them all, he proposed going out again to look about the
city, where there was nothing for the moment to remind them of the
presence of their friends or even of their existence. She answered that
she was worrying about all those people, and trying to work out their
problem for them. He asked why she did not let them work it out
themselves as they would have to do, after all her worry, and she said
that where her sympathy had been excited she could not stop worrying,
whether it did any good or not, and she could not respect any one who
could drop things so completely out of his mind as he could; she had
never been able to respect that in him.

"I know, my dear," he assented. "But I don't think it's a question of
moral responsibility; it's a question of mental structure, isn't it? Your
consciousness isn't built in thought-tight compartments, and one emotion
goes all through it, and sinks you; but I simply close the doors and shut
the emotion in, and keep on."

The fancy pleased him so much that he worked it out in all its
implications, and could not, after their long experience of each other,
realize that she was not enjoying the joke too, till she said she saw
that he merely wished to tease. Then, too late, he tried to share her
worry; but she protested that she was not worrying at all; that she cared
nothing about those people: that she was nervous, she was tired; and she
wished he would leave her, and go out alone.

He found himself in the street again, and he perceived that he must be
walking fast when a voice called him by name, and asked him what his
hurry was. The voice was Stoller's, who got into step with him and
followed the first with a second question.

"Made up your mind to go to the manoeuvres with me?"

His bluntness made it easy for March to answer: "I'm afraid my wife
couldn't stand the drive back and forth."

"Come without her."

"Thank you. It's very kind of you. I'm not certain that I shall go at
all. If I do, I shall run out by train, and take my chances with the
crowd."

Stoller insisted no further. He felt no offence at the refusal of his
offer, or chose to show none. He said, with the same uncouth abruptness
as before: "Heard anything of that fellow since he left Carlsbad?"

"Burnamy?"

"Mm."

"No."

"Know where he is?"

"I don't in the least."

Stoller let another silence elapse while they hurried on, before he said,
"I got to thinking what he done afterwards. He wasn't bound to look out
for me; he might suppose I knew what I was about."

March turned his face and stared in Stoller's, which he was letting hang
forward as he stamped heavily on. Had the disaster proved less than he
had feared, and did he still want Burnamy's help in patching up the
broken pieces; or did he really wish to do Burnamy justice to his friend?

In any case March's duty was clear. "I think Burnamy was bound to look
out for you; Mr. Stoller, and I am glad to know that he saw it in the
same light."

"I know he did," said Stoker with a blaze as from a long-smouldering
fury, "and damn him, I'm not going to have it. I'm not going to, plead
the baby act with him, or with any man. You tell him so, when you get the
chance. You tell him I don't hold him accountable for anything I made him
do. That ain't business; I don't want him around me, any more; but if he
wants to go back to the paper he can have his place. You tell him I stand
by what I done; and it's all right between him and me. I hain't done
anything about it, the way I wanted him to help me to; I've let it lay,
and I'm a-going to. I guess it ain't going to do me any harm, after all;
our people hain't got very long memories; but if it is, let it. You tell
him it's all right."

"I don't know where he is, Mr. Stoller, and I don't know that I care to
be the bearer of your message," said March.

"Why not?"

"Why, for one thing, I don't agree with you that it's all right. Your
choosing to stand by the consequences of Burnamy's wrong doesn't undo it.
As I understand, you don't pardon it--"

Stoller gulped and did not answer at once. Then he said, "I stand by what
I done. I'm not going to let him say I turned him down for doing what I
told him to, because I hadn't the sense to know what I was about."

"Ah, I don't think it's a thing he'll like to speak of in any case," said
March.

Stoller left him, at the corner they had reached, as abruptly as he had
joined him, and March hurried back to his wife, and told her what had
just passed between him and Stoller.

She broke out, "Well, I am surprised at you, my dear! You have always
accused me of suspecting people, and attributing bad motives; and here
you've refused even to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. He
merely wanted to save his savage pride with you, and that's all he wants
to do with Burnamy. How could it hurt the poor boy to know that Stoller
doesn't blame him? Why should you refuse to give his message to Burnamy?
I don't want you to ridicule me for my conscience any more, Basil; you're
twice as bad as I ever was. Don't you think that a person can ever
expiate an offence? I've often heard you say that if any one owned his
fault, he put it from him, and it was the same as if it hadn't been; and
hasn't Burnamy owned up over and over again? I'm astonished at you,
dearest."

March was in fact somewhat astonished at himself in the light of her
reasoning; but she went on with some sophistries that restored him to his
self-righteousness.

"I suppose you think he has interfered with Stoller's political ambition,
and injured him in that way. Well, what if he has? Would it be a good
thing to have a man like that succeed in politics? You're always saying
that the low character of our politicians is the ruin of the country; and
I'm sure," she added, with a prodigious leap over all the sequences,
"that Mr. Stoller is acting nobly; and it's your duty to help him relieve
Burnamy's mind." At the laugh he broke into she hastened to say, "Or if
you won't, I hope you'll not object to my doing so, for I shall, anyway!"

She rose as if she were going to begin at once, in spite of his laughing;
and in fact she had already a plan for coming to Stoller's assistance by
getting at Burnamy through Miss Triscoe, whom she suspected of knowing
where he was. There had been no chance for them to speak of him either
that morning or the evening before, and after a great deal of controversy
with herself in her husband's presence she decided to wait till they came
naturally together the next morning for the walk to the Capuchin Church
on the hill beyond the river, which they had agreed to take. She could
not keep from writing a note to Miss Triscoe begging her to be sure to
come, and hinting that she had something very important to speak of.

She was not sure but she had been rather silly to do this, but when they
met the girl confessed that she had thought of giving up the walk, and
might not have come except for Mrs. March's note. She had come with Rose,
and had left him below with March; Mrs. Adding was coming later with
Kenby and General Triscoe.

Mrs. March lost no time in telling her the great news; and if she had
been in doubt before of the girl's feeling for Burnamy she was now in
none. She had the pleasure of seeing her flush with hope, and then the
pain which was also a pleasure, of seeing her blanch with dismay.

"I don't know where he is, Mrs. March. I haven't heard a word from him
since that night in Carlsbad. I expected--I didn't know but you--"

Mrs. March shook her head. She treated the fact skillfully as something
to be regretted simply because it would be such a relief to Burnamy to
know how Mr. Stoller now felt. Of course they could reach him somehow;
you could always get letters to people in Europe, in the end; and, in
fact, it was altogether probable that he was that very instant in
Wurzburg; for if the New York-Paris Chronicle had wanted him to write up
the Wagner operas, it would certainly want him to write up the
manoeuvres. She established his presence in Wurzburg by such an
irrefragable chain of reasoning that, at a knock outside, she was just
able to kelp back a scream, while she ran to open the door. It was not
Burnamy, as in compliance with every nerve it ought to have been, but her
husband, who tried to justify his presence by saying that they were all
waiting for her and Miss Triscoe, and asked when they were coming.

She frowned him silent, and then shut herself outside with him long
enough to whisper, "Say she's got a headache, or anything you please; but
don't stop talking here with me, or I shall go wild." She then shut
herself in again, with the effect of holding him accountable for the
whole affair.

LVI.

General Triscoe could not keep his irritation, at hearing that his
daughter was not coming, out of the excuses he made to Mrs. Adding; he
said again and again that it must seem like a discourtesy to her. She
gayly disclaimed any such notion; she would not hear of putting off their
excursion to another day; it had been raining just long enough to give
them a reasonable hope of a few hours' drought, and they might not have
another dry spell for weeks. She slipped off her jacket after they
started, and gave it to Kenby, but she let General Triscoe hold her
umbrella over her, while he limped beside her. She seemed to March, as he
followed with Rose, to be playing the two men off against each other,
with an ease which he wished his wife could be there to see, and to judge
aright.

They crossed by the Old Bridge, which is of the earliest years of the
seventh century, between rows of saints whose statues surmount the piers.
Some are bishops as well as saints; one must have been at Rome in his
day, for he wore his long thick beard in the fashion of Michelangelo's
Moses. He stretched out toward the passers two fingers of blessing and
was unaware of the sparrow which had lighted on them and was giving him
the effect of offering it to the public admiration. Squads of soldiers
tramping by turned to look and smile, and the dull faces of citizens
lighted up at the quaint sight. Some children stopped and remained very
quiet, not to scare away the bird; and a cold-faced, spiritual-looking
priest paused among them as if doubting whether to rescue the
absent-minded bishop from a situation derogatory to his dignity; but he
passed on, and then the sparrow suddenly flew off.

Rose Adding had lingered for the incident with March, but they now pushed
on, and came up with the others at the end of the bridge, where they
found them in question whether they had not better take a carriage and
drive to the foot of the hill before they began their climb. March
thanked them, but said he was keeping up the terms of his cure, and was
getting in all the walking he could. Rose begged his mother not to
include him in the driving party; he protested that he was feeling so
well, and the walk was doing him good. His mother consented, if he would
promise not to get tired, and then she mounted into the two-spanner which
had driven instinctively up to their party when their parley began, and
General Triscoe took the place beside her, while Kenby, with smiling
patience, seated himself in front.

Rose kept on talking with March about Wurzburg and its history, which it
seemed he had been reading the night before when he could not sleep. He
explained, "We get little histories of the places wherever we go. That's
what Mr. Kenby does, you know."

"Oh, yes," said March.

"I don't suppose I shall get a chance to read much here," Rose continued,
"with General Triscoe in the room. He doesn't like the light."

"Well, well. He's rather old, you know. And you musn't read too much,
Rose. It isn't good for you."

"I know, but if I don't read, I think, and that keeps me awake worse. Of
course, I respect General Triscoe for being in the war, and getting
wounded," the boy suggested.

"A good many did it," March was tempted to say.

The boy did not notice his insinuation. "I suppose there were some things
they did in the army, and then they couldn't get over the habit. But
General Grant says in his 'Life' that he never used a profane expletive."

"Does General Triscoe?"

Rose answered reluctantly, "If anything wakes him in the night, or if he
can't make these German beds over to suit him--"

"I see." March turned his face to hide the smile which he would not have
let the boy detect. He thought best not to let Rose resume his
impressions of the general; and in talk of weightier matters they found
themselves at that point of the climb where the carriage was waiting for
them. From this point they followed an alley through ivied, garden walls,
till they reached the first of the balustraded terraces which ascend to
the crest of the hill where the church stands. Each terrace is planted
with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports a bass-relief
commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the stations of the
cross.

Monks and priests were coming and going, and dropped on the steps leading
from terrace to terrace were women and children on their knees in prayer.
It was all richly reminiscent of pilgrim scenes in other Catholic lands;
but here there was a touch of earnest in the Northern face of the
worshipers which the South had never imparted. Even in the beautiful
rococo interior of the church at the top of the hill there was a sense of
something deeper and truer than mere ecclesiasticism; and March came out
of it in a serious muse while the boy at his side did nothing to
interrupt. A vague regret filled his heart as he gazed silently out over
the prospect of river and city and vineyard, purpling together below the
top where he stood, and mixed with this regret was a vague resentment of
his wife's absence. She ought to have been there to share his pang and
his pleasure; they had so long enjoyed everything together that without
her he felt unable to get out of either emotion all there was in it.

The forgotten boy stole silently down the terraces after the rest of the
party who had left him behind with March. At the last terrace they
stopped and waited; and after a delay that began to be long to Mrs.
Adding, she wondered aloud what could have become of them.

Kenby promptly offered to go back and see, and she consented in seeming
to refuse: "It isn't worth while. Rose has probably got Mr. March into
some deep discussion, and they've forgotten all about us. But if you will
go, Mr. Kenby, you might just remind Rose of my existence." She let him
lay her jacket on her shoulders before he left her, and then she sat down
on one of the steps, which General Triscoe kept striking with the point
of her umbrella as he stood before her.

"I really shall have to take it from you if you do that any more," she
said, laughing up in his face. "I'm serious."

He stopped. "I wish I could believe you were serious, for a moment."

"You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why."

The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might
have been pathetic to any one who liked him. "Do you know this is almost
the first time I have spoken alone with you?"

"Really, I hadn't noticed," said Mrs. Adding.

General Triscoe laughed in rather a ghastly way. "Well, that's
encouraging, at least, to a man who's had his doubts whether it wasn't
intended."

"Intended? By whom? What do you mean, General Triscoe? Why in the world
shouldn't you have spoken alone with me before?"

He was not, with all his eagerness, ready to say, and while she smiled
pleasantly she had the look in her eyes of being brought to bay and being
prepared, if it must come to that, to have the worst over, then and
there. She was not half his age, but he was aware of her having no
respect for his years; compared with her average American past as he
understood it, his social place was much higher, but, she was not in the
least awed by it; in spite of his war record she was making him behave
like a coward. He was in a false position, and if he had any one but
himself to blame he had not her. He read her equal knowledge of these
facts in the clear eyes that made him flush and turn his own away.

Then he started with a quick "Hello!" and stood staring up at the steps
from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by a
clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other.

His mother looked round and caught herself up from where she sat and ran
toward him. "Oh, Rose!"

"It's nothing, mother," he called to her, and as she dropped on her knees
before him he sank limply against her. "It was like what I had in
Carlsbad; that's all. Don't worry about me, please!"

"I'm not worrying, Rose," she said with courage of the same texture as
his own. "You've been walking too much. You must go back in the carriage
with us. Can't you have it come here?" she asked Kenby.

"There's no road, Mrs. Adding. But if Rose would let me carry him--"

"I can walk," the boy protested, trying to lift himself from her neck.

"No, no! you mustn't." She drew away and let him fall into the arms that
Kenby put round him. He raised the frail burden lightly to his shoulder,
and moved strongly away, followed by the eyes of the spectators who had
gathered about the little group, but who dispersed now, and went back to
their devotions.

March hurried after Kenby with Mrs. Adding, whom he told he had just
missed Rose and was looking about for him, when Kenby came with her
message for them. They made sure that he was nowhere about the church,
and then started together down the terraces. At the second or third
station below they found the boy clinging to the barrier that protected
the bass-relief from the zeal of the devotees. He looked white and sick,
though he insisted that he was well, and when he turned to come away with
them he reeled and would have fallen if Kenby had not caught him. Kenby
wanted to carry him, but Rose would not let him, and had made his way
down between them.

"Yea, he has such a spirit," she said, "and I've no doubt he's suffering
now more from Mr. Kenby's kindness than from his own sickness he had one
of these giddy turns in Carlsbad, though, and I shall certainly have a
doctor to see him."

"I think I should, Mrs. Adding," said March, not too gravely, for it
seemed to him that it was not quite his business to alarm her further, if
she was herself taking the affair with that seriousness. He questioned
whether she was taking it quite seriously enough, when she turned with a
laugh, and called to General Triscoe, who was limping down the steps of
the last terrace behind them:

"Oh, poor General Triscoe! I thought you had gone on ahead."

General Triscoe could not enter into the joke of being forgotten,
apparently. He assisted with gravity at the disposition of the party for
the return, when they all reached the carriage. Rose had the place beside
his mother, and Kenby wished March to take his with the general and let
him sit with the driver; but he insisted that he would rather walk home,
and he did walk till they had driven out of eight. Then he called a
passing one-spanner, and drove to his hotel in comfort and silence.

LVII.

Kenby did not come to the Swan before supper; then he reported that the
doctor had said Rose was on the verge of a nervous collapse. He had
overworked at school, but the immediate trouble was the high, thin air,
which the doctor said he must be got out of at once, into a quiet place
at the sea-shore somewhere. He had suggested Ostend; or some point on the
French coast; Kenby had thought of Schevleningen, and the doctor had said
that would do admirably.

"I understood from Mrs. Adding," he concluded, "that you were going.
there for your after-cure, Mr. March, and I didn't know but you might be
going soon."

At the mention of Schevleningen the Marches had looked at each other with
a guilty alarm, which they both tried to give the cast of affectionate
sympathy but she dismissed her fear that he might be going to let his
compassion prevail with him to his hurt when he said: "Why, we ought to
have been there before this, but I've been taking my life in my hands in
trying to see a little of Germany, and I'm afraid now that Mrs. March has
her mind too firmly fixed on Berlin to let me think of going to
Schevleningen till we've been there."

"It's too bad!" said Mrs. March, with real regret. "I wish we were
going." But she had not the least notion of gratifying her wish; and they
were all silent till Kenby broke out:

"Look here! You know how I feel about Mrs Adding! I've been pretty frank
with Mr. March myself, and I've had my suspicions that she's been frank
with you, Mrs. March. There isn't any doubt about my wanting to marry
her, and up to this time there hasn't been any doubt about her not
wanting to marry me. But it isn't a question of her or of me, now. It's a
question of Rose. I love the boy," and Kenby's voice shook, and he
faltered a moment. "Pshaw! You understand."

"Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby," said Mrs. March. "I perfectly understand you."

"Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with him
alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to
Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up; she broke down before the
doctor; she said she didn't know what to do; I suppose she's
frightened--"

Kenby stopped again, and March asked, "When is she going?"

"To-morrow," said Kenby, and he added, "And now the question is, why
shouldn't I go with her?"

Mrs. March gave a little start, and looked at her husband, but he said
nothing, and Kenby seemed not to have supposed that he would say
anything.

"I know it would be very American, and all that, but I happen to be an
American, and it wouldn't be out of character for me. I suppose," he
appealed to Mrs. March, "that it's something I might offer to do if it
were from New York to Florida--and I happened to be going there? And I
did happen to be going to Holland."

"Why, of course, Mr. Kenby," she responded, with such solemnity that
March gave way in an outrageous laugh.

Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of
protest.

"Well," Kenby continued, still addressing her, "what I want you to do is
to stand by me when I propose it."

Mrs. March gathered strength to say, "No, Mr. Kenby, it's your own
affair, and you must take the responsibility."

"Do you disapprove?"

"It isn't the same as it would be at home. You see that yourself."

"Well," said Kenby, rising, "I have to arrange about their getting away
to-morrow. It won't be easy in this hurly-burly that's coming off."

"Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I'll come round and see
her to-morrow before she starts."

"Oh! I'm afraid you can't, Mrs. March. They're to start at six in the
morning."

"They are! Then we must go and see them tonight. We'll be there almost as
soon as you are."

March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the stairs:

"Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us
completely away. And what was there to keep grinning about, all through?"

"Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always
the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself
off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection
for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; I
wanted to yell."

His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said
from the point where he had side-tracked her mind: "I don't call it
disingenuous. He was brutally frank. He's made it impossible to treat the
affair with dignity. I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from this
out. Now, will you?"

On their way to the Spanischer Hof she arranged in her own mind for Mrs.
Adding to get a maid, and for the doctor to send an assistant with her on
the journey, but she was in such despair with her scheme that she had not
the courage to right herself when Mrs. Adding met her with the appeal:

"Oh, Mrs. March, I'm so glad you approve of Mr. Kenby's plan. It does
seem the only thing to do. I can't trust myself alone with Rose, and Mr.
Kenby's intending to go to Schevleningen a few days later anyway. Though
it's too bad to let him give up the manoeuvres."

"I'm sure he won't mind that," Mrs. March's voice said mechanically,
while her thought was busy with the question whether this scandalous
duplicity was altogether Kenby's, and whether Mrs. Adding was as
guiltless of any share in it as she looked. She looked pitifully
distracted; she might not have understood his report; or Kenby might
really have mistaken Mrs. March's sympathy for favor.

"No, he only lives to do good," Mrs. Adding returned. "He's with Rose;
won't you come in and see them?"

Rose was lying back on the pillows of a sofa, from which they would not
let him get up. He was full of the trip to Holland, and had already
pushed Kenby, as Kenby owned, beyond the bounds of his very general
knowledge of the Dutch language, which Rose had plans for taking up after
they were settled in Schevleningen. The boy scoffed at the notion that he
was not perfectly well, and he wished to talk with March on the points
where he had found Kenby wanting.

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