Cummings. "Don't! You wrong yourself and me. I have seen Miss Wyatt; but I hope"
General Wyatt. "You have seen her ghost. You have not seen the radiant creature that was once alive. Well, sir; enough of this. There is little left to trouble you with. We landed eight days ago, and I have since been looking about for some place in which my daughter could hide herself; I can't otherwise suggest her morbid sensitiveness, her terror of people. This region was highly commended to me for its healthfulness; but I have come upon this house by chance. I understood that it was empty, and I thought it more than probable that we might pass the autumn months here unmolested by the presence of any one belonging to our world, if not in entire seclusion. At the best, my daughter would hardly have been able to endure another change at once; so far as anything could give her pleasure, the beauty and the wild quiet of the region had pleased her, but she is now quite prostrated, sir,"
Cummings, definitively. "My friend will go away at once. There is nothing else for it."
General Wyatt. "That is too much to ask."
Cummings. "I won't conceal my belief that he will think so. But there can be no question with him when"
General Wyatt. "When you tell him our story?" After a moment: "Yes, he has a right to know it as the rest of the world knows it. You must tell him, sir."
Cummings, gently. "No, he need know nothing beyond the fact of this resemblance to some one painfully associated with your past lives. He is a man whose real tenderness of heart would revolt from knowledge that could inflict further sorrow upon you."
General Wyatt. "Sir, will you convey to this friend of yours an old man's very humble apology, and sincere prayer for his forgiveness?"
Cummings. "He will not exact anything of that sort. The evidence of misunderstanding will be clear to him at a word from me."
General Wyatt. "But he has a right to this explanation from my own lips, and Sir, I am culpably weak. But now that I have missed seeing him here, I confess that I would willingly avoid meeting him. The mere sound of his voice, as I heard it before I saw him, in first coming upon you, was enough to madden me. Can you excuse my senseless dereliction to him?"
Cummings. "I will answer for him."
General Wyatt. "Thanks. It seems monstrous that I should be asking and accepting these great favours. But you are doing a deed of charity to a helpless man utterly beggared in pride." He chokes with emotion, and does not speak for a moment. "Your friend is also he is not also a clergyman?"
Cummings, smiling. "No. He is a painter."
General Wyatt. "Is he a man of note? Successful in his profession?"
Cummings. "Not yet. But that is certain to come."
General Wyatt. "He is poor?"
Cummings. "He is a young painter."
General Wyatt. "Sir, excuse me. Had he planned to remain here some time yet?"
Cummings, reluctantly. "He has been sketching here. He had expected to stay through October."
General Wyatt. "You make the sacrifice hard to accept I beg your pardon! But I must accept it. I am bound hand and foot."
Cummings. "I am sorry to have been obliged to tell you this."
General Wyatt. "I obliged you, sir; I obliged you. Give me your advice, sir; you know your friend. What shall I do? I am not rich. I don't belong to a branch of the government service in which people enrich themselves. But I have my pay; and if your friend could sell me the pictures he's been painting here"
Cummings. "That's quite impossible. There is no form in which I could propose such a thing to a man of his generous pride."
General Wyatt. "Well, then, sir, I must satisfy myself as I can to remain his debtor. Will you kindly undertake to tell him?"
An Elderly Serving-Woman, who appears timidly and anxiously at the right-hand door. "General Wyatt."
General Wyatt, with a start. "Yes, Mary! Well?"
Mary, in vanishing. "Mrs. Wyatt wishes to speak with you."
General Wyatt, going up to Cummings. "I must go, sir. I leave unsaid what I cannot even try to say." He offers his hand.
Cummings, grasping the proffered hand. "Everything is understood." But as Mr. Cummings returns from following General Wyatt to the door, his face does not confirm the entire security of his words. He looks anxious and perturbed, and when he has taken up his hat and stick, he stands pondering absent-mindedly. At last he puts on his hat and starts briskly toward the door. Before he reaches it, he encounters Bartlett, who advances abruptly into the room. "Oh! I was going to look for you."
VICummings and BartlettBartlett, sulkily. "Were you?" He walks, without looking at Cummings, to where his painter's paraphernalia are lying, and begins to pick them up.
Cummings. "Yes." In great embarrassment: "Bartlett, General Wyatt has been here."
Bartlett, without looking round. "Who is General Wyatt?"
Cummings. "I mean the gentleman who whom you wouldn't wait to see."
Bartlett. "Um!" He has gathered the things into his arms, and is about to leave the room.
Cummings, in great distress. "Bartlett, Bartlett! Don't go! I implore you, if you have any regard for me whatever, to hear what I have to say. It's boyish, it's cruel, it's cowardly to behave as you're doing!"
Bartlett. "Anything more, Mr. Cummings? I give you benefit of clergy."
Cummings. "I take it to denounce your proceeding as something that you'll always be sorry for and ashamed of."
Bartlett. "Oh! Then, if you have quite freed your mind, I think I may go."
Cummings. "No, no! You mustn't go. Don't go, my dear fellow. Forgive me! I know how insulted you feel, but upon my soul it's all a mistake, it is, indeed. General Wyatt" Bartlett falters a moment and stands as if irresolute whether to stay and listen or push on out of the room "the young lady I don't know how to begin!"
Bartlett, relenting a little. "Well? I'm sorry for you, Cummings. I left a very awkward business to you, and it wasn't yours either. As for General Wyatt, as he chooses to call himself"
Cummings, in amaze. "Call himself? It's his name!"
Bartlett. "Oh, very likely! So is King David his name, when he happens to be in a Scriptural craze. What explanation have you been commissioned to make me? What apology?"
Cummings. "The most definite, the most satisfactory. You resemble in a most extraordinary manner a man who has inflicted an abominable wrong upon these people, a treacherous and cowardly villain"
Bartlett, in a burst of fury. "Stop! Is that your idea of an apology, an explanation? Isn't it enough that I should be threatened, and vilified, and have people fainting at the sight of me, but I must be told by way of reparation that it all happens because I look like a rascal?"