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diff --git a/old/whahp10.txt b/old/whahp10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..709d0c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whahp10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13707 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of April Hopes, by W. D. Howells +#50 in our series by William Dean Howells + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> +and Pat Castevens <patcat@ctnet.net> + + + + + +APRIL HOPES + +by William Dean Howells + + + + +From his place on the floor of the Hemenway Gymnasium Mr. Elbridge G. +Mavering looked on at the Class Day gaiety with the advantage which his +stature, gave him over most people there. Hundreds of these were pretty +girls, in a great variety of charming costumes, such as the eclecticism +of modern fashion permits, and all sorts of ingenious compromises between +walking dress and ball dress. It struck him that the young men on whose +arms they hung, in promenading around the long oval within the crowd of +stationary spectators, were very much younger than students used to be, +whether they wore the dress-coats of the Seniors or the cut-away of the +Juniors and Sophomores; and the young girls themselves did not look so +old as he remembered them in his day. There vas a band playing +somewhere, and the galleries were well filled with spectators seated at +their ease, and intent on the party-coloured turmoil of the floor, where +from time to time the younger promenaders broke away from the ranks into +a waltz, and after some turns drifted back, smiling and controlling their +quick breath, and resumed their promenade. The place was intensely +light, in the candour of a summer day which had no reserves; and the +brilliancy was not broken by the simple decorations. Ropes of wild +laurel twisted up the pine posts of the aisles, and swung in festoons +overhead; masses of tropical plants in pots were set along between the +posts on one side of the room; and on the other were the lunch tables, +where a great many people were standing about, eating chicken and salmon +salads, or strawberries and ice-cream, and drinking claret-cup. From the +whole rose that blended odour of viands, of flowers, of stuff's, of +toilet perfumes, which is the characteristic expression of, all social +festivities, and which exhilarates or depresses--according as one is new +or old to it. + +Elbridge Mavering kept looking at the faces of the young men as if he +expected to see a certain one; then he turned his eyes patiently upon. +the faces around him. He had been introduced to a good many persons, but +he had come to that time of life when an introduction; unless charged +with some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisome +encounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on the +severity of a man who finds himself without acquaintance where others are +meeting friends, when a small man, with a neatly trimmed reddish-grey +beard and prominent eyes, stepped in front of him, and saluted him with +the "Hello, Mavering!" of a contemporary. + +His face, after a moment of question, relaxed into joyful recognition. +"Why, John Munt! is that you?" he said, and he took into his large moist +palm the dry little hand of his friend, while they both broke out into +the incoherencies of people meeting after a long time. Mr. Mavering +spoke in it voice soft yet firm, and with a certain thickness of tongue; +which gave a boyish charm to his slow, utterance, and Mr. Munt used the +sort of bronchial snuffle sometimes cultivated among us as a chest tone. +But they were cut short in their intersecting questions and exclamations +by the presence of the lady who detached herself from Mr. Munt's arm as +if to leave him the freer for his hand-shaking. + +"Oh!" he said, suddenly recurring to her; "let me introduce you to Mrs. +Pasmer, Mr. Mavering," and the latter made a bow that creased his +waistcoat at about the height of Mrs. Pasmer's pretty little nose. + +His waistcoat had the curve which waistcoats often describe at his age; +and his heavy shoulders were thrown well back to balance this curve. His +coat hung carelessly open; the Panama hat in his hand suggested a certain +habitual informality of dress, but his smoothly shaven large handsome +face, with its jaws slowly ruminant upon nothing, intimated the +consequence of a man accustomed to supremacy in a subordinate place. + +Mrs. Pasmer looked up to acknowledge the introduction with a sort of +pseudo-respectfulness which it would be hard otherwise to describe. +Whether she divined or not that she was in the presence of a magnate of +some sort, she was rather superfluously demure in the first two or three +things she said, and was all sympathy and interest in the meeting of +these old friends. They declared that they had not seen each other for +twenty years, or, at any rate, not since '59. She listened while they +disputed about the exact date, and looked from time to time at Mr. Munt, +as if for some explanation of Mr. Mavering; but Munt himself, when she +saw him last, had only just begun to commend himself to society, which +had since so fully accepted him, and she had so suddenly, the moment +before, found her self hand in glove with him that she might well have +appealed to a third person for some explanation of Munt. But she was not +a woman to be troubled much by this momentary mystification, and she was +not embarrassed at all when Munt said, as if it had all been pre- +arranged, "Well, now, Mrs. Pasmer, if you'll let me leave you with Mr. +Mavering a moment, I'll go off and bring that unnatural child to you; no +use dragging you round through this crowd longer." + +He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once polite +and jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised, and Mr. +Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to overcome pressing his jaws +together two or three times without speaking. She had no trouble in +getting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?" +She spoke in a deep low voice, with a caressing manner, and stood looking +up, at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and the other drooped, and +a tasteful composition of her fan and hands and handkerchief at her +waist. + +"Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her +with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind +fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman +from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president? +railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?-- +no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes, +and to centre there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch of +her neat brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and her +very appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half the +battle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer; +but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say, +with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity, +whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give a +much finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, than +we used to do in our rooms." + +"Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, with +surprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes, +indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" she +said, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders. + +"Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of the +consciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a son +somewhere here?" + +"Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, but for +her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, Mr. +Mavering." + +At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with question +as to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only a +daughter?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor, +despised young girl, Mr. Mavering." + +"You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as if it +were a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that had its +queer fascination. + +"Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Well, I shouldn't have thought so." + +"Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry and devotion +have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoiled nowadays, +and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?" + +"No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of the +novel ideas. "Do you?" + +"Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that I +don't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're not +one of those--pessimists!" + +"Well," said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, "I don't know that I can +speak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't been at +a Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even been at +Commencement more than once or twice. But in my time here we didn't +expect the young ladies to show us attentions; at any rate, we didn't +wait for them to do it. We were very glad, to be asked to meet them, +and we thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk or +dance with them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of them +could complain of want of attention." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, "that's what I preached, that's what I +prophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her that +a girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now that +girls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hears +such dreadful things!" + +"Like what?" asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which Mrs. +Primer made most people feel in her talk. + +"Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girls +moping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young men to +talk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an assembly and +not going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl fairly throws +herself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this terrible +disproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; it +reverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round, and +they know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the war." + +He laughed, and, "I should think," he said, laying hold of a single idea +out of several which she had presented, "that there would always be +enough young men in Cambridge to go round." + +Mrs. Pasmer gave a little cry. "In Cambridge!" + +"Yes; when I was in college our superiority was entirely numerical." + +"But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear," retorted Mrs. Pasmer. +"I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantage for a girl +to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave her independence and ease +of manner to have so many young men attentive to her. But they say the +students all go into Boston now, and if the Cambridge girls want to meet +them, they have to go there too. Oh, I assure you that, from what I +hear, they've changed all that since our time, Mr. Mavering." + +Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than she would +have approved of in another. The result was apparent in the jocosity of +this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply. + +"Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wicked +generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men is +brought low, so to speak, after marriage?" + +Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. "Oh, give us an equal +chance," she laughed, "and we can always take care of ourselves, and +something more. They say," she added, "that the young married women now +have all the attention that girls could wish." + +"H'm!" said Mr. Mavering, frowning. "I think I should be tempted to box +my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention." + +"What a Roman father!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting +herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really +must find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye +over the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meant to +take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did not +see him, and something else suggested itself. "He probably wouldn't let +you see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it." + +"How not know it?" + +Mrs. Primer did not answer. "One hears such dreadful things. What do +you say--or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip--" + +"Oh no;" said Mr: Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever it +was. + +Mrs. Primer resumed: "--to the young married women meeting last winter +just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously +resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?" + +"The Buds?" + +"Yes, the Rose-buds--the debutantes; it's an odious little word, but +everybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of things for +America? But I can't believe all those things," said Mrs. Pasmer, +flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. "Isn't this a +pretty scene?" + +"Yes, it is," Mr. Mavering admitted, withdrawing his mind gradually from +a consideration of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. "Yes!" he added, in +final self-possession. "The young fellows certainly do things in a great +deal better style nowadays than we used to." + +"Oh yes, indeed! And all those pretty girls do seem to be having such a +good time!" + +"Yes; they don't have the despised and rejected appearance that you'd +like to have one believe." + +"Not in the least!" Mrs. Pasmer readily consented. "They look radiantly +happy. It shows that you can't trust anything that people say to you." +She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent shame +for her inconsistency. "I fancy it's pretty much as it's always been: if +a girl is attractive, the young men find it out." + +"Perhaps," said Mr: Mavering, unbending with dignity, "the young married +women have held another meeting, and resolved to give the Buds one more +chance." + +"Oh, there are some pretty mature Roses here," said Mrs. Pasmer, laughing +evasively. "But I suppose Class Day can never be taken from the young +girls." + +"I hope not," said Mr. Mavering. His wandering eye fell upon some young +men bringing refreshments across the nave toward them, and he was +reminded to ask Mrs. Pasmer, "Will you have something to eat?" He had +himself had a good deal to eat, before he took up his position at the +advantageous point where John Munt had found him. + +"Why, yes, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "I ought to say, 'An ice, +please,' but I'm really hungry, and--" + +"I'll get you some of the salad," said Mr. Mavering, with the increased +liking a man feels for a woman when she owns to an appetite. "Sit down +here," he added, and he caught a vacant chair toward her. When he turned +about from doing so, he confronted a young gentleman coming up to Mrs. +Pasmer with a young lady on his arm, and making a very low bow of +relinquishment. + + + + +II. + +The men looked smilingly at each other without saying anything; and the +younger took in due form the introduction which the young lady gave him. + +"My mother, Mr. Mavering." + +"Mr. Mavering!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, in a pure astonishment, before she had +time to colour it with a polite variety of more conventional emotions. +She glanced at the two men, and gave a little "Oh?" of inquiry and +resignation, and then said, demurely, "Let me introduce you to Mr. +Mavering, Alice," while the young fellow laughed nervously, and pulled +out his handkerchief, partly to hide the play of his laughter, and partly +to wipe away the perspiration which a great deal more laughing had +already gathered on his forehead. He had a vein that showed prominently +down its centre, and large, mobile, girlish blue eyes under good brows, +an arched nose, and rather a long face and narrow chin. He had beautiful +white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw that contracted +very much toward the front. He was tall and slim, and he wore with +elegance the evening dress which Class Day custom prescribes for the +Seniors; in his button-hole he had a club button. + +"I shall not have to ask an introduction to Mr. Mavering; and you've +robbed me of the pleasure of giving him one to you, Mrs. Pasmer," he +said. + +She heard the young man in the course of a swift review of what she had +said to his father, and with a formless resentment of the father's not +having told her he had a son there; but she answered with the flattering +sympathy she had the use of, "Oh, but you won't miss one pleasure out of +so many to-day, Mr. Mavering; and think of the little dramatic surprise!" + +"Oh, perfect," he said, with another laugh. "I told Miss Pasmer as we +came up." + +"Oh, then you were in the surprise, Alice!" said Mrs. Pasmer, searching +her daughter's eyes for confession or denial of this little community of +interest. The girl smiled slightly upon the young man, but not +disapprovingly, and made no other answer to her mother, who went on: +"Where in the world have you been? Did Mr. Munt find you? Who told you +where I was? Did you see me? How did you know I was here? Was there +ever anything so droll?" She did not mean her questions to be answered, +or at least not then; for, while her daughter continued to smile rather +more absently, and young Mavering broke out continuously in his nervous +laugh, and his father stood regarding him with visible satisfaction, she +hummed on, turning to the young man: "But I'm quite appalled at Alice's +having monopolised even for a few minutes a whole Senior--and probably an +official Senior at that," she said, with a glance at the pink and white +club button in his coat lapel, "and I can't let you stay another instant, +Mr. Mavering. I know very well how many demands you have upon you and +you must go back directly to your sisters and your cousins and your +aunts, and all the rest of them; you must indeed." + +"Oh no! Don't drive me away, Mrs. Pasmer," pleaded the young man, +laughing violently, and then wiping his face. "I assure you that I've no +encumbrances of any kind here except my father, and he seems to have been +taking very good care of himself." They all laughed at this, and the +young fellow hurried on: "Don't be alarmed at my button; it only means a +love of personal decoration, if that's where you got the notion of my +being an official Senior. This isn't my spread; I shall hope to welcome +you at Beck Hall after the Tree; and I wish you'd let me be of use to +you. Wouldn't you like to go round to some of the smaller spreads? I +think it would amuse you. And have you got tickets to the Tree, to see +us make fools of ourselves? It's worth seeing, Mrs. Pasmer, I assure +you." + +He rattled on very rapidly but with such a frankness in his urgency, such +amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. +She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction +as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she +waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one +sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the +fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of +white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple +combination of colours was carried up into her hat, which surmounted +darker hair than Mrs. Pasmer's, and a complexion of wholesome pallor; her +eyes were grey and grave, with black brows, and her face, which was +rather narrow, had a pleasing irregularity in the sharp jut of the nose; +in profile the parting of the red lips showed well back into the cheek, + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, in her own behalf; and she added in +his, "about letting you take so much trouble," so smoothly that it would +have been quite impossible to detect the point of union in the two +utterances. + +"Well, don't call it names, anyway, Mrs. Pasmer," pleaded the young man. +"I thought it was nothing but a pleasure and a privilege--" + +"The fact is," she explained, neither consenting nor refusing, "that we +were expecting to meet some friends who had tickets for us"--young +Mavering's face fell--" and I can't imagine what's happened." + +"Oh, let's hope something dreadful," he cried. + +Perhaps you know them," she delayed further. "Professor Saintsbury!" + +"Well, rather! Why, they were here about an hour ago--both of them. +They must have been looking for you." + +"Yes; we were to meet them here. We waited to come out with other +friends, and I was afraid we were late." Mrs. Pasmer's face expressed a +tempered disappointment, and she looked at her daughter for indications +of her wishes in the circumstances; seeing in her eye a willingness to +accept young Mavering's invitation, she hesitated more decidedly than she +had yet done, for she was, other things being equal, quite willing to +accept it herself. But other things were not equal, and the whole +situation was very odd. All that she knew of Mr. Mavering the elder was +that he was the old friend of John Munt, and she knew far too little of +John Munt, except that he seemed to go everywhere, and to be welcome, not +to feel that his introduction was hardly a warrant for what looked like +an impending intimacy. She did not dislike Mr. Mavering; he was +evidently a country person of great self-respect, and no doubt of entire +respectability. He seemed very intelligent, too. He was a Harvard man; +he had rather a cultivated manner, or else naturally a clever way of +saying things. But all that was really nothing, if she knew no more +about him, and she certainly did not. If she could only have asked her +daughter who it was that presented young Mavering to her, that might have +formed some clew, but there was no earthly chance of asking this, and, +besides, it was probably one of those haphazard introductions that people +give on such occasions. Young Mavering's behaviour gave her still +greater question: his self-possession, his entire absence of anxiety; +or any expectation of rebuff or snub, might be the ease of unimpeachable +social acceptance, or it might be merely adventurous effrontery; only +something ingenuous and good in the young fellow's handsome face forbade +this conclusion. That his face was so handsome was another of the +complications. She recalled, in the dreamlike swiftness with which all +these things passed through her mind, what her friends had said to Alice +about her being sure to meet her fate on Class Day, and she looked at her +again to see if she had met it. + +"Well, mamma?" said the girl, smiling at her mother's look. + +Mrs. Pasmer thought she must have been keeping young Mavering waiting a +long time for his answer. "Why, of course, Alice. But I really don't +know what to do about the Saintsburys." This was not in the least true, +but it instantly seemed so to Mrs. Pasmer, as a plausible excuse will +when we make it. + +"Why, I'll tell you what, Mrs. Pasmer," said young Mavering, with a +cordial unsuspicion that both won and reassured her, "we'll be sure to +find them at some of the spreads. Let me be of that much use, anyway; +you must." + +"We really oughtn't to let you," said Mrs. Pasmer, making a last effort +to cling to her reluctance, but feeling it fail, with a sensation that +was not disagreeable. She could not help being pleased with the pleasure +that she saw in her daughter's face. + +Young Mavering's was radiant. "I'll be back in just half a minute," he +said, and he took a gay leave of them in running to speak to another +student at the opposite end of the hall. + + + + +III. + +"You must allow me to get you something to eat first, Mrs. Pasmer," said +the elder Mavering. + +"Oh no, thank you," Mrs. Pasmer began. But she changed her mind and +said, "Or, yes; I will, Mr. Mavering: a very little salad, please." She +had really forgotten her hunger, as a woman will in the presence of any +social interest; but she suddenly thought his going would give her a +chance for two words with her daughter, and so she sent him. As he +creaked heavily across the smooth floor of the nave; "Alice," she +whispered, "I don't know exactly what I've done: Who introduced this +young Mr. Mavering to you?" + +"Mr. Munt." + +"Mr. Munt!" + +"Yes; he came for me; he said you sent him. He introduced Mr. Mavering, +and he was very polite. Mr. Mavering said we ought to go up into the +gallery and see how it looked; and Mr. Munt said he'd been up, and Mr. +Mavering promised to bring me back to him, but he was not there when we +got back. Mr. Mavering got me some ice cream first, and then he found +you for me." + +"Really," said Mrs. Pasmer to herself, "the combat thickens!" To her +daughter she said, "He's very handsome." + +"He laughs too much," said the daughter. Her mother recognised her +uncandour with a glance. "But he waltzes well," added the girl. + +"Waltzes?" echoed the mother. "Did you waltz with him, Alice?" + +"Everybody else was dancing. He asked me for a turn or two, and of +course I did it. What difference?" + +"Oh, none--none. Only--I didn't see you." + +"Perhaps you weren't looking." + +"Yes, I was looking all the time." + +"What do you mean, mamma?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Pasmer, in a final despair, "we don't know anything +about them." + +"We're the only people here who don't, then," said her daughter. "The +ladies were bowing right left to him all the time, and he kept asking +if I knew this one and that one, and all I could say was that some of +them were distant cousins, but I wasn't acquainted with them. I would +think he'd wonder who we were." + +"Yes," said the mother thoughtfully. + +"There! he's laughing with that other student. But don't look!" + +Mrs. Pasmer saw well enough out of the corner of her eye the joking that +went on between Mavering and his friend, and it did not displease her to +think that it probably referred to Alice. While the young man came +hurrying back to them she glanced at the girl standing near her with a +keenly critical inspection, from which she was able to exclude all +maternal partiality, and justly decided that she was one of the most +effective girls in the place. That costume of hers was perfect. Mrs. +Pasmer wished now that she could have compared it more carefully with +other costumes; she had noticed some very pretty ones; and a feeling of +vexation that Alice should have prevented this by being away so long just +when the crowd was densest qualified her satisfaction. The people were +going very fast now. The line of the oval in the nave was broken into +groups of lingering talkers, who were conspicuous to each other, and Mrs. +Pasmer felt that she and her daughter were conspicuous to all the rest +where they stood apart, with the two Maverings converging upon them from +different points, the son nodding and laughing to friends of both sexes +as he came, the father wholly absorbed in not spilling the glass of +claret punch which he carried in one hand, and not falling down on the +slippery floor with the plate of salad which he bore in the other. She +had thoughts of feigning unconsciousness; she would have had no scruple +in practising this or any other social stratagem, for though she kept a +conscience in regard to certain matters--what she considered essentials-- +she lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her daughter by +precept and example to do the same. You must seem to be looking one way +when you were really looking another; you must say this when you meant +that; you must act as if you were thinking one thing when you were +thinking something quite different; and all to no end, for, as she +constantly said, people always know perfectly well what you were about, +whichever way you looked or whatever you said, or no matter how well you +acted the part of thinking what you did not think. Now, although she +seemed not to look, she saw all that has been described at a glance, and +at another she saw young Mavering slide easily up to his father and +relieve him of the plate and glass, with a laugh as pleasant and a show +of teeth as dazzling as he bestowed upon any of the ladies he had passed. +She owned to her recondite heart that she liked this in young Mavering, +though at the same time she asked herself what motive he really had in +being so polite to his father before people. But she had no time to +decide; she had only time to pack the question hurriedly away for future +consideration, when young Mavering arrived at her elbow, and she turned +with a little "Oh!" of surprise so perfectly acted that it gave her the +greatest pleasure. + + + + +IV. + +"I don't think my father would have got here alive with these things," +said young Mavering. "Did you see how I came to his rescue?" + +Mrs. Pasmer instantly threw away all pretext of not having seen. "Oh +yes! my heart was in my mouth when you bore down upon him, Mr. Mavering. +It was a beautiful instance of filial devotion." + +"Well, do sit down now, Mrs. Pasmer, and take it comfortably," said the +young fellow; and he got her one of the many empty chairs, and would not +give her the things, which he put in another, till she sat down and let +him spread a napkin over her lap. + +"Really," she said, "I feel as if I were stopping all the wheels of Class +Day. Am I keeping them from closing the Gymnasium, Mr. Mavering?" + +"Not quite," said the young man, with one of his laughs. "I don't +believe they will turn us out, and I'll see that they don't lock us in. +Don't hurry, Mrs. Pasmer. I'm only sorry you hadn't something sooner." + +"Oh, your father proposed getting me something a good while ago." + +"Did he? Then I wonder you haven't had it. He's usually on time." + +"You're both very energetic, I think," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +He's the father of his son," said the young fellow, assuming the merit +with a bow of burlesque modesty. + +It went to Mrs. Pasmer's heart. "Let's hope he'll never forget that," +she said, in an enjoyment of the excitement and the salad that was +beginning to leave her question of these Maverings a light, diaphanous +cloud on the verge of the horizon. + +The elder Mavering had been trying, without success, to think of +something to say to Miss Pasmer, he had twice cleared his throat for that +purpose. But this comedy between his son and the young lady's mother +seemed so much lighter and brighter than anything he could have said, +that he said nothing, and looked on with his mouth set in its queer +smile, while the girl listened with the gravity of a daughter who sees +that her mother is losing her head. Mrs. Pasmer buzzed on in her +badinage with the young man, and allowed him to go for a cup of coffee +before she rose from her chair, and shook out her skirts with an air of +pleasant expectation of whatever should come next. + +He came back without it. "The coffee urn has dried up here, Mrs. Pasmer. +But you can get some at the other spreads; they'd be inconsolable if you +didn't take something everywhere." + +They all started toward the door, but the elder Mavering said, holding +back a little, "Dan, I think I'll go and see--" + +"Oh no, you mustn't, father," cried the young man, laying his hand with +caressing entreaty on his father's coat sleeve. "I don't want you to go +anywhere till you've seen Professor Saintsbury. We shall be sure to meet +him at some of the spreads. I want you to have that talk with him--" +He corrected himself for the instant's deflection from the interests of +his guest, and added, "I want you to help me hunt him up for Mrs. Pasmer. +Now, Mrs. Pasmer, you're not to think it's the least trouble, or anything +but a boon, much less say it," he cried, turning to the deprecation in +Mrs. Pasmer's face. He turned away from it to acknowledge the smiles and +bows of people going out of the place, and he returned their salutations +with charming heartiness. + +In the vestibule they met the friends they were going in search of. + + + + +V. + +"With Mr. Mavering, of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Saintsbury: "I might have +known it." Mrs. Pasmer would have given anything she could think of to +be able to ask why her friend might have known it; but for the present +they could only fall upon each other with flashes of self-accusal and +explanation, and rejoicing for their deferred and now accomplished +meeting. The Professor stood by with the satirical smile with which men +witness the effusion of women. Young Mavering, after sharing the ladies' +excitement fully with them, rewarded himself by an exclusive moment with +Miss Pasmer. + +"You must get Mrs. Pasmer to let me show you all of Class Day that a +Senior can. I didn't know what a perfect serpent's tooth it was to be +one before. Mrs. Saintsbury," he broke off, "have you got tickets for +the Tree? Ah, she doesn't hear me!" + +Mrs. Saintsbury was just then saying to the elder Mavering, "I'm so glad +you decided to come today. It would have been a shame if none of you +were here." She made a feint of dropping her voice, with a glance at Dan +Mavering. "He's such a nice boy," which made him laugh, and cry out-- + +"Oh, now? Don't poison my father's mind, Mrs. Saintsbury." + +"Oh, some one would be sure to tell him," retorted the Professor's wife, +"and he'd better hear it from a friend." + +The young fellow laughed again, and then he shook hands with some ladies +going out, and asked were they going so soon, from an abstract +hospitality, apparently, for he was not one of the hosts; and so turned +once more to Miss Pasmer. "We must get away from here, or the afternoon +will get away from us, and leave us nothing to show for it. Suppose we +make a start, Miss Pasmer?" + +He led the way with her out of the vestibule, banked round with pots of +palm and fern, and down the steps into the glare of the Cambridge +sunshine, blown full, as is the case on Class Day, of fine Cambridge +dust, which had drawn a delicate grey veil over the grass of the +Gymnasium lawn, and mounted in light clouds from the wheels powdering it +finer and finer in the street. Along the sidewalks dusty hacks and +carriages were ranged, and others were driving up to let people dismount +at the entrances to the college yard. Within the temporary picket- +fences, secluding a part of the grounds for the students and their +friends, were seen stretching from dormitory to dormitory long lines of +Chinese lanterns, to be lit after nightfall, swung between the elms. +Groups of ladies came and went, nearly always under the escort of some +student; the caterers' carts, disburdened of their ice-creams and salads, +were withdrawn under the shade in the street, and their drivers lounged +or drowsed upon the seats; now and then a black waiter, brilliant as a +bobolink in his white jacket and apron, appeared on some errand; the +large, mild Cambridge policemen kept the entrances to the yard with a +benevolent vigilance which was not harsh with the little Irish children +coming up from the Marsh in their best to enjoy the sight of other +people's pleasure. + +"Isn't it a perfect Class Day?" cried young Mavering, as he crossed +Kirkland Street with Miss Pasmer, and glanced down its vaulted +perspective of elms, through which the sunlight broke, and lay in the +road in pools and washes as far as the eye reached. "Did you ever see +anything bluer than the sky to-day? I feel as if we'd ordered the +weather, with the rest of the things, and I had some credit for it as +host. Do make it a little compliment, Miss Pasmer; I assure you I'll be +very modest about it." + +"Ah, I think it's fully up to the occasion," said the girl, catching the +spirit of his amiable satisfaction. "Is it the usual Class Day weather?" + +"You spoil everything by asking that," cried the young man; "it obliges +me to make a confession--it's always good weather on Class Day. There +haven't been more than a dozen bad Class Days in the century. But you'll +admit that there can't have been a better Class Day than this?" + +"Oh yes; it's certainly the pleasantest Class Day I've seen;" said the +girl; and now when Mavering laughed she laughed too. + +"Thank you so much for saying that! I hope it will pass off in unclouded +brilliancy; it will, if I can make it. Why, hallo! They're on the other +side of the street yet, and looking about as if they were lost." + +He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and waved it at the others of +their party. + +They caught sight of it, and came hurrying over through the dust. + +Mrs. Saintsbury said, apparently as the sum of her consultations with +Mrs. Pasmer: "The Tree is to be at half-past five; and after we've seen a +few spreads, I'm going to take the ladies hone for a little rest." + +"Oh no; don't do that," pleaded the young man. After making this protest +he seemed not to have anything to say immediately in support of it. He +merely added: "This is Miss Pasmer's first Class Day, and I want her to +see it all." + +"But you'll have to leave us very soon to get yourself ready for the +Tree" suggested the Professor's lady, with a motherly prevision. + +"I shall want just fifteen minutes for that." + +"I know, better, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Saintsbury, with finality. +"You will want a good three-quarters of an hour to make yourself as +disreputable as you'll look at the Tree; and you'll have to take time for +counsel and meditation. You may stay with us just half an hour, and +then we shall part inexorably. I've seen a great many more Class +Days than you have, and I know what they are in their demands upon the +Seniors." + +"Oh; well! Then we won't think about the time," said the young man, +starting on with Miss Pasmer. + +"Well, don't undertake too much," said the lady. She came last in the +little procession, with the elder Mavering, and her husband and Mrs +Pasmer preceded her. + +"What?" young Mavering called back, with his smiling face over his +shoulder. + +"She says not to bite off more than you can chew," the professor answered +for her. + +Mavering broke into a conscious laugh, but full of delight, and with his +handkerchief to his face had almost missed the greeting of some ladies +who bowed to him. He had to turn round to acknowledge it, and he was +saluting and returning salutations pretty well all along the line of +their progress. + +"I'm afraid you'll think I'm everybody's friend but my own, Miss Pasmer, +but I assure you all this is purely accidental. I don't know so many +people, after all; only all that I do know seem to be here this morning." + +"I don't think it's a thing to be sorry for," said the girl. "I wish we +knew more people. It's rather forlorn--" + +"Oh, will you let me introduce some of the fellows to you? They'll be so +glad." + +"If you'll tell them how forlorn I said I was," said the girl, with a +smile. + +"Oh, no, no, no! I understand that. And I assure you that I didn't +suppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluous +reassurance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only there +are some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you'll +allow me--" + +"We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behind +him. + +"Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for another +burst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication of +youth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in the +young faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between the +different dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged with people +coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, the +prettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, at once +sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of the +Renaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old university +town, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly and +almost pathetically beautiful under the leafage of her hovering elms and +in, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youth +that overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poets +who have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of the +humanities who has left her. + +"Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to her +daughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor's, "did you ever see so +many pretty costumes?" + +"Never," said the girl, with equal intensity. + +"Well, it makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighed +Mrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You see +splendid dressing abroad, but it's mostly upon old people who ought to be +sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it's the young +girls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charming +in the Gymnasium, but I see you must get them out-of-doors to have the +full effect. Mr. Mavering, are they always so prettily dressed on Class +Day?" + +"Well, I'm beginning to feel as if it wouldn't be exactly modest for me +to say so, whatever I think. You'd better ask Mrs. Saintsbury; she +pretends to know all about it." + +"No, I'm bound to say they're not," said the Professor's wife candidly. +"Your daughter," she added, in a low tone for all to hear, "decides that +question." + +"I'm so glad you said that, Mrs. Saintsbury," said the young man. He +looked at the girl; who blushed with a pleasure that seemed to thrill to +the last fibre of her pretty costume. + +She could not say anything, but her mother asked, with an effort at self- +denial: "Do you think so really? It's one of those London things. They +have so much taste there now," she added yielding to her own pride in the +dress. + +"Yes; I supposed it must be," said Mrs. Saintsbury, "We used to come in +muslins and tremendous hoops--don't you remember?" + +"Did you look like your photographs?" asked young Mavering, over his +shoulder. + +"Yes; but we didn't know it then," said the Professor's wife. + +"Neither did we," said the Professor. "We supposed that there had never +been anything equal to those hoops and white muslins." + +"Thank you, my dear," said his wife, tapping him between the shoulders +with her fan. "Now don't go any further." + +"Do you mean about our first meeting here on Class Day?" asked her +husband. + +"They'll think so now," said Mrs. Saintsbury patiently, with a playful +threat of consequences in her tone. + +"When I first saw the present Mrs. Saintsbury," pursued the Professor--it +was his joking way, of describing her, as if there had been several other +Mrs. Saintsburys--"she was dancing on the green here." + +"Ah, they don't dance on the green any more, I hear," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. + +"No, they don't," said the other lady; "and I think it's just as well. +It was always a ridiculous affectation of simplicity." + +"It must have been rather public," said young Mavering, in a low voice, +to Miss Pasmer. + +"It doesn't seem as if it could ever have been in character quite," she +answered. + +"We're a thoroughly indoors people," said the Professor. "And it seems +as if we hadn't really begun to get well as a race till we had come in +out of the weather." + +"How can you say that on a day like this?" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I didn't +suppose any one could be so unromantic." + +"Don't flatter him," cried his wife. + +"Does he consider that a compliment?" + +"Not personally," he answered: "But it's the first duty of a Professor of +Comparative Literature to be unromantic." + +"I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Pasmer. + +"He will be happy to explain, at the greatest possible length," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "But you shan't spoil our pleasure now, John." + +They all laughed, and the Professor looked proud of the wit at his +expense; the American husband is so, and the public attitude of the +American husband and wife toward each other is apt to be amiably +satirical; their relation seems never to have lost its novelty, or to +lack droll and surprising contrasts for them. + +Besides these passages with her husband, Mrs. Saintsbury kept up a full +flow of talk with the elder Mavering, which Mrs. Pasmer did her best to +overhear, for it related largely to his son, whom, it seemed, from the +father's expressions, the Saintsburys had been especially kind to. + +No, I assure you, "Mrs. Pasmer heard her protest, "Mr. Saintsbury has, +been very much interested in him. I hope he has not put any troublesome +ideas into his head. Of course he's very much interested in literature, +from his point of view, and he's glad to find any of the young men +interested in it, and that's apt to make him overdo matters a little." + +"Dan wished me to talk with him, and I shall certainly be glad to do so," +said the father, but in a tone which conveyed to Mrs. Pasmer the +impression that though he was always open to conviction, his mind was +made up on this point, whatever it was. + + + + +VI. + +The party went to half a dozen spreads, some of which were on a scale of +public grandeur approaching that of the Gymnasium, and others of a +subdued elegance befitting the more private hospitalities in the +students' rooms. Mrs. Pasmer was very much interested in these rooms, +whose luxurious appointments testified to the advance of riches and of +the taste to apply them since she used to visit students' rooms in far- +off Class Days. The deep window nooks and easy-chairs upholstered in the +leather that seems sacred alike to the seats and the shelves of +libraries; the aesthetic bookcases, low and topped with bric-a-brac; the +etchings and prints on the walls, which the elder Mavering went up to +look at with a mystifying air of understanding such things; the foils +crossed over the chimney, and the mantel with its pipes, and its +photographs of theatrical celebrities tilted about over it--spoke of +conditions mostly foreign to Mrs. Pasmer's memories of Harvard. The +photographed celebrities seemed to be chosen chiefly for their beauty, +and for as much of their beauty as possible, Mrs. Pasmer perceived, with +an obscure misgiving of the sort which an older generation always likes +to feel concerning the younger, but with a tolerance, too, which was +personal to herself; it was to be considered that the massive thought and +honest amiability of Salvini's face, and the deep and spiritualized power +of Booth's, varied the effect of these companies of posturing nymphs. + +At many places she either met old friends with whom she clamoured over +the wonder of their encounter there, or was made acquainted with new +people by the Saintsburys. She kept a mother's eye on her daughter, to +whom young Mavering presented everybody within hail or reach, and whom +she could see, whenever she looked at her, a radiant centre of +admiration. She could hear her talk sometimes, and she said to herself +that really Alice was coming out; she had never heard her say so many +good things before; she did not know it was in her. She vas very glad +then that she had let her wear that dress; it was certainly +distinguished, and the girl carried it off, to her mother's amusement, +with the air of a superb lady of the period from which it dated. She +thought what a simple child Alice really was, all the time those other +children, the Seniors, were stealing their glances of bold or timid +worship at her, and doubtless thinking her a brilliant woman of the +world. But there could be no mistake that she was a success. + +Part of her triumph was of course due to Mrs. Saintsbury; whose +chaperonage; Mrs. Pasmer could see, was everywhere of effect. But it was +also largely due to the vigilant politeness of young Mavering, who seemed +bent on making her have good time, and who let no chance slip him. Mrs. +Pasmer felt his kindness truly; and she did not feel it the less because +she knew that there was but one thing that could, at his frankly selfish +age, make a young fellow wish to make a girl have a good time; except for +that reason he must be bending the whole soul of egotistic youth to +making some other girl have a good time. But all the same, it gave her +pause when some one to whom she was introduced spoke to her of her +friends the Maverings, as if they were friends of the oldest standing +instead of acquaintances of very recent accident. She did not think of +disclaiming the intimacy, but "Really I shall die of these Maverings," +she said to herself, "unless I find out something about them pretty +soon." + +"I'm not going to take you to the Omicron spread, Mrs. Pasmer," said +young Mavering, coming up to her with such an effect of sympathetic +devotion that she had to ask herself, "Are they my friends, the +Maverings?" "The Saintsburys have been there already, and it is a little +too common." The tone of superiority gave Mrs. Pasmer courage. "They're +good fellows; and all that, but I want you to see the best. I suppose it +will get back to giving the spreads all in the fellows' rooms again. +It's a good deal pleasanter, don't you think?" + +"Oh yes, indeed," assented Mrs. Pasmer, though she had really been +thinking the private spreads were not nearly so amusing as the large +spread she had seen at the Gymnasium. She had also wondered where all +Mr. Mavering's relations and friends were, and the people who had social +claims on him, that he could be giving up his Class Day in this reckless +fashion to strangers. Alice would account for a good deal, but she would +not account for everything. Mrs. Pasmer would have been willing to take +him from others, but if he were so anomalous as to have no one to be +taken from, of course it lessened his value as a trophy. These things +went in and out of her mind, with a final resolution to get a full +explanation from Mrs. Saintsbury, while she stood and smiled her winning +assent up into the young man's handsome face. + +Mrs. Saintsbury, caught sight of them, and as if suddenly reminded of a +forgotten duty, rushed vividly upon him. + +"Mr. Mavering, I shall not let you stay with us another minute. You must +go to your room now and get ready. You ought to have a little rest." + +He broke out in his laugh. "Do you think I want to go and lie down +awhile, like a lady before a party?" + +"I'm sure you'd be the stronger for it," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "But go, +upon any theory. Don't you see there isn't a Senior left?" + +He would not look round. "They've gone to other spreads," he said. +"But now I'll tell you: it is pretty, near time, and if you'll take me to +my room, I'll go." + +"You're a spoiled boy," said Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"But I want Mrs. Pasmer to see the room of a real student--a reading man, +and all that--and we'll come, to humour you." + +"Well, come upon any theory," said young Mavering. + +His father, and Professor Saintsbury, who had been instructed by his wife +not to lose sight of her, were at hand, and they crossed to that old hall +which keeps its favour with the students in spite of the rivalry of the +newer dormitories--it would be hard to say why. + +Mrs. Pasmer willingly assented to its being much better, out of pure +complaisance, though the ceilings were low and the windows small, and it +did not seem to her that the Franklin stove and the aesthetic papering +and painting of young Mavering's room brought it up to the level of those +others that she had seen. But with her habit of saying some friendly +lying thing, no matter what her impressions were, she exclaimed; "Oh, how +cosy!" and glad of the word, she went about from one to another, asking, +"Isn't this cosy?" + +Mrs. Saintsbury said: "It's supposed to be the cell of a recluse; but it +is cosy--yes." + +"It looks as if some hermit had been using it as a store-room," said her +husband; for there were odds and ends of furniture and clothes and boxes +and handbags scattered about the floor. + +"I forgot all about them when I asked you," cried Mavering, laughing out +his delight. "They belong to some fellows that are giving spreads in +their rooms, and I let them put them in here." + +"Do you commonly let people put things in your room that they want to get +rid off?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Well, not when I'm expecting company." + +"He couldn't refuse even then, if they pressed the matter," said Mrs. +Saintsbury, lecturing upon him to her friend. + +"I'm afraid you're too amiable altogether, Mr. Mavering. I'm sure you +let people impose upon you," said the other lady. "You have been letting +us impose upon you." + +"Ah! now that proves you're all wrong, Mrs. Pasmer." + +"It proves that you know how to say things very prettily." + +"Oh, thank you. I know when I'm having a good time, and I do my best to +enjoy it." He ended with the nervous laugh which seemed habitual with +him. + +"He, does laugh a good deal;" thought Mrs. Pasmer, surveying him with +smiling steadiness. "I suppose it tires Alice. Some of his teeth are +filled at the sides. That vein in his forehead--they say that means +genius." She said to him: "I hope you know when others are having a good +time too, Mr. Mavering? You ought to have that reward." + +They both looked at Alice. "Oh, I should be so happy to think you hadn't +been bored with it all, Mrs: Pasmer," he returned;--with-deep feeling. + +Alice was looking at one of the sketches which were pretty plentifully +pinned about the wall, and apparently seeing it and apparently listening +to what Professor Saintsbury was saying; but her mother believed from a +tremor of the ribbons on her hat that she was conscious of nothing but +young Mavering's gaze and the sound of his voice. + +"We've been delighted, simply enchanted," said Mrs. Pasmer. And she +thought; "Now if Alice were to turn round just as she stands, he could +see all the best points of her face. I wonder what she really thinks of +him? What is it you have there; Alice?" she asked aloud. + +The girl turned her face over her shoulder so exactly in the way her +mother wished that Mrs. Pasmer could scarcely repress a cry of joy. "A +sketch of Mr. Mavering's." + +"Oh, how very interesting!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "Do you sketch, Mr. +Mavering? But of course." She pressed forward, and studied the sketch +inattentively. "How very, very good!" she buzzed deep in her throat, +while, with a glance at her daughter, she thought, "How impassive Alice +is! But she behaves with great dignity. Yes. Perhaps that's best. +And are you going to be an artist?" she asked of Mavering. + +"Not if it can be prevented," he answered, laughing again. + +"But his laugh is very pleasant," reflected Mrs. Pasmer. "Does Alice +dislike it so much?" She repeated aloud, "If it can be prevented?" + +"They think I might spoil a great lawyer in the attempt." + +"Oh, I see. And are you going to be a lawyer? But to be a great +painter! And America has so few of them." She knew quite well that she +was talking nonsense, but she was aware, through her own indifference to +the topic that he was not minding what she said, but was trying to bring +himself into talk with Alice again. The girl persistently listened to +Professor Saintsbury. + +"Is she punishing him for something?" her mother asked herself. "What +can it be for. Does she think he's a little too pushing? Perhaps, he is +a little pushing." She reflected, with an inward sigh, that she would +know whether he was if she only knew more about him. + +He did the honours of his room very simply and nicely, and he said it was +pretty rough to think this was the last of it. After which he faltered, +and something occurred to Mrs Saintsbury. + +"Why, we're keeping you! It's time for you to dress for the Tree. +John"--she reproached her husband--"how could you let us do it?" + +"Far be it from me to hurry ladies out of other people's houses-- +especially ladies who have put themselves in charge of other people." + +"No, don't hurry," pleaded Mavering; "there's plenty of time." + +"How much time?" asked Mrs. Saintsbury. + +He looked at his watch. "Well, a good quarter of an hour." + +"And I was to have taken Mrs. Pasmer and Alice home for a little rest +before the Tree!" cried Mrs Saintsbury. And now we must go at once, or +we shall get no sort of places," + +In the civil and satirical parley which followed, no one answered +another, but young Mavering bore as full a part as the elder ladies, and +only his father and Alice were silent: his guests got themselves out of +his room. They met at the threshold a young fellow, short and dark and +stout, in an old tennis suit. He fell back at sight of them, and took +off his hat to Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"Why, Mr. Boardman!" + +"Don't be bashful, Boardman?" young Mavering called out. "Come in and +show them how I shall look in five minutes." + +Mr. Boardman took his introductions with a sort of main-force self- +possession, and then said, "You'll have to look it in less than five +minutes now, Mavering. You're come for." + +"What? Are they ready?" + +"We must fly," panted Mrs. Saintsbury, without waiting for the answer, +which was lost in the incoherencies of all sorts of au revoirs called +after and called back. + + + + +VII. + +"That is one thing," said Mrs. Saintsbury, looking swiftly round to see +that the elder Mavering was not within hearing, as she hurried ahead with +Mrs. Pasmer, "that I can't stand in Dan Mavering. Why couldn't he have +warned us that it was getting near the time? Why should he have gone on +pretending that there was no hurry? It isn't insincerity exactly, but it +isn't candour; no, it's uncandid. Oh, I suppose it's the artistic +temperament--never coming straight to the point." + +"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Pasmer eagerly. + +"I'll tell you sometime." She looked round and halted a little for +Alice, who was walking detached and neglected by the preoccupation of the +two elderly men. "I'm afraid you're tired," she said to the girl. + +"Oh no." + +"Of course not, on Class Day. But I hope we shall get seats. What +weather!" + +The sun had not been oppressive at any time during the day, though the +crowded building had been close and warm, and now it lay like a painted +light on the grass and paths over which they passed to the entrance of +the grounds around the Tree. Holden Chapel, which enclosed the space on +the right as they went in, shed back the sun from its brick-red flank, +rising unrelieved in its venerable ugliness by any touch of the festive +preparations; but to their left and diagonally across from them high +stagings supported tiers of seats along the equally unlovely red bulks of +Hollis and of Harvard. These seats, and the windows in the stories above +them, were densely packed with people, mostly young girls dressed in a +thousand enchanting shades and colours, and bonneted and hatted to the +last effect of fashion. They were like vast terraces of flowers to the +swift glance, and here and there some brilliant parasol, spread to catch +the sun on the higher ranks, was like a flaunting poppy, rising to the +light and lolling out above the blooms of lower stature. But the +parasols were few, for the two halls flung wide curtains of shade over +the greater part of the spectators, and across to the foot of the chapel, +while a piece of the carpentry whose simplicity seems part of the Class +Day tradition shut out the glare and the uninvited public, striving to +penetrate the enclosure next the street. In front of this yellow pine +wall; with its ranks of benches, stood the Class Day Tree, girded at ten +or fifteen feet from the ground with a wide band of flowers. + +Mrs. Pasmer and her friends found themselves so late that if some +gentlemen who knew Professor Saintsbury had not given up their places +they could have got no seats. But this happened, and the three ladies +had harmoniously blended their hues with those of the others in that bank +of bloom, and the gentlemen had somehow made away with their +obstructiveness in different crouching and stooping postures at their +feet, when the Junior Class filed into the green enclosure amidst the +'rahs of their friends; and sank in long ranks on the grass beside the +chapel. Then the Sophomores appeared, and were received with cheers by +the Juniors, with whom they joined, as soon as they were placed, in +heaping ignominy upon the freshmen. The Seniors came last, grotesque in +the variety of their old clothes, and a fierce uproar of 'rahs and yells +met them from the students squatted upon the grass as they loosely +grouped themselves in front of the Tree; the men of the younger classes +formed in three rings, and began circling in different directions around +them. + +Mrs. Pasmer bent across Mrs. Saintsbury to her daughter: "Can you make +out Mr. Mavering among them, Alice?" + +"No. Hush, mamma!" pleaded the girl. + +With the subsidence of the tumult in the other classes, the Seniors had +broken from the stoical silence they kept through it, and were now with +an equally serious clamour applauding the first of a long list of +personages, beginning with the President, and ranging through their +favourites in the Faculty down to Billy the Postman. The leader who +invited them to this expression of good feeling exacted the full tale of +nine cheers for each person he named, and before he reached the last the +'rahs came in gasps from their dry throats. + +In the midst of the tumult the marshal flung his hat at the elm; then the +rush upon the tree took place, and the scramble for the flowers. The +first who swarmed up the trunk were promptly plucked down by the legs and +flung upon the ground, as if to form a base there for the operations of +the rest; who surged and built themselves up around the elm in an +irregular mass. From time to time some one appeared clambering over +heads and shoulders to make a desperate lunge and snatch at the flowers, +and then fall back into the fluctuant heap again. Yells, cries, and +clappings of hands came from the other students, and the spectators in +the, seats, involuntarily dying away almost to silence as some stronger +or wilfuler aspirant held his own on the heads and shoulders of the +others, or was stayed there by his friends among them till he could make +sure of a handful of the flowers. A rush was made upon him when be +reached the ground; if he could keep his flowers from the hands that +snatched at them, he staggered away with the fragments. The wreath began +to show wide patches of the bark under it; the surging and struggling +crowd below grew less dense; here and there one struggled out of it and +walked slowly about, panting pitiably. + +"Oh, I wonder they don't kill each other!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "Isn't it +terrible?" She would not have missed it on any account; but she liked to +get all she could out of her emotions. + +"They never get hurt," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "Oh, look! There's Dan +Mavering!" + +The crowd at the foot of the tree had closed densely, and a wilder roar +went up from all the students. A tall, slim young fellow, lifted on the +shoulders of the mass below, and staying himself with one hand against +the tree, rapidly stripped away the remnants of the wreath, and flung +them into the crowd under him. A single tuft remained; the crowd was +melting away under him in a scramble for the fallen flowers; he made a +crooked leap, caught the tuft, and tumbled with it headlong. + +"Oh!" breathed the ladies on the Benches, with a general suspiration lost +in the 'rahs and clappings, as Mavering reappeared with the bunch of +flowers in his hand. He looked dizzily about, as if not sure, of his +course; then his face, flushed and heated, with the hair pulled over the +eyes, brightened with recognition, and he advanced upon Mrs. Saintsbury's +party with rapid paces, each of which Mrs. Pasmer commentated with inward +conjecture. + +"Is he bringing the flowers to Alice?. Isn't it altogether too +conspicuous? Has he really the right to do it? What will people think? +Will he give them to me for her, or will he hand them directly to her? +Which should I prefer him to do? I wonder if I know?" + +When she looked up with the air of surprise mixed with deprecation and +ironical disclaimer which she had prepared while these things were +passing through her mind, young Mavering had reached them, and had paused +in a moment's hesitation before his father. With a bow of affectionate +burlesque, from which he lifted his face to break into laughter at the +look in all their eyes, he handed the tattered nosegay to his father. + +"Oh, how delightful! how delicate! how perfect!" Mrs. Pasmer confided to +herself. + +"I think this must be for you, Mrs. Pasmer," said the elder Mavering, +offering her the bouquet, with a grave smile at his son's whim. + +"Oh no, indeed!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "For Mrs. Saintsbury, of course." + +She gave it to her, and Mrs. Saintsbury at once transferred it to Miss +Pasmer. + +"They wished me to pass this to you, Alice;" and at this consummation Dan +Mavering broke into another happy laugh. + +"Mrs. Saintsbury, you always do the right thing at once," he cried. + +"That's more than I can say of you, Mr. Mavering," she retorted. + +"Oh, thank you, Mr. Mavering!" said the girl, receiving the flowers. It +was as if she had been too intent upon them and him to have noticed the +little comedy that had conveyed them to her. + + + + +VIII. + +As soon after Class Day as Mrs. Pasmer's complaisant sense of the +decencies would let her, she went out from Boston to call on Mrs. +Saintsbury in Cambridge, and thank her for her kindness to Alice and +herself. "She will know well enough what I come for," she said to +herself, and she felt it the more important to ignore Mrs. Saintsbury's +penetration by every polite futility; this was due to them both: and she +did not go till the second day after. + +Mrs. Saintsbury came down into the darkened, syringa-scented library to +find her, and give her a fan. + +"You still live, Jenny," she said, kissing her gaily. + +They called each other by their girl names, as is rather the custom in +Boston with ladies who are in the same set, whether they are great +friends or not. In the more changeful society of Cambridge, where so +many new people are constantly coming and going in connection with the +college, it is not so much the custom; but Mrs. Saintsbury was Boston +born, as well as Mrs. Pasmer, and was Cantabrigian by marriage--though +this is not saying that she was not also thoroughly so by convincement +and usage she now rarely went into Boston society. + +"Yes, Etta--just. But I wasn't sure of it," said Mrs. Pasmer, "when I +woke yesterday. I was a mere aching jelly!" + +"And Alice?" + +"Oh; I don't think she had any physical consciousness. She was a mere +rapturous memory!" + +"She did have a good time, didn't she?" said Mrs. Saintsbury, in a +generous retrospect. "I think she was on her feet every moment in the +evening. It kept me from getting tired, to watch her." + +"I was afraid you'd be quite worn out. I'd no idea it was so late. It +must have been nearly half past seven before we got away from the Beck +Hall spread, and then by the time we had walked round the college +grounds--how extremely pretty the lanterns were, and how charming the +whole effect was!--it must have been nine before the dancing began. +Well, we owe it all to you, Etta." + +"I don't know what you mean by owing. I'm always glad of an excuse for +Class Day. And it was Dan Mavering who really managed the affair." + +"He was very kind," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a feeling which was chiefly +gratitude to her friend for bringing in his name so soon. Now that it +had been spoken, she felt it decorous to throw aside the outer integument +of pretense, which if it could have been entirely exfoliated would have +caused Mrs. Pasmer morally to disappear, like an onion stripped of its +successive laminae. + +"What did you mean," she asked, leaning forward, with, her face averted, +"about his having the artistic temperament? Is he going to be an artist? +I should hope not." She remembered without shame that she had strongly +urged him to consider how much better it would be to be a painter than a +lawyer, in the dearth of great American painters. + +"He could be a painter if he liked--up to a certain point," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "Or he could be any one of half s dozen other things--his +last craze was journalism; but you know what I mean by the artistic +temperament: it's that inability to be explicit; that habit of leaving +things vague and undefined, and hoping they'll somehow come out as you +want them of themselves; that way of taking the line of beauty to get at +what you wish to do or say, and of being very finicking about little +things and lag about essentials. That's what I mean by the artistic +temperament." + +"Yes; that's terrible," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, with the abstractly severe +yet personally pitying perception of one whose every word and act was +sincere and direct. "I know just what you mean. But how does it apply +to Mr. Mavering?" + +"It doesn't, exactly," returned her friend. "And I'm always ashamed when +I say, or even think, anything against Dan Mavering. He's sweetness +itself. We've known him ever since he came to Harvard, and I must say +that a more constant and lovely follow I never saw. It wasn't merely +when he was a Freshman, and he had that home feeling hanging about him +still that makes all the Freshmen so appreciative of anything you do for +them; but all through the Sophomore and Junior years, when they're so +taken up with their athletics and their societies and their college life +generally that they haven't a moment for people that have been kind to +them, he was just as faithful as ever." + +"How nice!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Yes, indeed! And all the allurements of Boston society haven't taken him +from us altogether. You can't imagine how much this means till you've +been at home a while and seen how the students are petted and spoiled +nowadays in the young society." + +"Oh, I've heard of it," said Mrs. Pasmer. "And is it his versatility and +brilliancy, or his amiability, that makes him such a universal +favourite?" + +"Universal favourite? I don't know that he's that." + +"Well, popular, then." + +"Oh, he's certainly very much liked. But, Jenny, there are no universal +favourites in Harvard now, if there ever were: the classes are altogether +too big. And it wouldn't be ability, and it wouldn't be amiability +alone, that would give a man any sort of leadership." + +"What in the world would it be?" + +"That question, more than anything else, shows how long you've been away, +Jenny. It would be family--family, with a judicious mixture of the +others, and with money." + +"Is it possible? But of course--I remember! Only at their age one +thinks of students as being all hail-fellow-well-met with each other--" + +"Yes; it's hard to realise how conventional they are--how very much +worldlier than the world--till one sees it as one does in Cambridge. +They pique themselves on it. And Mr. Saintsbury"--she was one of those +women whom everything reminds of their husbands "says that it isn't a bad +thing altogether. He says that Harvard is just like the world; and even +if it's a little more so, these boys have got to live in the world, and +they had better know what it is. You may not approve of the Harvard +spirit, and Mr. Saintsbury doesn't sympathise with it; he only says it's +the world's spirit. Harvard men--the swells--are far more exclusive than +Oxford men. A student, 'comme il faut', wouldn't at all like to be +supposed to know another student whom we valued for his brilliancy, +unless he was popular and well known in college." + +"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "But of course! It's perfectly natural, +with young people. And it's well enough that they should begin to +understand how things really are in the world early; it will save them +from a great many disappointments." + +"I assure you we have very little to teach Harvard men in those matters. +They could give any of us points. Those who are of good family and +station know how to protect themselves by reserves that the others +wouldn't dare to transgress. But a merely rich man couldn't rise in +their set any more than a merely gifted man. He could get on to a +certain point by toadying, and some do; but he would never get to be +popular, like Dan Mavering." + +"And what makes him popular?--to go back to the point we started from," +said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Ah, that's hard to say. It's--quality, I suppose. I don't mean social +quality, exactly; but personal charm. He never had a mean thought; of +course we're all full of mean thoughts, and Dan is too; but his first +impulse is always generous and sweet, and at his age people act a great +deal from impulse. I don't suppose he ever met a human being without +wanting to make him like him, and trying to do it." + +"Yes, he certainly makes you like him," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. "But I +understand that he can't make people like him without family or money; +and I don't understand that he's one of those 'nouveaux riches' who are +giving Harvard such a reputation for extravagance nowadays." + +There was an inquiring note in Mrs. Pasmer's voice; and in the syringa- +scented obscurity, which protected the ladies from the expression of each +other's faces, Mrs. Saintsbury gave a little laugh of intelligence, to +which Mrs. Pasmer responded by a murmur of humorous enjoyment at being +understood. + +"Oh no! He isn't one of those. But the Maverings have plenty of money," +said Mrs. Saintsbury, "and Dan's been very free with it, though not +lavish. And he came here with a reputation for popularity from a very +good school, and that always goes a very great way in college." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Pasmer, feeling herself getting hopelessly adrift in +these unknown waters; but reposing a pious confidence in her pilot. + +"Yes; if a sufficient number of his class said he was the best fellow in +the world, he would be pretty sure to be chosen one of the First Ten in +the 'Dickey'." + +"What mysteries!" gasped Mrs. Pasmer, disposed to make fun of them, but a +little overawed all the same. "What in the world is the 'Dickey'?" + +"It's the society that the Freshmen are the most eager to get into. +They're chosen, ten at a time, by the old members, and to be one of the +first ten--the only Freshmen chosen--is something quite ineffable." + +"I see." Mrs. Pasmer fanned herself, after taking a long breath. "And +when he had got into the ------ " + +"Then it would depend upon himself, how he spent his money, and all that, +and what sort of society success he was in Boston. That has a great deal +to do with it from the first. Then another thing is caution-- +discreetness; not saying anything censorious or critical of other men, no +matter what they do. And Dan Mavering is the perfection of prudence, +because he's the perfection of good-nature." + +Mrs. Pasmer had apparently got all of these facts that she could digest. +"And who are the Maverings?" + +"Why, it's an old Boston name--" + +"It's too old, isn't it? Like Pasmer. There are no Maverings in Boston +that I ever heard of." + +"No; the name's quite died out just here, I believe: but it's old, and it +bids fair to be replated at Ponkwasset Falls." + +"At Ponk--" + +"That's where they have their mills, or factories, or shops, or whatever +institution they make wall-paper in." + +"Wall-paper!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, austerely. After a moment she asked: +"And is wall-paper the 'thing' now? I mean--" She tried to think of +some way of modifying the commonness of her phrase, but did not. After +all, it expressed her meaning. + +"It isn't the extreme of fashion, of course. But it's manufacturing, and +it isn't disgraceful. And the Mavering papers are very pretty, and you +can live with them without becoming anaemic, or having your face twitch." + +"Face twitch?" echoed Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Yes; arsenical poisoning." + +"Oh! Conscientious as well as aesthetic. I see. And does Mr. Mavering +put his artistic temperament into them?" + +"His father does. He's a very interesting man. He has the best taste in +certain things--he knows more about etchings, I suppose, than any one +else in Boston." + +"Is it possible! And does he live at Ponkwasset Falls? It's in Rhode +Island, isn't it?" + +"New Hampshire. Yes; the whole family live there." + +"The whole family? Are there many of them? I'd fancied, somehow, that +Mr. Mavering was the only----Do tell me about them, Etta," said Mrs. +Pasmer, leaning back in her chair, and fanning herself with an effect of +impartial interest, to which the dim light of the room lent itself. + +"He's the only son. But there are daughters, of course--very cultivated +girls." + +"And is he--is the elder Mr. Mavering a--I don't know what made me think +so--a widower?" + +"Well, no--not exactly." + +"Not exactly! He's not a grass-widower, I hope?" + +"No, indeed. But his wife's a helpless invalid, and always has been. +He's perfectly devoted to her; and he hurried home yesterday, though he +wanted very much to stay for Commencement. He's never away from her +longer than he can help. She's bedridden; and you can see from the +moment you enter it that it's a man's house. Daughters can't change +that, you know." + +"Have you been there?" asked Mrs. Pasmer, surprised that she was getting +so much information, but eager for more. "Why, how long have you known +them, Etta?" + +"Only since Dan came to Harvard. Mr. Saintsbury took a fancy to him from +the start, and the boy was so fond of him that they were always insisting +upon a visit; and last summer we stopped there on our way to the +mountains." + +"And the sisters--do they stay there the whole year round? Are they +countrified?" + +"One doesn't live in the country without being countrified," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "They're rather quiet girls, though they've been about a +good deal--to Europe with friends, and to New York in the winter. +They're older than Dan; they're more like their father. Are you afraid +of that draught at the windows?" + +"Oh no; it's delicious. And he's like the mother?" + +"Yes." + +"Then it's the father who has the artistic taste--he gets that from him; +and the mother who has the--" + +"Temperament--yes." + +"How extremely interesting! And so he's going to be a lawyer. Why +lawyer, if he's got the talent and the temperament of an artist? Does +his father wish him to be a lawyer?" + +"His father wishes him to be a wall-paper maker." + +"And the young man compromises on the law. I see," said Mrs. Pasmer. +"And you say he's been going into Boston a great deal? Where does he +go?" + +The ladies entered into this social inquiry with a zest which it would be +hard to make the reader share, or perhaps to feel the importance of. +It is enough that it ended in the social vindication of Dan Mavering. +It would not have been enough for Mrs Pasmer that he was accepted in the +best Cambridge houses; she knew of old how people were accepted in +Cambridge for their intellectual brilliancy or solidity, their personal +worth, and all sorts of things, without consideration of the mystical +something which gives vogue in Boston. + +"How superb Alice was!" Mrs. Saintsbury broke off abruptly. "She has +such a beautiful manner. Such repose." + +"Repose! Yes," said her mother, thoughtfully. "But she's very intense. +And I don't see where she gets it. Her father has repose enough, but he +has no intensity; and I'm all intensity, and no repose. But I'm no more +like my mother than Alice is like me." + +"I think she has the Hibbins face," said Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"Oh! she's got the Hibbins face," said Mrs Pasmer, with a disdain of tone +which she did not at all feel; the tone was mere absent-mindedness. + +She was about to revert to the question of Mavering's family, when the +door-bell rang, and another visitor interrupted her talk with Mrs. +Saintsbury. + + + + +IX. + +Mrs. Pasmer's husband looked a great deal older than herself, and, by +operation of a well-known law of compensation, he was lean and silent, +while she was plump and voluble. He had thick eyebrows, which remained +black after his hair and beard had become white, and which gave him an +aspect of fierceness, expressive of nothing in his character. It was +from him that their daughter got her height, and, as Mrs. Pasmer freely +owned, her distinction. + +Soon after their marriage the Pasmers had gone to live in Paris, where +they remained faithful to the fortunes of the Second Empire till its +fall, with intervals of return to their own country of a year or two +years at a time. After the fall of the Empire they made their sojourn in +England, where they lived upon the edges and surfaces of things, as +Americans must in Europe everywhere, but had more permanency of feeling +than they had known in France, and something like a real social status. +At one time it seemed as if they might end their days there; but that +which makes Americans different from all other peoples, and which finally +claims their allegiance for their own land, made them wish to come back +to America, and to come back to Boston. After all, their place in +England was strictly inferior, and must be. They knew titles, and +consorted with them, but they had none themselves, and the English +constancy which kept their friends faithful to them after they had become +an old story, was correlated with the English honesty which never +permitted them to mistake themselves for even the lowest of the nobility. +They went out last, and they did not come in first, ever. + +The invitations, upon these conditions, might have gone on indefinitely, +but they did not imply a future for the young girl in whom the interests +of her parents centred. After being so long a little girl, she had +become a great girl, and then all at once she had become a young lady. +They had to ask themselves, the mother definitely and the father +formlessly, whether they wished their daughter to marry an Englishman, +and their hearts answered them, like true Republican hearts, Not an +untitled Englishman, while they saw no prospect of her getting any other. +Mrs. Pasmer philosophised the case with a clearness and a courage which +gave her husband a series of twinges analogous to the toothache, for a +man naturally shrinks from such bold realisations. She said Alice had +the beauty of a beauty, and she had the distinction of a beauty, but she +had not the principles of a beauty; there was no use pretending that she +had. For this reason the Prince of Wales's set, so accessible to +American loveliness with the courage of its convictions, was beyond her; +and the question was whether there was money enough for a younger son, or +whether, if there was, a younger son was worth it. + +However this might be, there was no question but there was now less money +than there had been, and a great deal less. The investments had not +turned out as they promised; not only had dividends been passed, but +there had been permanent shrinkages. What was once an amiable competency +from the pooling of their joint resources had dwindled to a sum that +needed a careful eye both to the income and the outgo. Alice's becoming +a young lady had increased their expenses by the suddenly mounting cost +of her dresses, and of the dresses which her mother must now buy for the +different role she had to sustain in society. They began to ask +themselves what it was for, and to question whether, if she could not +marry a noble Englishman, Alice had not better marry a good American. + +Even with Mrs. Pasmer this question was tacit, and it need not be +explained to any one who knows our life that in her most worldly dreams +she intended at the bottom of her heart that her daughter should marry +for love. It is the rule that Americans marry for love, and the very +rare exception that they marry for anything else; and if our divorce +courts are so busy in spite of this fact, it is perhaps because the +Americans also unmarry for love, or perhaps because love is not so +sufficient in matters of the heart as has been represented in the +literature of people who have not been able to give it so fair a trial. +But whether it is all in all in marriage, or only a very marked +essential, it is certain that Mrs. Pasmer expected her daughter's +marriage to involve it. She would have shrunk from intimating anything +else to her as from a gross indecency; and she could not possibly, by any +finest insinuation, have made her a partner in her design for her +happiness. That, so far as Alice was concerned, was a thing which was to +fall to her as from heaven; for this also is part of the American plan. +We are the children of the poets, the devotees of the romancers, so far +as that goes; and however material and practical we are in other things, +in this we are a republic of shepherds and shepherdesses, and we live in +a golden age; which if it sometimes seems an age of inconvertible paper, +is certainly so through no want of faith in us. + +Though the Pasmers said that they ought to go home for Alice's sake, they +both understood that they were going home experimentally, and not with +the intention of laying their bones in their native soil, unless they +liked it, or found they could afford it. Mrs. Pasmer had no illusions in +regard to it. She had learned from her former visits home that it was +frightfully expensive; and, during the fifteen years which they had spent +chiefly abroad, she had observed the decay of that distinction which +formerly attended returning sojourners from Europe. She had seen them +cease gradually from the romantic reverence which once clothed them, and +decline through a gathering indifference into something like slight and +compassion, as people who have not been able to make their place or hold +their own at home; and she had taught herself so well how to pocket the +superiority natural to the Europeanised American before arriving at +consciousness of this disesteem, that she paid a ready tribute to people +who had always stayed at home. + +In fact Mrs. Pasmer was a flatterer, and it cannot be claimed for her +that she flattered adroitly always. But adroitness in flattery is not +necessary for its successful use. There is no morsel of it too gross for +the condor gullet and the ostrich stomach of human vanity; there is no +society in which it does not give the utterer instant honour and +acceptance in greater or less degree. Mrs. Pasmer, who was very good- +natured, employed it because she liked it herself, and knowing how +absolutely worthless it was from her own tongue, prized it from others. +She could have rested perfectly safe without it in her social position, +which she found unchanged by years of absence. She had not been a +Hibbins for nothing, and she was not a Pasmer for nothing, though why she +should have been either for something it would not be easy to say. + +But while confessing the foibles of Mrs. Pasmer, it would not be fair to +omit from the tale of her many virtues the final conscientiousness of her +openly involuted character. Not to mention other things, she instituted +and practised economies as alien to her nature as to her husband's, and +in their narrowing affairs she kept him out of debt. She was prudent; +she was alert; and while presenting to the world all the outward effect +of a butterfly, she possessed some of the best qualities of the bee. + +With his senatorial presence, his distinction of person and manner, Mr. +Pasmer was inveterately selfish in that province of small personal things +where his wife left him unmolested. In what related to his own comfort +and convenience he was undisputed lord of himself. It was she who +ordered their comings and goings, and decided in which hemisphere they +should sojourn from time to time, and in what city, street, and house, +but always with the understanding that the kitchen and all the domestic +appointments were to her husband's mind. He was sensitive to degrees of +heat and cold, and luxurious in the matter of lighting, and he had a fine +nose for plumbing. If he had not occupied himself so much with these +details, he was the sort of man to have thought Mrs. Pasmer, with her +buzz of activities and pretences, rather a tedious little woman. He had +some delicate tastes, if not refined interests, and was expensively fond +of certain sorts of bric-a-brac: he spent a great deal of time in packing +and unpacking it, and he had cases stored in Rome and London and Paris; +it had been one of his motives in consenting to come home that he might +get them out, and set up the various objects of bronze and porcelain in +cabinets. He had no vices, unless absolute idleness ensuing +uninterruptedly upon a remotely demonstrated unfitness for business can +be called a vice. Like other people who have always been idle, he did +not consider his idleness a vice. He rather plumed himself upon it, for +the man who has done nothing all his life naturally looks down upon +people who have done or are doing something. In Europe he had not all +the advantage of this superiority which such a man has here; he was often +thrown with other idle people, who had been useless for so many +generations that they had almost ceased to have any consciousness of it. +In their presence Pasmer felt that his uselessness had not that passive +elegance which only ancestral uselessness can give; that it was positive, +and to that degree vulgar. + +A life like this was not one which would probably involve great passions +or affections, and it would be hard to describe exactly the feeling with +which he regarded his daughter. He liked her, of course, and he had +naturally expected certain things of her, as a ladylike intelligence, +behaviour, and appearance; but he had never shown any great tenderness +for her, or even pride in her. She had never given him any displeasure, +however, and he had not shared his wife's question of mind at a temporary +phase of Alice's development when she showed a decided inclination for a +religious life. He had apparently not observed that the girl had a +pensive temperament in spite of the effect of worldly splendour which her +mother contrived for her, and that this pensiveness occasionally deepened +to gloom. He had certainly never seen that in a way of her own she was +very romantic. Mrs. Pasmer had seen it, with amusement sometimes, and +sometimes with anxiety, but always with the courage to believe that she +could cope with it when it was necessary. + +Whenever it was necessary she had all the moral courage she wanted; it +seemed as if she could have it or not as she liked; and in coming home +she had taken a flat instead of a house, though she had not talked with +her friends three minutes without perceiving that the moment when flats +had promised to assert their social equality with houses in Boston was +past for ever. There were, of course, cases in which there could be no +question of them; but for the most part they were plainly regarded as +makeshifts, the resorts of people of small means, or the defiances or +errors of people who had lived too much abroad. They stamped their +occupants as of transitory and fluctuant character; good people might +live in them, and did, as good people sometimes boarded; but they could +not be regarded as forming a social base, except in rare instances. They +presented peculiar difficulties in calling, and for any sort of +entertainment they were too--not public, perhaps, but--evident. + +In spite of these objections Mrs. Pasmer took a flat in the Cavendish, +and she took it furnished from people who were going abroad for a year. + + + + +X. + +Mrs. Pasmer stood at the drawing-room window of this apartment, the +morning after her call upon Mrs. Saintsbury, looking out on the passage +of an express-wagon load of trunks through Cavendish Square, and +commenting the fact with the tacit reflection that it was quite time she +should be getting away from Boston too, when her daughter, who was +looking out of the other window, started significantly back. + +"What is it, Alice?" + +"Nothing! Mr. Mavering, I think, and that friend of his----" + +"Which friend? But where? Don't look! They will think we were watching +them. I can't see them at all. Which way were they going?" Mrs. Pasmer +dramatised a careless unconsciousness to the square, while vividly +betraying this anxiety to her daughter. + +Alice walked away to the furthest part of the room. "They are coming +this way," she said indifferently. + +Before Mrs. Pasmer had time to prepare a conditional mood, adapted either +to their coming that way or going some other, she heard the janitor below +in colloquy with her maid in the kitchen, and then the maid came in to +ask if she should say the ladies were at home. "Oh, certainly," said +Mrs. Pasmer, with a caressing politeness that anticipated the tone she +meant to use with Mavering and his friend. "Were you going, Alice? +Better stay. It would be awkward sending out for you. You look well +enough." + +"Well!" + +The young men came in, Mavering with his nervous laugh first, and then +Boardman with his twinkling black eyes, and his main-force self- +possession. + +"We couldn't go away as far as New London without coming to see whether +you had really survived Class Day," said the former, addressing his +solicitude to Mrs. Pasmer. "I tried to find out from, Mrs. Saintsbury, +but she was very noncommittal." He laughed again, and shook hands with +Alice, whom he now included in his inquiry. + +"I'm glad she was," said Mrs. Pasmer--inwardly wondering what he meant by +going to New London--"if it sent you to ask in person." She made them +sit down; and she made as little as possible of the young ceremony they +threw into the transaction. To be cosy, to be at ease instantly, was +Mrs. Pasmer's way. "We've not only survived, we've taken a new lease of +life from Class Day. I'd for gotten how charming it always was. Or +perhaps it didn't use to be so charming? I don't believe they have +anything like it in Europe. Is it always so brilliant?" + +"I don't know," said Mavering. "I really believe it was rather a nice +one." + +"Oh, we were both enraptured," cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Alice added a quiet "Yes, indeed," and her mother went on-- + +"And we thought the Beck Hall spread was the crowning glory of the whole +affair. We owe ever so much to your kindness." + +"Oh, not at all," said Mavering. + +"But we were talking afterward, Alice and I, about the sudden +transformation of all that disheveled crew around the Tree into the +imposing swells--may I say howling swells?--" + +"Yes, do say 'howling,' Mrs. Pasmer!" implored the young man. + +"--whom we met afterward at the spread," she concluded. "How did you +manage it all? Mr. Irving in the 'Lyons Mail' was nothing to it. We +thought we had walked directly over from the Tree; and there you were, +all ready to receive us, in immaculate evening dress." + +"It was pretty quick work," modestly admitted the young man. "Could you +recognise any one in that hurly-burly round the Tree?" + +"We didn't till you rose, like a statue of Victory, and began grabbing +for the spoils from the heads and shoulders of your friends. Who was +your pedestal?" + +Mavering put his hand on his friend's broad shoulder, and gave him a +playful push. + +Boardman turned up his little black eyes at him, with a funny gleam in +them. + +"Poor Mr. Boardman!" said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"It didn't hurt him a bit," said Mavering, pushing him. "He liked it." + +"Of course he did," said Mrs. Pasmer, implying, in flattery of Mavering, +that Boardman might be glad of the distinction; and now Boardman looked +as if he were not. She began to get away in adding, "But I wonder you +don't kill each other." + +"Oh, we're not so easily killed," said Mavering. + +"And what a fairy scene it was at the spread!" said Mrs. Pasmer, turning +to Boardman. She had already talked its splendours over with Mavering the +same evening. "I thought we should never get out of the Hall; but when +we did get out of the window upon that tapestried platform, and down on +the tennis-ground, with Turkey rugs to hide the bare spots in it--" She +stopped as people do when it is better to leave the effect to the +listener's imagination. + +"Yes, I think it was rather nice," said Boardman. + +"Nice?" repeated Mrs. Pasmer; and she looked at Mavering. "Is that the +famous Harvard Indifferentism?" + +"No, no, Mrs. Pasmer! It's just his personal envy. He wasn't in the +spread, and of course he doesn't like to hear any one praise it. Go on!" +They all laughed. + +"Well, even Mr. Boardman will admit," said Mrs. Pasmer; "that nothing +could have been prettier than that pavilion at the bottom of the lawn, +and the little tables scattered about over it, and all those charming +young creatures under that lovely evening sky." + +"Ah! Even Boardman can't deny that. We did have the nicest crowd; +didn't we?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Pasmer, playfully checking herself in a ready adhesion, +"that depends a good deal upon where Mr. Boardman's spread was." + +"Thank you," said Boardman. + +"He wasn't spreading anywhere," cried his friend. "Except himself--he +was spreading himself everywhere." + +"Then I think I should prefer to remain neutral," said Mrs. Pasmer, with +a mock prudence which pleased the young men. In the midst of the +pleasure the was giving and feeling she was all the time aware that her +daughter had contributed but one remark to the conversation, and that she +must be seeming very stiff and cold. She wondered what that meant, and +whether she disliked this little Mr. Boardman, or whether she was again +trying to punish Mr: Mavering for something, and, if so, what it was. +Had he offended her in some way the other day? At any rate, she had no +right to show it. She longed for some chance to scold the girl, and tell +her that it would not do, and make her talk. Mr. Mavering was merely a +friendly acquaintance, and there could be no question of anything +personal. She forgot that between young people the social affair is +always trembling to the personal affair. + +In the little pause which these reflections gave her mother, the girl +struck in, with the coolness that always astonished Mrs. Pasmer, and as +if she had been merely waiting till some phase of the talk interested +her. + +"Are many of the students going to the race?" she asked Boardman. + +"Yes; nearly everybody. That is--" + +"The race?" queried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Yes, at New London," Mavering broke in. "Don't you know? The University +race--Harvard and Yale." + +"Oh--oh yes," cried Mrs. Pasmer, wondering how her daughter should know +about the race, and she not. "Had they talked it over together on Class +Day?" she asked herself. She felt herself, in spite of her efforts to +keep even with them; left behind and left out, as later age must be +distanced and excluded by youth. "Are you gentlemen going to row?" she +asked Mavering. + +"No; they've ruled the tubs out this time; and we should send anything +else to the bottom." + +Mrs. Pasmer perceived that he was joking, but also that they were not of +the crew; and she said that if that was the case the should not go. + +"Oh, don't let that keep you away! Aren't you going? I hoped you were +going," continued the young man, speaking with his eyes on Mrs. Pasmer, +but with his mind, as she could see by his eyes, on her daughter. + +"No, no." + +"Oh, do go, Mrs. Pasmer!" he urged: "I wish you'd go along to chaperon +us." + +Mrs. Pasmer accepted the notion with amusement. "I should think you +might look after each other. At any rate, I think I must trust you to +Mr. Boardman this time." + +"Yes; but he's going on business," persisted Mavering, as if for the +pleasure he found in fencing with the air, "and he can't look after me." + +"On business?" said Mrs. Pasmer, dropping her outspread fan on her lap, +incredulously. + +"Yes; he's going into journalism--he's gone into it," laughed Mavering; +"and he's going down to report the race for the 'Events'." + +"Really!" asked Mrs. Pasmer, with a glance at Boardman, whose droll +embarrassment did not contradict his friend's words. "How splendid!" she +cried. "I had, heard that a great many Harvard men were taking up +journalism. I'm so glad of it! It will do everything to elevate its +tone." + +Boardman seemed to suffer under these expectations a little, and he stole +a glance of comical menace at his friend. + +"Yes," said Mavering; "you'll see a very different tone about the fires, +and the fights, and the distressing accidents, in the 'Events' after +this." + +"What does he mean?" she asked Boardman, giving him unavoidably the +advantage of the caressing manner which was in her mind for Mavering. + +"Well, you see," said Boardman, "we have to begin pretty low down." + +"Oh, but all departments of our press need reforming, don't they?" she +inquired consolingly. "One hears such shocking things about our papers +abroad. I'm sure that the more Harvard men go into them the better. And +how splendid it is to have them going into politics the way they are! +They're going into politics too, aren't they?" She looked from one young +man to the other with an idea that she was perhaps shooting rather wild, +and an amiable willingness to be laughed at if she were. "Why don't you +go into politics, Mr. Mavering?" + +"Well, the fact is--" + +"So many of the young University men do in England," said Mrs. Pasmer, +fortifying her position. + +"Well, you see, they haven't got such a complete machine in England--" + +"Oh yes, that dreadful machine!" sighed Mrs. Pasmer, who had heard of it, +but did not know in the least what it was. + +"Do you think the Harvard crew will beat this time?" Alice asked of +Boardman. + +"Well, to tell you the truth--" + +"Oh, but you must never believe him when he begins that way!" cried +Mavering. "To be sure they will beat. And you ought to be there to see +it. Now, why won't you come, Mrs. Pasmer?" he pleaded, turning to her +mother. + +"Oh, I'm afraid we must be getting away from Boston by that time. It's +very tiresome, but there seems to be nobody left; and one can't stay +quite alone, even if you're sick of moving about. Have you ever been-- +we think of going there--to Campobello?" + +"No; but I hear that it's charming, there. I had a friend who was there +last year, and he said it was charming. The only trouble is it's so far. +You're pretty well on the way to Europe when you get there. You know +it's all hotel life?" + +"Yes. It's quite a new place, isn't it?" + +"Well, it's been opened up several years. And they say it isn't like the +hotel life anywhere else; it's charming. And there's the very nicest +class of people." + +"Very nice Philadelphia people, I hear," said Mrs. Pasmer; "and +Baltimore. Don't you think it's well;" she asked deferentially, and +under correction, if she were hazarding too much, "to see somebody +besides Boston people sometimes--if they're nice? That seems to be one +of the great advantages of living abroad." + +"Oh, I think there are nice people everywhere," said the young man, with +the bold expansion of youth. + +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. "We saw two such delightful young people +coming in and out of the hotel in Rome. We were sure they were English. +And they were from Chicago! But there are not many Western people at +Campobello, are there?" + +"I really don't know," said Mavering. "How is it, Boardman? Do many of +your people go there?" + +"You know you do make it so frightfully expensive with your money," said +Mrs. Pasmer, explaining with a prompt effect of having known all along +that Boardman was from the West, "You drive us poor people all away." + +"I don't think my money would do it," said Boardman quietly. + +"Oh, you wait till you're a Syndicate Correspondent," said, Mavering, +putting his hand on his friend's shoulder, and rising by aid of it. He +left Mrs. Pasmer to fill the chasm that had so suddenly yawned between +her and Boardman; and while she tumbled into every sort of flowery +friendliness and compliment, telling him she should look out for his +account of the race with the greatest interest, and expressing the hope +that he would get as far as Campobello during the summer, Mavering found +some minutes for talk with Alice. He was graver with her--far graver +than with her mother--not only because she was a more serious nature, but +because they were both young, and youth is not free with youth except by +slow and cautious degrees. In that little space of time they talked of +pictures, 'a propos' of some on the wall, and of books, because of those +on the table. + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Pasmer when they paused, and she felt that her piece +of difficult engineering had been quite successful, "Mrs. Saintsbury was +telling me what a wonderful connoisseur of etchings your father is." + +"I believe he does know something about them," said the young man +modestly. + +"And he's gone back already?" + +"Oh yes. He never stays long away from my mother. I shall be going home +myself as soon as I get back from the race." + +"And shall you spend the summer there?" + +"Part of it. I always like to do that." + +"Perhaps when you get away you'll come as far as Campobello--with Mr. +Boardman," she added. + +"Has Boardman promised to go?" laughed Mavering. "He will promise +anything. Well, I'll come to Campobello if you'll come to New London. +Do come, Mrs. Pasmer!" + +The mother stood watching the two young men from the window as they made +their way across the square together. She had now, for some reason; no +apparent scruple in being seen to do so. + +"How ridiculous that stout little Mr. Boardman is with him!" said Mrs. +Pasmer. "He hardly comes up to his shoulder. Why in the world should he +have brought him?" + +"I thought he was very pleasant," said the girl. + +"Yes, yes, of course. And I suppose he'd have felt that it was rather +pointed coming alone." + +"Pointed?" + +"Young men are so queer! Did you like that kind of collar he had on?" + +"I didn't notice it." + +"So very, very high." + +"I suppose he has rather a long neck." + +"Well, what did you think of his urging us to go to the race? Do you +think he meant it? Do you think he intended it for an invitation?" + +"I don't think he meant anything; or, if he did, I think he didn't know +what." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer vaguely; "that must be what Mrs. Saintsbury meant +by the artistic temperament." + +"I like people to be sincere, and not to say things they don't mean, or +don't know whether they mean or not," said Alice. + +"Yes, of course, that's the best way," admitted Mrs. Pasmer. "It's the +only way," she added, as if it were her own invariable practice. Then +she added further, "I wonder what he did mean?" + +She began to yawn, for after her simulation of vivid interest in them the +visit of the young men had fatigued her. In the midst of her yawn her +daughter went out of the room, with an impatient gesture, and she +suspended the yawn long enough to smile, and then finished it. + + + +XI. + +After first going to the Owen, at Campobello, the Pasmers took rooms at +the Ty'n-y-Coed, which is so much gayer, even if it is not so +characteristic of the old Welsh Admiral's baronial possession of the +island. It is characteristic enough, and perched on its bluff +overlooking the bay, or whatever the body of water is, it sees a score of +pretty isles and long reaches of mainland coast, with a white marble +effect of white-painted wooden Eastport, nestled in the wide lap of the +shore, in apparent luxury and apparent innocence of smuggling and the +manufacture of herring sardines. The waters that wrap the island in +morning and evening fog temper the air of the latitude to a Newport +softness in summer, with a sort of inner coolness that is peculiarly +delicious, lulling the day with long calms and light breezes, and after +nightfall commonly sending a stiff gale to try the stops of the hotel's +gables and casements, and to make the cheerful blaze on its public +hearths acceptable. Once or twice a day the Eastport ferry-boat arrives, +with passengers from the southward, at a floating wharf that sinks or +swims half a hundred feet on the mighty tides of the Northeast; but all +night long the island is shut up to its own memories and devices. The +pretty romance of the old sailor who left England to become a sort of +feudal seigneur here, with a holding of the entire island, and its +fisher-folk for his villeins, forms a picturesque background for the +aesthetic leisure and society in the three hotels remembering him and his +language in their names, and housing with a few cottages all the +sojourners on the island. By day the broad hotel piazzas shelter such of +the guests as prefer to let others make their excursions into the heart +of the island, and around its rocky, sea-beaten borders; and at night, +when the falling mists have brought the early dark, and from lighthouse +to lighthouse the fog-horns moan and low to one another, the piazzas cede +to the corridors and the parlours and smoking-rooms. The life does not +greatly differ from other seaside hotel life on the surface, and if one +were to make distinctions one would perhaps begin by saying that hotel +society there has much of the tone of cottage society elsewhere, with a +little more accessibility. As the reader doubtless knows, the great mass +of Boston society, thoughtful of its own weight and bulk, transports +itself down the North Shore scarcely further than Manchester at the +furthest; but there are more courageous or more detachable spirits who +venture into more distant regions. These contribute somewhat toward +peopling Bar Harbour in the summer, but they scarcely characterise it in +any degree; while at Campobello they settle in little daring colonies, +whose self-reliance will enlist the admiration of the sympathetic +observer. They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies of other +stirps and origins, and they even combine in temporary alliance with +them. But, after all, Boston speaks one language, and New York another, +and Washington a third, and though the several dialects have only slight +differences of inflection, their moral accents render each a little +difficult for the others. In fact every society is repellant of +strangers in the degree that it is sufficient to itself, and is incurious +concerning the rest of the world. If it has not the elements of self- +satisfaction in it, if it is uninformed and new and restless, it is more +hospitable than an older society which has a sense of merit founded upon +historical documents, and need no longer go out of itself for comparisons +of any sort, knowing that if it seeks anything better it will probably be +disappointed. The natural man, the savage, is as indifferent to others +as the exclusive, and those who accuse the coldness of the Bostonians, +and their reluctant or repellant behaviour toward unknown people, accuse +not only civilisation, but nature itself. + +That love of independence which is notable in us even in our most +acquiescent phases at home is perhaps what brings these cultivated and +agreeable people so far away, where they can achieve a sort of sylvan +urbanity without responsibility, and without that measuring of purses +which attends the summer display elsewhere. At Campobello one might be +poor with almost as little shame as in Cambridge if one were cultivated. +Mrs. Pasmer, who seldom failed of doing just the right thing for herself, +had promptly divined the advantages of Campobello for her family. She +knew, by dint of a little inquiry, and from the volunteer information of +enthusiasts who had been there the summer before, just who was likely to +be there during the summer with which she now found herself confronted. +Campobello being yet a new thing, it was not open to the objection that +you were sure to meet such and such people, more or less common or +disagreeable, there; whatever happened, it could be lightly handled in +the retrospect as the adventure of a partial and fragmentary summer when +really she hardly cared where they went. + +They did not get away from Boston before the middle of July, and after +the solitude they left behind them there, the Owen at first seemed very +gay. But when they had once or twice compared it with the Ty'n-y-Coed, +riding to and fro in the barge which formed the connecting link with the +Saturday evening hops of the latter hotel, Mrs. Pasmer decided that, from +Alice's point of view, they had made a mistake, and she repaired it +without delay. The young people were, in fact, all at the Ty'n-y-Coed, +and though she found the Owen perfectly satisfying for herself and Mr. +Pasmer, she was willing to make the sacrifice of going to a new place: it +was not a great sacrifice for one who had dwelt so long in tents. + +There were scarcely any young girls at the Owen, and no young men, of +course. Even at the Ty'n-y-Coed, where young girls abounded, it would +not be right to pretend that there were young men enough. Nowhere, +perhaps, except at Bar Harbour, is the long-lost balance of the sexes +trimmed in New England; and even there the observer, abstractly +delighting in the young girls and their dresses at that grand love- +exchange of Rodick's, must question whether the adjustment is perfectly +accurate. + +At Campobello there were not more than half enough young men, and there +was not enough flirtation to affect the prevailing social mood of the +place: an unfevered, expectationless tranquillity, in which to-day is +like yesterday, and to-morrow cannot be different. It is a quiet of +light reading, and slowly, brokenly murmured, contented gossip for the +ladies, of old newspapers and old stories and luxuriously meditated +cigars for the men, with occasional combinations for a steam-launch +cruise among the eddies and islands of the nearer waters, or a voyage +further off in the Bay of Fundy to the Grand Menan, and a return for the +late dinner which marks the high civilisation of Campobello, and then an +evening of more reading and gossip and cigars, while the night wind +whistles outside, and the brawl and crash of the balls among the tenpins +comes softened from the distant alleys. There are pleasant walks, which +people seldom take, in many directions, and there are drives and bridle- +paths all through the dense, sad, Northern woods which still savagely +clothe the greater part of the island to its further shores, where there +are shelves and plateaus of rock incomparable for picnicking. + +One need ask nothing better, in fact, than to stroll down the sylvan road +that leads to the Owen, past the little fishing-village with its sheds +for curing herring; and the pale blue smoke and appetising savour +escaping from them; and past the little chapel with which the old Admiral +attested his love of the Established rite. On this road you may +sometimes meet a little English bishop from the Provinces, in his apron. +and knee-breeches; and there is a certain bridge over a narrow estuary, +where in the shallow land-locked pools of the deeply ebbing tide you may +throw stones at sculpin, and witness the admirable indifference of those +fish to human cruelty and folly. In the middle distance you will see a +group of herring weirs, which with their coronals of tufted saplings form +the very most picturesque aspect of any fishing industry. You may, now +and then find an artist at this point, who, crouched over his easel, or +hers, seems to agree with you about the village and the weirs. + +But Alice Pasmer cared little more for such things than her mother did, +and Mrs. Pasmer regarded Nature in all her aspects simply as an adjunct +of society, or an occasional feature of the entourage. The girl had no +such worldly feeling about it, but she found slight sympathy in the moods +of earth and sky with her peculiar temperament. This temperament, whose +recondite origin had almost wholly broken up Mrs. Pasmer's faith in +heredity, was like other temperaments, not always in evidence, and Alice +was variously regarded as cold, of shy, or proud, or insipid, by the +various other temperaments brought in contact with her own. She was apt +to be liked because she was as careful of others as she was of herself, +and she never was childishly greedy about such admiration as she won, as +girls often are, perhaps because she did not care for it. Up to this +time it is doubtful if her heart had been touched even by the fancies +that shake the surface of the soul of youth, and perhaps it was for this +reason that her seriousness at first fretted Mrs. Pasmer with a vague +anxiety for her future. + +Mrs. Pasmer herself remained inalienably Unitarian, but she was aware of +the prodigious-growth which the Church had been making in society, and +when Alice showed her inclination for it, she felt that it was not at all +as if she had developed a taste for orthodoxy; when finally it did not +seem likely to go too far, it amused Mrs. Pasmer that her daughter should +have taken so intensely to the Anglican rite. + +In the hotel it attached to her by a common interest several of the +ladies who had seen her earnestly responsive at the little Owen chapel-- +ladies left to that affectional solitude which awaits long widowhood +through the death or marriage of children; and other ladies, younger, +but yet beginning to grow old with touching courage. Alice was +especially a favourite with the three or four who represented their class +and condition at the Ty'n-y Coed, and who read the best books read there, +and had the gentlest manners. There was a tacit agreement among these +ladies, who could not help seeing the difference in the temperaments of +the mother and daughter, that Mrs. Pasmer did not understand Alice; but +probably there were very few people except herself whom Mrs. Pasmer did +not understand quite well. She understood these ladies and their +compassion for Alice, and she did not in the least resent it. She was +willing that people should like Alice for any reason they chose, if they +did not go too far. With her little flutter of futile deceits, her +irreverence for every form of human worth and her trust in a providence +which had seldom failed her, she smiled at the cult of Alice's friends, +as she did at the girl's seriousness, which also she felt herself able to +keep from going too far. + +While she did not object to the sympathy of these ladies, whatever +inspired it, she encouraged another intimacy which grew up +contemporaneously with theirs, and which was frankly secular and +practical, though the girl who attached herself to Alice with one of +those instant passions of girlhood was also in every exterior observance +a strict and diligent Churchwoman. The difference was through the +difference of Boston and New York in everything: the difference between +idealising and the realising tendency. The elderly and middle-aged +Boston women who liked Alice had been touched by something high yet sad +in the beauty of her face at church; the New York girl promptly owned +that she had liked her effect the first Sunday she saw her there, and she +knew in a minute she never got those things on this side; her obeisances +and genuflections throughout the service, much more profound and +punctilious than those of any one else there, had apparently not +prevented her from making a thorough study of Alice's costume and a +correct conjecture as to its authorship. + +Miss Anderson, who claimed a collateral Dutch ancestry by the Van Hook, +tucked in between her non-committal family name and the Julia given her +in christening, was of the ordinary slender make of American girlhood, +with dull blond hair, and a dull blond complexion, which would have left +her face uninteresting if it had not been for the caprice of her nose in +suddenly changing from the ordinary American regularity, after getting +over its bridge, and turning out distinctly 'retrousse'. This gave her +profile animation and character; you could not expect a girl with that +nose to be either irresolute or commonplace, and for good or for ill Miss +Anderson was decided and original. She carried her figure, which was no +great things of a figure as to height, with vigorous erectness; she +walked with long strides, knocking her skirts into fine eddies and +tangles as she went; and she spoke in a bold, deep voice, with tones like +a man in it, all the more amusing and fascinating because of the +perfectly feminine eyes with which she looked at you, and the nervous, +feminine gestures which she used while she spoke. + +She took Mrs. Pasmer into her confidence with regard to Alice at an early +stage of their acquaintance, which from the first had a patronising or +rather protecting quality in it; if she owned herself less fine, she knew +herself shrewder, and more capable of coping with actualities. + +"I think she's moybid, Alice is," she said. "She isn't moybid in the +usual sense of the word, but she expects more of herself and of the woyld +generally than anybody's going to get out of it. She thinks she's going +to get as much as she gives, and that's a great mistake, Mrs. Pasmer," +she said, with that peculiar liquefaction of the canine letter which the +New-Yorkers alone have the trick of, and which it would be tiresome and +futile to try to represent throughout her talk. + +"Oh yes, I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Pasmer, deep in her throat, +and reserving deeper still her enjoyment of this early wisdom of Miss +Anderson's. + +"Now, even at church--she carries the same spirit into the church. She +doesn't make allowance for human nature, and the church does." + +"Oh, certainly!" Mrs. Pasmer agreed. + +"She isn't like a person that's been brought up in the church. It's more +like the old Puritan spirit.--Excuse me, Mrs. Pasmer!" + +"Yes, indeed! Say anything you like about the Puritans!" said Mrs. +Pasmer, delighted that, as a Bostonian, she should be thought to care for +them. + +"I always forget that you're a Bostonian," Miss Anderson apologized. + +"Oh, thank you!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +"I'm going to try to make her like other girls," continued Miss Anderson. + +"Do," said Alice's mother, with the effect of wishing her joy of the +undertaking. + +"If there were a few young men about, a little over seventeen and a +little under fifty, it would be easier," said Miss Anderson thoughtfully. +"But how are you going to make a girl like other girls when there are no +young men?" + +"That's very true," said Mrs. Pasmer, with an interest which she of +course did her best to make impersonal. "Do you think there will be +more, later on?" + +"They will have to Huey up if they are comin'," said Miss Anderson. +"It's the middle of August now, and the hotel closes the second week in +September." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, vaguely looking at Alice. She had just appeared +over the brow of the precipice, along whose face the arrivals and +departures by the ferry-boat at Campobello obliquely ascend and descend. + +She came walking swiftly toward the hotel, and, for her, so excitedly +that Mrs. Pasmer involuntarily rose and went to meet her at the top of +the broad hotel steps. + +"What is it, Alice?" + +"Oh, nothing! I thought I saw Mr. Munt coming off the boat." + +"Mr. Munt?" + +"Yes." She would not stay for further question. + +Her mother looked after her with the edge of her fan over her mouth till +she disappeared in the depths of the hotel corridor; then she sat down +near the steps, and chatted with some half-grown boys lounging on the +balustrade, and waited for Munt to come up over the brink of the +precipice. Dan Mavering came with him, running forward with a polite +eagerness at sight of Mrs. Pasmer. She distributed a skillful +astonishment equally between the two men she had equally expected to see, +and was extremely cordial with them, not only because she was pleased +with them, but because she was still more pleased with her daughter's +being, after all, like other girls, when it came to essentials. + + + + +XII. + +Alice came down to lunch in a dress which reconciled the seaside and the +drawing-room in an effect entirely satisfactory to her mother, and gave +her hand to both the gentlemen without the affectation of surprise at +seeing either. + +"I saw Mr. Munt coning up from the boat," she said in answer to +Mavering's demand for some sort of astonishment from her. "I wasn't +certain that it was you." + +Mrs. Pasmer, whose pretences had been all given away by this simple +confession, did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her +daughter's evident excitement at the young man's having come. Without +being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of +hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the +hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her +there. They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after a +little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their +acquaintance had been making progress in the interval. She took him +about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him to +Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom, within +five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some winning +service. She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with deep +respect and said "Sir" to. She showed him the bowling alley, and began +to play tennis with him. + +Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite +attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified as +they went on. + +"Alice," she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the +evening, and then she hesitated for the right word. + +"Well; mamma?" said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk up +and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a +Tam-o'-Shanter cap. + +"Don't--overdo--the honours." + +"What do you mean, mamma?" asked the girl; dropping her arms before her, +and letting the shawl trail on the floor. + +"Don't you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?" + +Her mother laughed. "But every one mayn't know it's gratitude." + +Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her +room without speaking to any one. + +The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed for +her succeeded one another during Mavering's stay. He did not need +Alice's chaperonage long. By the next morning he seemed to know and to +like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which at +that moment had no exceptions. In the afternoon he began to organise +excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson. + +The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with an +authority which every one tacitly admitted, just as every one recognised +that Mavering had come to Campobello because she was there. Such a phase +is perhaps the prettiest in the history of a love affair. All is yet in +solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact. The parties to +it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do; +they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that. +It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American of +all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or +imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any +outside influences. + +The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk +between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief, +might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it. + +She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his +taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year. + +"Oh, I've abandoned Europe altogether for the present," he said laughing. +"And I don't know but I may go back on the law too." + +"Indeed! Then you are going to be an artist?" + +"Oh no; not so bad as that. It isn't settled yet, and I'm off here to +think it over a while before the law school opens in September. My +father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in +designing wall-papers." + +"Oh, how very interesting!" At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the +whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper maker +in it. But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said: it was +manufacturing. This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys +lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge, +though. + +"And we shall actually see a young man," she said finally, "in the act of +deciding his own destiny!" + +He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage. "Yes; only don't give me +away. Nobody else knows it." + +"Oh no, indeed. Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering. Shall you let me know +when you've decided? I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too high- +minded to ask." + +It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life, and +Mavering said, "You will learn from the expression of my eyes." + + + + +XIII. + +The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody like him +were interested in his differentiation of the attentions he offered every +age and sex from those he paid Alice. But while they all agreed that +there never was a sweeter fellow, they would have been puzzled to say in +just what this difference consisted, and much as they liked him, the +ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him till they decided +that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which was perfectly +fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is, he did nice +things for others without asking; but with her there was always an +explicit pause, and an implicit prayer and permission, first. Upon this +condition they consented to the glamour which he had for her, and which +was evident to every one probably but him. + +Once agreeing that no one was good enough for Alice Pasmer, whose +qualities they felt that only women could really appreciate, they were +interested to see how near Mavering could come to being good enough; and +as the drama played itself before their eyes, they pleased themselves in +analysing its hero. + +"He is not bashful, certainly," said one of a little group who sat midway +of the piazza while Alice and Mavering walked up and down together. +"But don't you think he's modest? There's that difference, you know." + +The lady addressed waited so long before answering that the young couple +came abreast of the group, and then she had to wait till they were out of +hearing. "Yes," she said then, with a tender, sighing thoughtfulness, +"I've felt that in him. And really think he is a very loveable nature. +The only question would be whether he wasn't too loveable." + +"Yes," said the first lady, with the same kind of suspiration, "I know +what you mean. And I suppose they ought to be something more alike in +disposition." + +"Or sympathies?" suggested the other. + +"Yes, or sympathies." + +A third lady laughed a little. "Mr. Mavering has so many sympathies that +he ought to be like her in some of them." + +"Do you mean that he's too sympathetic--that he isn't sincere?" asked the +first--a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a little knot +of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by the unremitting +effort of half a century to do and say exactly the truth, and to find it +out. + +Mrs. Brinkley, whom she addressed, was of that obesity which seems often +to incline people to sarcasm. "No, I don't think he's insincere. I +think he always means what he says and does--Well, do you think a little +more concentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose +--if she has it?" + +"Yes, I see," said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixed +wistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. +"I wonder what the men think of him?" + +"You might ask Miss Anderson," said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Oh, do you think they tell her?" + +"Not that exactly," said Mrs. Brinkley, shaking with good-humoured +pleasure in her joke. + +"Her voice--oh yes. She and Alice are great friends, of course." + +"I should think," said Mrs. Stamwell, the second speaker, "that Mr. +Mavering would be jealous sometimes--till he looked twice." + +"Yes," said Miss Cotton, obliged to admit the force of the remark, but +feeling that Mr. Mavering had been carried out of the field of her vision +by the turn of the talk. "I suppose," she continued, "that he wouldn't +be so well liked by other young men as she is by other girls, do you +think?" + +"I don't think, as a rule," said Mrs. Brinkley, "that men are half so +appreciative of one another as women are. It's most amusing to see the +open scorn with which two young fellows treat each other if a pretty girl +introduces them." + +All the ladies joined in the laugh with which Mrs. Brinkley herself led +off. But Miss Cotton stopped laughing first. + +"Do you mean,", she asked, "that if a gentleman were generally popular +with gentlemen it would be--" + +"Because he wasn't generally so with women? Something like that--if +you'll leave Mr. Mavering out of the question. Oh, how very good of +them!" she broke off, and all the ladies glanced at Mavering and Alice +where they had stopped at the further end of the piazza, and were looking +off. "Now I can probably finish before they get back here again. What I +do mean, Miss Cotton, is that neither sex willingly accepts the +favourites of the other." + +"Yes," said Miss Cotton admissively. + +"And all that saves Miss Pasmer is that she has not only the qualities +that women like in women, but some of the qualities that men, like in +them. She's thoroughly human." + +A little sensation, almost a murmur, not wholly of assent, went round +that circle which had so nearly voted Alice a saint. + +"In the first place, she likes to please men." + +"Oh!" came from the group. + +"And that makes them like her--if it doesn't go too far, as her mother +says." + +The ladies all laughed, recognising a common turn of phrase in Mrs. +Pasmer. + +"I should think," said Mrs. Stamwell, "that she would believe a little in +heredity if she noticed that in her daughter;" and the ladies laughed +again. + +"Then," Mrs. Brinkley resumed concerning Alice, "she has a very pretty +face--an extremely pretty face; she has a tender voice, and she's very, +very graceful--in rather an odd way; perhaps it's only a fascinating +awkwardness. Then she dresses--or her mother dresses her--exquisitely." +The ladies, with another sensation, admitted the perfect accuracy with +which these points had been touched. + +"That's what men like, what they fall in love with, what Mr. Mavering's +in love with this instant. It's no use women's flattering themselves +that they don't, for they do. The rest of the virtues and graces and +charms are for women. If that serious girl could only know the silly +things that that amiable simpleton is taken with in her, she'd--" + +"Never speak to him again?" suggested Miss Cotton. + +"No, I don't say that. But she would think twice before marrying him." + +"And then do it," said Mrs. Stamwell pensively, with eyes that seemed +looking far into the past. + +"Yes, and quite right to do it," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I don't know that +we should be very proud ourselves if we confessed just what caught our +fancy in our husbands. For my part I shouldn't like to say how much a +light hat that Mr. Brinkley happened to be wearing had to do with the +matter." + +The ladies broke into another laugh, and then checked themselves, so that +Mrs. Pasmer, coming out of the corridor upon them, naturally thought they +were laughing at her. She reflected that if she had been in their place +she would have shown greater tact by not stopping just at that instant. + +But she did not mind. She knew that they talked her over, but having a +very good conscience, she simply talked them over in return. "Have you +seen my daughter within a few minutes?" she asked. + +"She was with Mr. Mavering at the end of the piazza a moment ago," said +Mrs. Brinkley. "They must leave just gone round the corner of the +building." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Pasmer. She had a novel, with her finger between its +leaves, pressed against her heart, after the manner of ladies coming out +on hotel piazzas. She sat down and rested it on her knee, with her hand +over the top. + +Miss Cotton bent forward, and Mrs. Pasmer lifted her fingers to let her +see the name of the book. + +"Oh yes," said Miss Cotton. "But he's so terribly pessimistic, don't you +think?" + +"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Fumee," said Mrs. Pasmer, laying the book title upward on her lap for +every one to see. + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, fanning herself. "Tourguenief. That man +gave me the worst quarter of an hour with his 'Lisa' that I ever had." + +"That's the same as the 'Nichee des Gentilshommes', isn't it?" asked Mrs. +Pasmer, with the involuntary superiority of a woman who reads her +Tourguenief in French. + +"I don't know. I had it in English. I don't build my ships to cross the +sea in, as Emerson says; I take those I find built." + +"Ah! I was already on the other side," said Mrs. Pasmer softly. She +added: "I must get Lisa. I like a good heart-break; don't you? If +that's what gave you the bad moment." + +"Heart-break? Heart-crush! Where Lavretsky comes back old to the scene +of his love for Lisa, and strikes that chord on the piano--well, I simply +wonder that I'm alive to recommend the book to you. + +"Do you know," said Miss Cotton, very deferentially, "that your daughter +always made me think of Lisa?" + +"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, not wholly pleased, but gratified that she +was able to hide her displeasure. "You make me very curious." + +"Oh, I doubt if you'll see more than a mere likeness of temperament," +Mrs. Brinkley interfered bluntly. "All the conditions are so different. +There couldn't be an American Lisa. That's the charm of these Russian +tragedies. You feel that they're so perfectly true there, and so +perfectly impossible here. Lavretsky would simply have got himself +divorced from Varvara Pavlovna, and no clergyman could have objected to +marrying him to Lisa." + +"That's what I mean by his pessimism," said Miss Cotton. "He leaves you +no hope. And I think that despair should never be used in a novel except +for some good purpose; don't you, Mrs. Brinkley?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Brinkley, "I was trying to think what good purpose +despair could be put to, in a book or out of it." + +"I don't think," said Mrs. Pasmer, referring to the book in her lap, +"that he leaves you altogether in despair here, unless you'd rather he'd +run off with Irene than married Tatiana." + +"Oh, I certainly didn't wish that;" said Miss Cotton, in self-defence, as +if the shot had been aimed at her. + +"The book ends with a marriage; there's no denying that," said Mrs. +Brinkley, with a reserve in her tone which caused Mrs. Pasmer to continue +for her-- + +"And marriage means happiness--in a book." + +"I'm not sure that it does in this case. The time would come, after +Litvinof had told Tatiana everything, when she would have to ask herself, +and not once only, what sort of man it really was who was willing to +break his engagement and run off with another man's wife, and whether he +could ever repent enough for it. She could make excuses for him, and +would, but at the bottom of her heart--No, it seems to me that there, +almost for the only time, Tourguenief permitted himself an amiable +weakness. All that part of the book has the air of begging the +question." + +"But don't you see," said Miss Cotton, leaning forward in the way she had +when very earnest, "that he means to show that her love is strong enough +for all that?" + +"But he doesn't, because it isn't. Love isn't strong enough to save +people from unhappiness through each other's faults. Do you suppose that +so many married people are unhappy in each other because they don't love +each other? No; it's because they do love each other that their faults +are such a mutual torment. If they were indifferent, they wouldn't mind +each other's faults. Perhaps that's the reason why there are so many +American divorces; if they didn't care, like Europeans, who don't marry +for love, they could stand it." + +"Then the moral is," said Mrs. Pasmer, at her lightest through the +surrounding gravity, "that as all Americans marry for love, only +Americans who have been very good ought to get married." + +"I'm not sure that the have-been goodness is enough either," said Mrs. +Brinkley, willing to push it to the absurd. "You marry a man's future as +well as his past." + +"Dear me! You are terribly exigeante, Mrs. Brinkley," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"One can afford to be so--in the abstract," answered Mrs. Brinkley. + +They all stopped talking and looked at John Munt, who was coming toward +them, and each felt a longing to lay the matter before him. + +There was probably not a woman among them but had felt more, read more, +and thought more than John Munt, but he was a man, and the mind of a man +is the court of final appeal for the wisest women. Till some man has +pronounced upon their wisdom, they do not know whether it is wisdom or +not. + +Munt drew up his chair, and addressed himself to the whole group through +Mrs. Pasmer: "We are thinking of getting up a little picnic to-morrow. + + + + +XIV. + +The day of the picnic struggled till ten o'clock to peer through the fog +that wrapt it with that remote damp and coolness and that nearer drouth +and warmth which some fogs have. The low pine groves hung full of it, +and it gave a silvery definition to the gossamer threads running from one +grass spear to another in spacious networks over the open levels of the +old fields that stretch back from the bluff to the woods. At last it +grew thinner, somewhere over the bay; then you could see the smooth water +through it; then it drifted off in ragged fringes before a light breeze: +when you looked landward again it was all gone there, and seaward it had +gathered itself in a low, dun bank along the horizon. It was the kind of +fog that people interested in Campobello admitted as apt to be common +there, but claimed as a kind of local virtue when it began to break away. +They said that it was a very dry fog, not like Newport, and asked you to +notice that it did not wet you at all. + +Four or five carriages, driven by the gentlemen of the party, held the +picnic, which was destined for that beautiful cove on the Bay of Fundy +where the red granite ledges, smooth-washed by ages of storm and sun, +lend themselves to such festivities as if they had been artificially +fashioned into shelves and tables. The whole place is yet so new to men +that this haunt has not acquired that air of repulsive custom which the +egg shells and broken bottles and sardine boxes of many seasons give. Or +perhaps the winter tempests heap the tides of the bay over the ledge, and +wash it clean of these vulgar traces of human resort, and enable it to +offer as fresh a welcome to the picnics of each successive summer as if +there had never been a picnic in that place before. + +This was the sense that Mavering professed to have received from it, when +he jumped out of the beach wagon in which he had preceded the other +carriages through the weird forest lying between the fringe of farm +fields and fishing-villages on the western shore of the island and these +lonely coasts of the bay. As far as the signs of settled human +habitation last, tho road is the good hard country road of New England, +climbing steep little hills, and presently leading through long tracts of +woodland. But at a certain point beyond the furthest cottage you leave +it, and plunge deep into the heart of the forest, vaguely traversed by +the wheel-path carried through since the island was opened to summer +sojourn. Road you can hardly call it, remembering its curious pauses and +hesitations when confronted with stretches of marshy ground, and its +staggering progress over the thick stubble of saplings through which it +is cut. The progress of teams over it is slow, but there is such joy of +wildness in the solitudes it penetrates that; if the horses had any gait +slower than a walk, one might still wish to stay them. It is a Northern +forest, with the air of having sprang quickly up in the fierce heat and +haste of the Northern summers. The small firs are set almost as dense as +rye in a field, and in their struggle to the light they have choked one +another so that there is a strange blight of death and defeat on all that +vigour of life. Few of the trees have won any lofty growth; they seem to +have died and fallen when they were about to outstrip the others in size, +and from their decay a new sylvan generation riots rankly upward. The +surface of the ground is thinly clothed with a deciduous undergrowth, +above which are the bare, spare stems of the evergreens, and then their +limbs thrusting into one another in a sombre tangle, with locks of long +yellowish-white moss, like the grey pendants of the Southern pines, +dripping from them and draining their brief life. + +In such a place you must surrender yourself to its influences, profoundly +yet vaguely melancholy, or you must resist them with whatever gaiety is +in you, or may be conjured out of others. It was conceded that Mavering +was the life of the party, as the phrase goes. His light-heartedness, as +kindly and sympathetic as it was inexhaustible, served to carry them over +the worst places in the road of itself. He jumped down and ran back, +when he had passed a bad bit, to see if the others were getting through +safely; the least interesting of the party had some proof of his +impartial friendliness; he promised an early and triumphant emergence +from all difficulties; he started singing, and sacrificed himself in +several tunes, for he could not sing well; his laugh seemed to be always +coming back to Alice, where she rode late in the little procession; +several times, with the deference which he delicately qualified for her, +he came himself to see if he could not do something for her. + +"Miss Pasmer," croaked her friend Miss Anderson, who always began in that +ceremonious way with her, and got to calling her Alice further along in +the conversation, "if you don't drop something for that poor fellow to +run back two or three miles and get, pretty soon, I'll do it myself. +It's peyfectly disheaytening to see his disappointment when you tell him +theye's nothing to be done." + +"He seems to get over it," said Alice evasively. She smiled with +pleasure in Miss Anderson's impeachment, however. + +"Oh, he keeps coming, if that's what you mean. But do drop an umbrella, +or a rubber, or something, next time, just to show a proper +appreciation." + +But Mavering did not come any more. Just before they got to the cove, +Miss Anderson leaned over again to whisper in Alice's ear, "I told you he +was huyt. Now you must be very good to him the rest of the time." + +Upon theory a girl of Alice Pasmer's reserve ought to have resented this +intervention, but it is not probable she did. She flushed a little, but +not with offence, apparently; and she was kinder to Mavering, and let him +do everything for her that he could invent in transferring the things +from the wagons to the rocks. + +The party gave a gaiety to the wild place which accented its proper +charm, as they scattered themselves over the ledges on the bright shawls +spread upon the level spaces. On either hand craggy bluffs hemmed the +cove in, but below the ledge it had a pebbly beach strewn with drift- +wood, and the Bay of Fundy gloomed before it with small fishing craft +tipping and tilting on the swell in the foreground, and dim sail melting +into the dun fog bank at the horizon's edge. + +The elder ladies of the party stood up, or stretched themselves on the +shawls, as they found this or that posture more restful after their long +drive; one, who was skilled in making coffee, had taken possession of the +pot, and was demanding fire and water for it. The men scattered +themselves over the beach, and brought her drift enough to roast an ox; +two of them fetched water from the spring at the back of the ledge, +whither they then carried the bottles of ale to cool in its thrilling +pool. Each after his or her fashion symbolised a return to nature by +some act or word of self-abandon. + +"You ought to have brought heavier shoes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a +serious glance at her daughter's feet. " Well, never mind," she added. +"It doesn't matter if you do spoil them." + +"Really," cried Mrs Brinkley, casting her sandals from her, "I will not +be enslaved to rubbers in such a sylvan scene as this, at any rate." + +"Look at Mrs. Stamwell!" said Miss Cotton. "She's actually taken her hat +off." + +Mrs. Stamwell had not only gone to this extreme, but had tied a lightly +fluttering handkerchief round her hair. She said she should certainly +not put on that heavy thing again till she got in sight of civilisation. + +At these words Miss Cotton boldly drew off her gloves, and put them in +her pocket. + +The young girls, slim in their blues flannel skirts and their broad white +canvas belts, went and came over the rocks. There were some children in +the party, who were allowed to scream uninterruptedly in the games which +they began to play as soon as they found their feet after getting out of +the wagons. + +Some of the gentlemen drove a stake into the beach, and threw stones at +it, to see which could knock off the pebble balanced on its top. Several +of the ladies joined them in the sport, and shrieked and laughed when +they made wild shots with the missiles the men politely gathered for +them. + +Alice had remained with Mavering to help the hostess of the picnic lay +the tables, but her mother had followed those who went down to the beach. +At first Mrs. Pasmer looked on at the practice of the stone-throwers with +disapproval; but suddenly she let herself go in this, as she did in other +matters that her judgment condemned, and began to throw stones herself; +she became excited, and made the wildest shots of any, accepting missiles +right and left, and making herself dangerous to everybody within a wide +circle. A gentleman who had fallen a victim to her skill said, "Just +wait, Mrs. Pasmer, till I get in front of the stake." + +The men became seriously interested, and worked themselves red and hot; +the ladies soon gave it up, and sat down on the sand and began to talk. +They all owned themselves hungry, and from time to time they looked up +anxiously at the preparations for lunch on the ledge, where white napkins +were spread, with bottles at the four corners to keep them from blowing +away. This use of the bottles was considered very amusing; the ladies +tried to make jokes about it, and the desire to be funny spread to +certain of the men who had quietly left off throwing at the stake because +they had wrenched their shoulders; they succeeded in being merry. They +said they thought that coffee took a long time to boil. + +A lull of expectation fell upon all; even Mavering sat down on the rocks +near the fire, and was at rest a few minutes, by order of Miss Anderson, +who said that the sight of his activity tired her to death. + +"I wonder why always boiled ham at a picnic!" said the lady who took a +final plate of it from a basket. "Under the ordinary conditions, few of +us can be persuaded to touch it." + +"It seems to be dear to nature, and to nature's children," said Mrs. +Brinkley. "Perhaps because their digestions are strong." + +"Don't you wish that something could be substituted for it?" asked Miss. +Cotton. + +"There have been efforts to replace it with chicken and tongue in +sandwiches;" said Mrs. Brinkley; "but I think they've only measurably +succeeded--about as temperance drinks have in place of the real strong +waters." + +"On the boat coming up," said Mavering, "we had a troupe of genuine darky +minstrels. One of them sang a song about ham that rather took me-- + +"'Ham, good old ham! +Ham is de best ob meat; +It's always good and sweet; +You can bake it, you can boil it, +You can fry it, you can broil it-- +Ham, good old ham!'" + +"Oh, how good!" sighed Mrs. Brinkley. "How sincere! How native! Go on, +Mr. Mavering, for ever." + +"I haven't the materials," said Mavering, with his laugh. "The rest was +da capo. But there was another song, about a coloured lady--" + +"'Six foot high and eight foot round, +Holler ob her foot made a hole in de ground.'" + +"Ah, that's an old friend," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I remember hearing of +that coloured lady when I was a girl. But it's a fine flight of the +imagination. What else did they sing?" + +"I can't remember. But there was something they danced--to show how a +rheumatic old coloured uncle dances." + +He jumped nimbly up, and sketched the stiff and limping figure he had +seen. It was over in a flash. He dropped down again, laughing. + +"Oh, how wonderfully good!" cried Mrs. Brinkley, with frank joy. "Do it +again." + +"Encore! Oh, encore!" came from the people on the beach. + +Mavering jumped to his feet, and burlesqued the profuse bows of an actor +who refuses to repeat; he was about to drop down again amidst their wails +of protest. + +"No, don't sit down, Mr. Mavering," said the lady who had introduced the +subject of ham. "Get some of the young ladies, and go and gather some +blueberries for the dessert. There are all the necessaries of life here, +but none of the luxuries." + +"I'm at the service of the young ladies as an escort," said Mavering +gallantly, with an infusion of joke. "Will you come and pick blueberries +under my watchful eyes, Miss Pasmer?" + +"They've gone to pick blueberries," called the lady through her tubed +hand to the people on the beach, and the younger among them scrambled up +the rocks for cups and bowls to follow them. + +Mrs. Pasmer had an impulse to call her daughter back, and to make some +excuse to keep her from going. She was in an access of decorum, +naturally following upon her late outbreak, and it seemed a very +pronounced thing for Alice to be going off into the woods with the young +man; but it would have been a pronounced thing to prevent her, and so +Mrs. Pasmer submitted. + +"Isn't it delightful," asked Mrs. Brinkley, following them with her eyes, +"to see the charm that gay young fellow has for that serious girl? She +looked at him while he was dancing as if she couldn't take her eyes off +him, and she followed him as if he drew her by an invisible spell. Not +that spells are ever visible," she added, saving herself. "Though this +one seems to be," she added further, again saving herself. + +"Do you really think so?" pleaded Miss Cotton. + +"Well, I say so, whatever I think. And I'm not going to be caught up on +the tenter-hooks of conscience as to all my meanings, Miss Cotton. I +don't know them all. But I'm not one of the Aliceolaters, you know." + +"No; of course not. But shouldn't you--Don't you think it would be a +great pity--She's so superior, so very uncommon in every way, that it +hardly seems--Ah, I should so like to see some one really fine--not a +coarse fibre in him, don't you know. Not that Mr. Mavering's coarse. +But beside her he does seem so light!" + +"Perhaps that's the reason she likes him." + +"No, no! I can't believe that. She must see more in him than we can." + +"I dare say she thinks she does. At any rate, it's a perfectly evident +case on both sides; and the frank way he's followed her up here, and +devoted himself to her, as if--well, not as if she were the only girl in +the world, but incomparably the best--is certainly not common." + +"No," sighed Miss Cotton, glad to admit it; "that's beautiful." + + + +XV. + +In the edge of the woods and the open spaces among the trees the +blueberries grew larger and sweeter in the late Northern summer than a +more southern sun seems to make them. They hung dense upon the low +bushes, and gave them their tint through the soft grey bloom that veiled +their blue. Sweet-fern in patches broke their mass here and there, and +exhaled its wild perfume to the foot or skirt brushing through it. + +"I don't think there's anything much prettier than these clusters; do +you, Miss Pasmer?" asked Mavering, as he lifted a bunch pendent from the +little tree before he stripped it into the bowl he carried. "And see! +it spoils the bloom to gather them." He held out a handful, and then +tossed them away. "It ought to be managed more aesthetically for an +occasion like this. I'll tell you what, Miss Pasmer: are you used to +blueberrying?" + +"No," she said; "I don't know that I ever went blueberrying before. +Why?" she asked. + +"Because, if you haven't, you wouldn't be very efficient perhaps, and so +you might resign yourself to sitting on that log and holding the berries +in your lap, while I pick them." + +"But what about the bowls, then?" + +"Oh, never mind them. I've got an idea. See here!" He clipped off a +bunch with his knife, and held it up before her, tilting it this way and +that. "Could anything be more graceful! My idea is to serve the +blueberry on its native stem at this picnic. What do you think? Sugar +would profane it, and of course they've only got milk enough for the +coffee." + +"Delightful!" Alice arranged herself on the log, and made a lap for the +bunch. He would not allow that the arrangement was perfect till he had +cushioned the seat and carpeted the ground for her feet with sweet-fern. + +"Now you're something like a wood-nymph," he laughed. "Only, wouldn't a +real wood-nymph have an apron?" he asked, looking down at her dress. + +"Oh, it won't hurt the dress. You must begin now, or they'll be calling +us." + +He was standing and gazing at her with a distracted enjoyment of her +pose. "Oh yes, yes," he answered, coming to himself, and he set about +his work. + +He might have got on faster if he had not come to her with nearly every +bunch he cut at first, and when he began to deny himself this pleasure he +stopped to admire an idea of hers. + +"Well, that's charming--making them into bouquets." + +"Yes, isn't it?" she cried delightedly, holding a bunch of the berries up +at arm's-length to get the effect. + +"Ah, but you must have some of this fern and this tall grass to go with +it. Why, it's sweet-grass--the sweet-grass of the Indian baskets!" + +"Is it?" She looked up at him. "And do you think that the mixture would +be better than the modest simplicity of the berries, with a few leaves of +the same?" + +"No; you're right; it wouldn't," he said, throwing away his ferns. "But +you'll want something to tie the stems with; you must use the grass." He +left that with her, and went back to his bushes. He added, from beyond a +little thicket, as if what he said were part of the subject, "I was +afraid you wouldn't like my skipping about there on the rocks, doing the +coloured uncle." + +"Like it?" + +"I mean--I--you thought it undignified--trivial--" + +She said, after a moment: "It was very funny; and people do all sorts of +things at picnics. That's the pleasure of it, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it is; but I know you don't always like that kind of thing." + +"Do I seem so very severe?" she asked. + +"Oh no, not severe. I should be afraid of you if you were. I shouldn't +have dared to come to Campobello." + +He looked at her across the blueberry bushes. His gay speech meant +everything or nothing. She could parry it with a jest, and then it would +mean nothing. She let her head droop over her work, and made no answer. + +"I wish you could have seen those fellows on the boat," said Mavering. + +"Hello, Mavering!" called the voice of John Munt, from another part of +the woods. + +"Alice!--Miss Pasmer!" came that of Miss Anderson. + +He was going to answer, when he looked at Alice. "We'll let them see if +they can find us," he said, and smiled. + +Alice said nothing at first; she smiled too. "You know more about the +woods than I do. I suppose if they keep looking--" + +"Oh yes." He came toward her with a mass of clusters which he had +clipped. "How fast you do them!" he said, standing and looking down at +her. "I wish you'd let me come and make up the withes for you when you +need them." + +"No, I couldn't allow that on any account," she answered, twisting some +stems of the grass together. + +"Well, will you let me hold the bunches while you tie them; or tie them +when you hold them?" + +"No." + +"This once, then?" + +"This once, perhaps." + +"How little you let me do for you!" he sighed. + +"That gives you a chance to do more for other people," she answered; and +then she dropped her eyes, as if she had been surprised into that answer. +She made haste to add: "That's what makes you so popular with--everybody!" + +"Ah, but I'd rather be popular with somebody!" + +He laughed, and then they both laughed together consciously; and still +nothing or everything had been said. A little silly silence followed, +and he said, for escape from it, "I never saw such berries before, even +in September, on the top of Ponkwasset." + +"Why, is it a mountain?" she asked. "I thought it was a--falls." + +"It's both," he said. + +"I suppose it's very beautiful, isn't it! All America seems so lovely, +so large." + +"It's pretty in the summer. I don't know that I shall like it there in +the winter if I conclude to--Did your--did Mrs. Pasmer tell you what my +father wants me to do?" + +"About going there to--manufacture?" + +Mavering nodded. "He's given me three weeks to decide whether I would +like to do that or go in for law. That's what I came up here for." + +There was a little pause. She bent her head down over the clusters she +was grouping. "Is the light of Campobello particularly good on such +questions?" she asked. + +"I don't mean that exactly, but I wish you could help me to some +conclusion." + +"Yes; why not?" + +"It's the first time I've ever had a business question referred to me." + + Well, then, you can bring a perfectly fresh mind to it." + +"Let me see," she said, affecting to consider. "It's really a very +important matter?" + +"It is to me." + +After a moment she looked up at him. "I should think that you wouldn't +mind living there if your business was there. I suppose it's being idle +in places that makes them dull. I thought it was dull in London. One +ought to be glad--oughtn't he?--to live in any place where there's +something to do." + +"Well, that isn't the way people usually feel," said Mavering. "That's +the kind of a place most of them fight shy of." + +Alice laughed with an undercurrent of protest, perhaps because she had +seen her parents' whole life, so far as she knew it, passed in this sort +of struggle. "I mean that I hate my own life because there seems nothing +for me to do with it. I like to have people do something." + +"Do you really?" asked Mavering soberly, as if struck by the novelty of +the idea. + +"Yes!" she said, with exaltation. "If I were a man--" + +He burst into a ringing laugh. "Oh no; don't!" + +"Why?" she demanded, with provisional indignation. + +"Because then there wouldn't be any Miss Pasmer." + +It seemed to Alice that this joking was rather an unwarranted liberty. +Again she could not help joining in his light-heartedness; but she +checked herself so abruptly, and put on a look so austere, that he was +quelled by it. + +"I mean," he began--"that is to say--I mean that I don't understand why +ladies are always saying that. I am sure they can do what they like, as +it is." + +"Do you mean that everything is open to them now?" she asked, +disentangling a cluster of the berries from those in her lap, and +beginning a fresh bunch. + +"Yes," said Mavering. "Something like that--yes. They can do anything +they like. Lots of them do." + +"Oh yes, I know," said the girl. "But people don't like them to." + +"Why, what would you like to be?" he asked. + +She did not answer, but sorted over the clusters in her lap. "We've got +enough now, haven't we?" she said. + +"Oh, not half," he said. "But if you're tired you must let me make up +some of the bunches." + +"No, no! I want to do them all myself," she said, gesturing his offered +hands away, with a little nether appeal in her laughing refusal + +"So as to feel that you've been of some use in the world?" he said, +dropping contentedly on the ground near her, and watching her industry. + +"Do you think that would be very wrong?" she asked. "What made that +friend of yours--Mr. Boardman--go into journalism?" + +"Oh, virtuous poverty. You're not thinking of becoming a newspaper +woman, Miss Pasmer!" + +"Why not?" She put the final cluster into the bunch in hand, and began +to wind a withe of sweet-grass around the stems. He dropped forward on +his knees to help her, and together they managed the knot. They were +both flushed a little when it was tied, and were serious. + +"Why shouldn't one be a newspaper woman, if Harvard graduates are to be +journalists?" + +"Well, you know, only a certain kind are." + +"What kind?" + +"Well, not exactly what you'd call the gentlemanly sort." + +"I thought Mr. Boardman was a great friend of yours?" + +"He is. He is one of the best fellows in the world. But you must have +seen that he wasn't a swell." + +"I should think he'd be glad he was doing something at once. If I were +a--" She stopped, and they laughed together. "I mean that I should hate +to be so long getting ready to do something as men are." + +"Then you'd rather begin making wall-paper at once than studying law?" + +"Oh, I don't say that. I'm not competent to advise. But I should like +to feel that I was doing something. I suppose it's hereditary." +Mavering stared a little. "One of my father's sisters has gone into a +sisterhood. She's in England." + +"Is she a--Catholic?" asked Mavering. + +"She isn't a Roman Catholic." + +"Oh yes!" He dropped forward on his knees again to help her tie the +bunch she had finished. It was not so easy as the first. + +"Oh, thank you!" she said, with unnecessary fervour. + +"But you shouldn't like to go into a sisterhood, I suppose?" said +Mavering, ready to laugh. + +"Oh, I don't know. Why not?" She looked at him with a flying glance, +and dropped her eyes. + +"Oh, no reason, if you have a fancy for that kind of thing." + +"That kind of thing?" repeated Alice severely. + +"Oh, I don't mean anything disrespectful to it," said Mavering, throwing +his anxiety off in the laugh he had been holding back. "And I beg your +pardon. But I don't suppose you're in earnest." + +"Oh no, I'm not in earnest," said the girl, letting her wrists fall upon +her knees, and the clusters drop from her hands. "I'm not in earnest +about anything; that's the truth--that's the shame. Wouldn't you like," +she broke off, "to be a priest, and go round among these people up here +on their frozen islands in the winter?" + +"No," shouted Mavering, "I certainly shouldn't. I don't see how anybody +stands it. Ponkwasset Falls is bad enough in the winter, and compared to +this region Ponkwasset Falls is a metropolis. I believe in getting all +the good you can out of the world you were born in--of course without +hurting anybody else." He stretched his legs out on the bed of sweet- +fern, where he had thrown himself, and rested his head on his hand lifted +on his elbow. "I think this is what this place is fit for--a picnic; and +I wish every one well out of it for nine months of the year." + +"I don't," said the girl, with a passionate regret in her voice. "It +would be heavenly here with--But you--no, you're different. You always +want to share your happiness." + +"I shouldn't call that happiness. But don't you?" asked Mavering. + +"No. I'm selfish." + +"You don't expect me to be believe that, I suppose." + +"Yes," she went on, "it must be selfishness. You don't believe I'm so, +because you can't imagine it. But it's true. If I were to be happy, I +should be very greedy about it; I couldn't endure to let any one else +have a part in it. So it's best for me to be wretched, don't you see--to +give myself up entirely to doing for others, and not expect any one to do +anything for me; then I can be of some use in the world. That's why I +should like to go into a sisterhood." + +Mavering treated it as the best kind of joke, and he was confirmed in +this view of it by her laughing with him, after a first glance of what he +thought mock piteousness. + + + + +XVI. + +The clouds sailed across the irregular space of pale blue Northern sky +which the break in the woods opened for them overhead. It was so still +that they heard, and smiled to hear, the broken voices of the others, who +had gone to get berries in another direction--Miss Anderson's hoarse +murmur and Munt's artificial bass. Some words came from the party on the +rocks. + +"Isn't it perfect?" cried the young fellow in utter content. + +"Yes, too perfect," answered the girl, rousing herself from the reverie +in which they had both lost themselves, she did not know how long. +"Shall you gather any more?" + +"No; I guess there's enough. Let's count them." He stooped over on his +hand's and knees, and made as much of counting the bunches as he could. +"There's about one bunch and a half a piece. How shall we carry them? +We ought to come into camp as impressively as possible." + +"Yes," said Alice, looking into his face with dreamy absence. It was +going through her mind, from some romance she had read, What if he were +some sylvan creature, with that gaiety, that natural gladness and +sweetness of his, so far from any happiness that was possible to her? +Ought not she to be afraid of him? She was thinking she was not afraid. + +"I'll tell you," he said. "Tie the stems of all the bunches together, +and swing them over a pole, like grapes of Eshcol. Don't you know the +picture?" + +"Oh yes." + +"Hold on! I'll get the pole." He cut a white birch sapling, and swept +off its twigs and leaves, then he tied the bunches together, and slung +them over the middle of the pole. + +"Well?" she asked. + +"Now we must rest the ends on our shoulders." + +"Do you think so?" she asked, with the reluctance that complies. + +"Yes, but not right away. I'll carry them out of the woods, and we'll +form the procession just before we come in sight." + +Every one on the ledge recognised the tableau when it appeared, and +saluted it with cheers and hand-clapping. Mrs. Pasmer bent a look on her +daughter which she faced impenetrably. + +"Where have you been?" "We thought you were lost!" "We were just +organising a search expedition!" different ones shouted at them. + +The lady with the coffee-pot was kneeling over it with her hand on it. +"Have some coffee, you poor things! You must be almost starved." + +"We looked about for you everywhere," said Munt, "and shouted ourselves +dumb." + +Miss Anderson passed near Alice. "I knew where you were all the time!" + +Then the whole party fell to praising the novel conception of the +bouquets of blueberries, and the talk began to flow away from Alice and +Mavering in various channels. + +All that had happened a few minutes ago in the blueberry patch seemed a +far-off dream; the reality had died out of the looks and words. + +He ran about from one to another, serving every one; in a little while +the whole affair was in his hospitable hands, and his laugh interspersed +and brightened the talk. + +She got a little back of the others, and sat looking wistfully out over +the bay, with her hands in her lap. + +"Hold on just half a minute, Miss Pasmer! don't move!" exclaimed the +amateur photographer, who is now of all excursions; he jumped to his +feet, and ran for his apparatus. She sat still, to please him; but when +he had developed his picture, in a dark corner of the rocks, roofed with +a waterproof, he accused her of having changed her position. "But it's +going to be splendid," he said, with another look at it. + +He took several pictures of the whole party, for which they fell into +various attitudes of consciousness. Then he shouted to a boat-load of +sailors who had beached their craft while they gathered some drift for +their galley fire. They had flung their arm-loads into the boat, and had +bent themselves to shove it into the water. + +"Keep still! don't move!" he yelled at them, with the imperiousness of +the amateur photographer, and they obeyed with the helplessness of his +victims. But they looked round. + +"Oh, idiots!" groaned the artist. + +"I always wonder what that kind of people think of us kind of people," +said Mrs. Brinkley, with her eye on the photographer's subjects. + +"Yes, I wonder what they do?" said Miss Cotton, pleased with the +speculative turn which the talk might take from this. "I suppose they +envy us?" she suggested. + +"Well, not all of them; and those that do, not respectfully. They view, +us as the possessors of ill-gotten gains, who would be in a very +different place if we had our deserts." + +"Do you really think so?" + +"Yes, I think so; but I don't know that I really think so. That's +another matter," said Mrs. Brinkley, with the whimsical resentment which +Miss Cotton's conscientious pursuit seemed always to rouse in her. + +"I supposed," continued Miss Cotton, "that it was only among the poor in +the cities, who have begin misled by agitators, that the-well-to-do +classes were regarded with suspicion." + +"It seems to have begun a great while ago," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and not +exactly with agitators. It was considered very difficult for us to get +into the kingdom of heaven, you know." + +"Yes, I know," assented Miss Cotton. + +"And there certainly are some things against us. Even when the chance +was given us to sell all we had and give it to the poor, we couldn't +bring our minds to it, and went away exceeding sorrowful." + +"I wonder," said Miss Cotton, "whether those things were ever intended to +be taken literally?" + +"Let's hope not," said John Munt, seeing his chance to make a laugh. + +Mrs. Stamwell said, "Well, I shall take another cup of coffee, at any +rate," and her hardihood raised another laugh. + +"That always seems to me the most pitiful thing in the whole Bible," said +Alice, from her place. "To see the right so clearly, and not to be +strong enough to do it." + +"My dear, it happens every day," said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"I always felt sorry for that poor fellow, too," said Mavering. "He +seemed to be a good fellow, and it was pretty hard lines for him." + +Alice looked round at him with deepening gravity. + +"Confound those fellows!" said the photographer, glancing at his hastily +developed plate. "They moved." + + + + +XVII. + +The picnic party gathered itself up after the lunch, and while some of +the men, emulous of Mavering's public spirit, helped some of the ladies +to pack the dishes and baskets away under the wagon seats, others threw a +corked bottle into the water, and threw stones at it. A few of the +ladies joined them, but nobody hit the bottle, which was finally left +bobbing about on the tide. + +Mrs. Brinkley addressed the defeated group, of whom her husband was one, +as they came up the beach toward the wagons. "Do you think that display +was calculated to inspire the lower middle classes with respectful envy?" + +Her husband made himself spokesman for the rest: "No; but you can't tell +how they'd have felt if we'd hit it." + +They all now climbed to a higher level, grassy and smooth, on the bluff, +from which there was a particular view; and Mavering came, carrying the +wraps of Mrs. Pasmer and Alice, with which he associated his overcoat. A +book fell out of one of the pockets when he threw it down. + +Miss Anderson picked the volume up. "Browning! He reads Browning! +Superior young man!" + +"Oh, don't say that!" pleaded Mavering. + +"Oh, read something aloud!" cried another of the young ladies. + +"Isn't Browning rather serious for a picnic?" he asked, with a glance at +Alice; he still had a doubt of the effect of the rheumatic uncle's dance +upon her, and would have been glad to give her some other aesthetic +impression of him. + +"Oh no!" said Mrs. Brinkley, "nothing is more appropriate to a picnic +than conundrums; they always have them. Choose a good tough one." + +"I don't know anything tougher than the 'Legend of Pernik'--or lovelier," +he said, and he began to read, simply, and with a passionate pleasure in +the subtle study, feeling its control over his hearers. + +The gentlemen lay smoking about at their ease; at the end a deep sigh +went up from the ladies, cut short by the question which they immediately +fell into. + +They could not agree, but they said, one after another: "But you read +beautifully, Mr. Mavering!" "Beautifully!" "Yes, indeed!" + +"Well, I'm glad there is one point clear," he said, putting the book +away, and "I'm afraid you'll think I'm rather sentimental," he added, in +a low voice to Alice, "carrying poetry around with me." + +"Oh no!" she replied intensely; "I thank you." + +"I thank you," he retorted, and their eyes met in a deep look. + +One of the outer circle of smokers came up with his watch in his hand, +and addressed the company, "Do you know what time it's got to be? It's +four o'clock." + +They all sprang up with a clamour of surprise. + +Mrs. Pasmer, under cover of the noise, said, in a low tone, to her +daughter, "Alice, I think you'd better keep a little more with me now." + +"Yes," said the girl, in a sympathy with her mother in which she did not +always find herself. + +But when Mavering, whom their tacit treaty concerned, turned toward them, +and put himself in charge of Alice, Mrs. Pasmer found herself +dispossessed by the charm of his confidence, and relinquished her to him. +They were going to walk to the Castle Rocks by the path that now loses +and now finds itself among the fastnesses of the forest, stretching to +the loftiest outlook on the bay. The savage woodland is penetrated only +by this forgetful path, that passes now and then aver the bridge of a +ravine, and offers to the eye on either hand the mystery deepening into +wilder and weirder tracts of solitude. The party resolved itself into +twos and threes, and these straggled far apart, out of conversational +reach of one another. Mrs. Pasmer found herself walking and talking with +John Munt. + +"Mr. Pasmer hasn't much interest in these excursions," he suggested. + +"No; he never goes," she answered, and, by one of the agile intellectual +processes natural to women, she arrived at the question, "You and the +Maverings are old friends, Mr. Munt?" + +"I can't say about the son, but I'm his father's friend, and I suppose +that I'm his friend too. Everybody seems to be so," suggested Munt. + +"Oh Yes," Mrs. Pasmer assented; "he appears to be a universal favourite." + +"We used to expect great things of Elbridge Mavering in college. We were +rather more romantic than the Harvard men are nowadays, and we believed +in one another more than they do. Perhaps we idealised one another. +But, anyway, our class thought Mavering could do anything. You know +about his taste for etchings?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of deep appreciation. "What gifted +people!" + +"I understand that the son inherits all his father's talent." + +"He sketches delightfully." + +"And Mavering wrote. Why, he was our class poet!" cried Munt, +remembering the fact with surprise and gratification to himself. "He was +a tremendous satirist." + +"Really? And he seems so amiable now." + +"Oh, it was only on paper." + +"Perhaps he still keeps it up--on wall-paper?" suggested Mrs. Pasmer. + +Munt laughed at the little joke with a good-will that flattered the +veteran flatterer. "I should like to ask him that some time. Will you +lend it to me?" + +"Yes, if such a sayer of good things will deign to borrow--" + +"Oh, Mrs. Pasmer!" cried Munt, otherwise speechless. + +"And the mother? Do you know Mrs. Mavering?" + +"Mrs. Mavering I've never seen." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried to +console her. + +"I've never even been at their place. He asked me once a great while +ago; but you know how those things are. I've heard that she used to be +very pretty and very gay. They went about a great deal, to Saratoga and +Cape May and such places--rather out of our beat." + +"And now?" + +"And now she's been an invalid for a great many years. Bedridden, I +believe. Paralysis, I think." + +Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind." + +"Well," said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which this +remark let him understand he had not materially increased, "I think Mrs. +Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper--or her money. Mavering was +poor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent." + +"How very interesting! And is that the reason--its being ancestral--that +Mr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?" + +"Is he going into it?" asked Munt. + +"He's come up here to think about it." + +"I should suppose it would be a very good thing," said Munt. + +"What a very remarkable forest!" said Mrs. Pasmer, examining it on either +side, and turning quite round. This gave her, from her place in the van +of the straggling procession, a glimpse of Alice and Dan Mavering far in +the rear. + +"Don't you know," he was saying to the girl at the same moment, "it's +like some of those Dore illustrations to the Inferno, or the Wandering +Jew." + +"Oh yes. I was trying to think what it was made me think I had seen it +before," she answered. "It must be that. But how strange it is!" she +exclaimed, "that sensation of having been there before--in some place +before where you can't possibly have been." + +"And do you feel it here?" he asked, as vividly interested as if they two +had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been a psychical +consolation to so many young observers. + +"Yes," she cried. + +"I hope I was with you," he said, with a sudden turn of levity, which did +not displease her, for there seemed to be a tender earnestness lurking in +it. "I couldn't bear to think of your being alone in such a howling +wilderness." + +"Oh, I was with a large picnic," she retorted gaily. "You might have +been among the rest. I didn't notice." + +"Well, the next time, I wish you'd look closer. I don't like being left +out." They were so far behind the rest that he devoted himself entirely +to her, and they had grown more and more confidential. + + +They came to a narrow foot-bridge over a deep gorge. The hand-rail had +fallen away. He sprang forward and gave her his hand for the passage. +"Who helped you over here?" he demanded. "Don't say I didn't." + +"Perhaps it was you," she murmured, letting him keep the fingers to which +he clung a moment after they had crossed the bridge. Then she took them +away, and said: "But I can't be sure. There were so many others." + +"Other fellows?" he demanded, placing himself before her on the narrow +path, so that she could not get by. "Try to remember, Miss Pasmer. This +is very important. It would break my heart if it was really some one +else." She stole a glance at his face, but it was smiling, though his +voice was so earnest. "I want to help you over all the bad places, and I +don't want any one else to have a hand in it." + +The voice and the face still belied each other, and between them the girl +chose to feel herself trifled with by the artistic temperament. "If +you'll please step out of the way, Mr. Mavering," she said severely, "I +shall not need anybody's help just here." + +He instantly moved aside, and they were both silent, till she said, as +she quickened her pace to overtake the others in front, "I don't see how +you can help liking nature in such a place as this." + +"I can't--human nature," he said. It was mere folly; and an abstract +folly at that; but the face that she held down and away from him flushed +with sweet consciousness as she laughed. + +On the cliff beetling above the bay, where she sat to look out over the +sad northern sea, lit with the fishing sail they had seen before, and the +surge washed into the rocky coves far beneath them, he threw himself at +her feet, and made her alone in the company that came and went and tried +this view and that from the different points where the picnic hostess +insisted they should enjoy it. She left the young couple to themselves, +and Mrs. Pasmer seemed to have forgotten that she had bidden Alice to be +a little more with her. + +Alice had forgotten it too. She sat listening to Mavering's talk with a +certain fascination, but not so much apparently because the meaning of +the words pleased her as the sound of his voice, the motion of his lips +in speaking, charmed her. At first he was serious, and even melancholy, +as if he were afraid he had offended her; but apparently he soon believed +that he had been forgiven, and began to burlesque his own mood, but still +with a deference and a watchful observance of her changes of feeling +which was delicately flattering in its way. Now and then when she +answered something it was not always to the purpose; he accused her of +not hearing what he said, but she would have it that she did, and then he +tried to test her by proofs and questions. It did not matter for +anything that was spoken or done; speech and action of whatever sort were +mere masks of their young joy in each other, so that when he said, after +he had quoted some lines befitting the scene they looked out on; "Now was +that from Tennyson or from Tupper?" and she answered, "Neither; it was +from Shakespeare," they joined, in the same happy laugh, and they laughed +now and then without saying anything. Neither this nor that made them +more glad or less; they were in a trance, vulnerable to nothing but the +summons which must come to leave their dream behind, and issue into the +waking world. + +In hope or in experience such a moment has come to all, and it is so +pretty to those who recognise it from the outside that no one has the +heart to hurry it away while it can be helped. The affair between Alice +and Mavering had evidently her mother's sanction, and all the rest were +eager to help it on. When the party had started to return, they called +to them, and let them come behind together. At the carriages they had +what Miss Anderson called a new deal, and Alice and Mavering found +themselves together in the rear seat of the last. + +The fog began to come in from the sea, and followed them through the +woods. When they emerged upon the highway it wrapped them densely round, +and formed a little world, cosy, intimate, where they two dwelt alone +with these friends of theirs, each of whom they praised for delightful +qualities. The horses beat along through the mist, in which there seemed +no progress, and they lived in a blissful arrest of time. Miss Anderson +called back from the front seat, "My ear buyns; you're talkin' about me." + +"Which ear?" cried Mavering. + +"Oh, the left, of couyse." + +"Then it's merely habit, Julie. You ought to have heard the nice things +we were saying about you," Alice called. + +"I'd like to hear all the nice things you've been saying." + +This seemed the last effect of subtle wit. Mavering broke out in his +laugh, and Alice's laugh rang above it. + +Mrs. Pasmer looked involuntarily round from the carriage ahead. + +"They seem to be having a good time," said Mrs. Brinkley at her side. + +"Yes; I hope Alice isn't overdoing." + +"I'm afraid you're dreadfully tired," said Mavering to the girl, in a low +voice, as he lifted her from her place when they reached the hotel +through the provisional darkness, and found that after all it was only +dinner-time. + +"Oh no. I feel as if the picnic were just beginning." + +"Then you will come to-night?" + +"I will see what mamma says." + +"Shall I ask her?" + +"Oh, perhaps not," said the girl, repressing his ardour, but not +severely. + + + + +XVIII. + +They were going to have some theatricals at one of the cottages, and the +lady at whose house they were to be given made haste to invite all the +picnic party before it dispersed. Mrs. Pasmer accepted with a mental +reservation, meaning to send an excuse later if she chose; and before she +decided the point she kept her husband from going after dinner into the +reading-room, where he spent nearly all his time over a paper and a +cigar, or in sitting absolutely silent and unoccupied, and made him go to +their own room with her. + +"There is something that I must speak to you about," she said, closing +the door, "and you must decide for yourself whether you wish to let it go +any further." + +"What go any further?" asked Mr. Pasmer, sitting down and putting his +hand to the pocket that held his cigar-case with the same series of +motions. + +"No, don't smoke," she said, staying his hand impatiently. "I want you +to think." + +"How can I think if I don't smoke?" + +"Very well; smoke, then. Do you want this affair with young Mavering to +go any farther?" + +"Oh!" said Pasmer, "I thought you had been looking after that." He had +in fact relegated that to the company of the great questions exterior to +his personal comfort which she always decided. + +"I have been looking after it, but now the time has come when you must, +as a father, take some interest in it." + +Pasmer's noble mask of a face, from the point of his full white beard to +his fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressed +all the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such an affair; +but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have to +intervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" he asked. + +"Why, I don't know that he's going to ask you anything. I don't know +whether he's said anything to Alice yet," said Mrs. Pasmer, with some +exasperation. + +Her husband was silent, but his silence insinuated a degree of wonder +that she should approach him prematurely on such a point. + +"They have been thrown together all day, and there is no use to conceal +from ourselves that they are very much taken with each other?" + +"I thought," Pasmer said, "that you said that from the beginning. Didn't +you want them to be taken with each other?" + +"That is what you are to decide." + +Pasmer silently refused to assume the responsibility. + +"Well?" demanded his wife, after waiting for him to speak. + +"Well what?" + +"What do you decide?" + +"What is the use of deciding a thing when it is all over?" + +"It isn't over at all. It can be broken off at any moment." + +"Well, break it off, then, if you like." + +Mrs. Pasmer resumed the responsibility with a sigh. She felt the burden, +the penalty, of power, after having so long enjoyed its sweets, and she +would willingly have abdicated the sovereignty which she had spent her +whole married life in establishing. But there was no one to take it up. +"No, I shall not break it off," she said resentfully; "I shall let it go +on." Then seeing that her husband was not shaken by her threat from his +long-confirmed subjection, she added: "It isn't an ideal affair, but I +think it will be a very good thing for Alice. He is not what I expected, +but he is thoroughly nice, and I should think his family was nice. I've +been talking with Mr. Munt about them to-day, and he confirms all that +Etta Saintsbury said. I don't think there can be any doubt of his +intentions in coming here. He isn't a particularly artless young man, +but he's been sufficiently frank about Alice since he's been here." Her +husband smoked on. "His father seems to have taken up the business from +the artistic side, and Mr. Mavering won't be expected to enter into the +commercial part at once. If it wasn't for Alice, I don't believe he +would think of the business for a moment; he would study law. Of course +it's a little embarrassing to have her engaged at once before she's seen +anything of society here, but perhaps it's all for the best, after all: +the main thing is that she should be satisfied, and I can see that she's +only too much so. Yes, she's very much taken with him; and I don't +wonder. He is charming." + +It was not the first time that Mrs. Pasmer had reasoned in this round; +but the utterance of her thoughts seemed to throw a new light on them, +and she took a courage from them that they did not always impart. She +arrived at the final opinion expressed, with a throb of tenderness for +the young fellow whom she believed eager to take her daughter from her, +and now for the first time she experienced a desolation in the prospect, +as if it were an accomplished fact. She was morally a bundle of +finesses, but at the bottom of her heart her daughter was all the world +to her. She had made the girl her idol, and if, like some other heathen, +she had not always used her idol with the greatest deference, if she had +often expected the impossible from it, and made it pay for her +disappointment, still she had never swerved from her worship of it. She +suddenly asked herself, What if this young fellow, so charming and so +good, should so wholly monopolise her child that she should no longer +have any share in her? What if Alice, who had so long formed her first +care and chief object in life, should contentedly lose herself in the +love and care of another, and both should ignore her right to her? She +answered herself with a pang that this might happen with any one Alice +married, and that it would be no worse, at the worst, with Dan Mavering +than with another, while her husband remained impartially silent. Always +keeping within the lines to which his wife's supremacy had driven him, he +felt safe there, and was not to be easily coaxed out of them. + +Mrs. Pasmer rose and left him, with his perfect acquiescence, and went +into her daughter's room. She found Alice there, with a pretty evening +dress laid out on her bed. Mrs. Pasmer was very fond of that dress, and +at the thought of Alice in it her spirits rose again. + +"Oh, are you going, Alice?" + +"Why, yes," answered the girl. "Didn't you accept?" + +"Why, yes," Mrs. Pasmer admitted. "But aren't you tired?" + +"Oh, not in the least. I feel as fresh as I did this morning. Don't you +want me to go?" + +"Oh yes, certainly, I want you to go--if you think you'll enjoy it." + +"Enjoy it? Why, why shouldn't I enjoy it, mamma!" What are you thinking +about? It's going to be the greatest kind of fun." + +"But do you think you ought to look at everything simply as fun?" asked +the mother, with unwonted didacticism. + +"How everything? What are you thinking about, mamma?" + +"Oh, nothing! I'm so glad you're going to wear that dress." + +"Why, of course! It's my best. But what arc you driving at, mamma?" + +Mrs. Pasmer was really seeking in her daughter that comfort of a distinct +volition which she had failed to find in her husband, and she wished to +assure herself of it more and more, that she might share with some one +the responsibility which he had refused any part in. + +"Nothing. But I'm glad you wish so much to go." The girl dropped her +hands and stared. "You must have enjoyed yourself to-day," she added, as +if that were an explanation. + +"Of course I enjoyed myself! But what has that to do with my wanting to +go to-night?" + +"Oh, nothing. But I hope, Alice, that there is one thing you have looked +fully in the face." + +"What thing?" faltered the girl, and now showed herself unable to +confront it by dropping her eyes. + +"Well, whatever you may have heard or seen, nobody else is in doubt about +it. What do you suppose has brought Mr. Mavering here!" + +"I don't know." The denial not only confessed that she did know, but it +informed her mother that all was as yet tacit between the young people. + +"Very well, then, I know," said Mrs. Pasmer; "and there is one thing that +you must know before long, Alice." + +"What?" she asked faintly. + +"Your own mind," said her mother. "I don't ask you what it is, and I +shall wait till you tell me. Of course I shouldn't have let him stay +here if I had objected--" + +"O mamma!" murmured the girl, dyed with shame to have the facts so boldly +touched, but not, probably, too deeply displeased. + +"Yes. And I know that he would never have thought of going into that +business if he had not expected--hoped--" + +"Mamma!" + +"And you ought to consider--" + +"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" implored the girl. + +"That's all," said her mother, turning from Alice, who had hidden her +face in her hands, to inspect the costume on the bed. She lifted one +piece of it after another, turned it over, looked at it, and laid it +down. "You can never get such a dress in this country." + +She went out of the room, as the girl dropped her face in the pillow. An +hour later they met equipped for the evening's pleasure. To the keen +glance that her mother gave her, the daughter's eyes had the brightness +of eyes that have been weeping, but they were also bright with that +knowledge of her own mind which Mrs. Pasmer had desired for her. She met +her mother's glance fearlessly, even proudly, and she carried her stylish +costume with a splendour to which only occasions could stimulate her. +They dramatised a perfect unconsciousness to each other, but Mrs. Pasmer +was by no means satisfied with the decision which she had read in her +daughter's looks. Somehow it did not relieve her of the responsibility, +and it did not change the nature of the case. It was gratifying, of +course, to see Alice the object of a passion so sincere and so ardent; so +far the triumph was complete, and there was really nothing objectionable +in the young man and his circumstances, though there was nothing very +distinguished. But the affair was altogether different from anything +that Mrs. Pasmer had imagined. She had supposed and intended that Alice +should meet some one in Boston, and go through a course of society before +reaching any decisive step. There was to be a whole season in which to +look the ground carefully over, and the ground was to be all within +certain well-ascertained and guarded precincts. But this that had +happened was outside of these precincts, of at least on their mere +outskirts. Class Day, of course, was all right; and she could not say +that the summer colony at Campobello was not thoroughly and essentially +Boston; and yet she felt that certain influences, certain sanctions, were +absent. To tell the truth, she would not have cared for the feelings of +Mavering's family in regard to the matter, except as they might afterward +concern Alice, and the time had not come when she could recognise their +existence in regard to the affair; and yet she could have wished that +even as it was his family could have seen and approved it from the start. +It would have been more regular. + + +With Alice it was a simpler matter, and of course deeper. For her it was +only a question of himself and herself; no one else existed to the +sublime egotism of her love. She did not call it by that name; she did +not permit it to assert itself by any name; it was a mere formless joy in +her soul, a trustful and blissful expectance, which she now no more +believed he could disappoint than that she could die within that hour. +All the rebellion that she had sometimes felt at the anomalous attitude +exacted of her sex in regard to such matters was gone. She no longer +thought it strange that a girl should be expected to ignore the +admiration of a young man till he explicitly declared it, and should then +be fully possessed of all the materials of a decision on the most +momentous question in life; for she knew that this state of ignorance +could never really exist; she had known from the first moment that he had +thought her beautiful. To-night she was radiant for him. Her eyes shone +with the look in which they should meet and give themselves to each other +before they spoke--the look in which they had met already, in which they +had lived that whole day. + + + + +XIX. + +The evening's entertainment was something that must fail before an +audience which was not very kind. They were to present a burlesque of +classic fable, and the parts, with their general intention, had been +distributed to the different actors; but nothing had been written down, +and, beyond the situations and a few points of dialogue, all had to be +improvised. The costumes and properties had been invented from such +things as came to hand. Sheets sculpturesquely draped the deities who +took part; a fox-pelt from the hearth did duty as the leopard skin of +Bacchus; a feather duster served Neptune for a trident; the lyre of +Apollo was a dust-pan; a gull's breast furnished Jove with his grey +beard. + +The fable was adapted to modern life, and the scene had been laid in +Campobello, the peculiarities of which were to be satirised throughout. +The principal situation was to be a passage between Jupiter, represented +by Mavering, and Juno, whom Miss Anderson personated; it was to be a +scene of conjugal reproaches and reprisals, and to end in reconciliation, +in which the father of the gods sacrificed himself on the altar of +domestic peace by promising to bring his family to Campobello every year. + +This was to be followed by a sketch of the Judgment of Paris, in which +Juno and Pallas were to be personated by two young men, and Miss Anderson +took the part of Venus. + +The pretty drawing-room of the Trevors--young people from Albany, and +cousins of Miss Anderson--was curtained off at one end for a stage, and +beyond the sliding doors which divided it in half were set chairs for the +spectators. People had come in whatever dress they liked; the men were +mostly in morning coats; the ladies had generally made some attempt at +evening toilet, but they joined in admiring Alice Pasmer's costume, and +one of them said that they would let it represent them all, and express +what each might have done if she would. There was not much time for +their tributes; all the lamps were presently taken away and set along the +floor in front of the curtain as foot-lights, leaving the company in a +darkness which Mrs. Brinkley pronounced sepulchral. She made her +reproaches to the master of the house, who had effected this +transposition of the lamps. "I was just thinking some very pretty and +valuable things about your charming cottage, Mr. Trevor: a rug on a bare +floor, a trim of varnished pine, a wall with half a dozen simple etchings +on it, an open fire, and a mantelpiece without bric-a-brac, how entirely +satisfying it all is! And how it upbraids us for heaping up upholstery +as we do in town!" + +"Go on," said the host. "Those are beautiful thoughts." + +"But I can't go on in the dark," retorted Mrs. Brinkley. "You can't +think in the dark, much less talk! Can you, Mrs. Pasmer?" Mrs. Pasmer, +with Alice next to her, sat just in front of Mrs. Brinkley. + +"No," she assented; "but if I could--YOU can thick anywhere, Mrs. +Brinkley--Mrs. Trevor's lovely house would inspire me to it." + +"Two birds with one stone--thank you, Mrs. Pasmer, for my part of the +compliment. Pick yourself up, Mr. Trevor." + +"Oh, thank you, I'm all right," said Trevor, panting after the ladies' +meanings, as a man must. "I suppose thinking and talking in the dark is +a good deal like smoking in the dark." + +"No; thinking and talking are not at all like smoking under any +conditions. Why in the world should they be?" + +"Oh, I can't get any fun out of a cigar unless I can see the smoke," the +host explained. + +"Do you follow him, Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"Yes, perfectly." + +"Thank you, Mrs. Pasmer," said Trevor. + +"I'll get you to tell me how you did it some time," said Mrs. Brinkley. +"But your house is a gem, Mr. Trevor." + +"Isn't it?" cried Trevor. "I want my wife to live here the year round." +It was the Trevors' first summer in their cottage, and the experienced +reader will easily recognise his mood. "But she's such a worldly spirit, +she won't." + +"Oh, I don't know about the year round. Do you, Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"I should," said Alice, with the suddenness of youth, breaking into the +talk which she had not been supposed to take any interest in. + +"Is it proper to kiss a young lady's hand?" said Trevor gratefully, +appealing to Mrs. Brinkley. + +"It isn't very customary in the nineteenth century," said Mrs. Brinkley. +"But you might kiss her fan. He might kiss her fan, mightn't he, Mrs. +Pasmer?" + +"Certainly. Alice, hold out your fan instantly." + +The girl humoured the joke, laughing. + +Trevor pressed his lips to the perfumed sticks. "I will tell Mrs. +Trevor," he said, "and that will decide her." + +"It will decide her not to come here at all next year if you tell her +all." + +"He never tells me all," said Mrs. Trevor, catching so much of the talk +as she came in from some hospitable cares in the dining-room. "They're +incapable of it. What has he been doing now?" + +"Nothing. Or I will tell you when we are alone, Mrs. Trevor," said Mrs. +Brinkley, with burlesque sympathy. "We oughtn't to have a scene on both +sides of the foot-lights." + +A boyish face, all excitement, was thrust out between the curtains +forming the proscenium of the little theatre. "All ready, Mrs. Trevor?" + +"Yes, all ready, Jim." + +He dashed the curtains apart, and marred the effect of his own +disappearance from the scene by tripping over the long legs of Jove, +stretched out to the front, where he sat on Mrs. Trevor's richest rug, +propped with sofa cushions on either hand. + +"So perish all the impious race of titans, enemies of the gods!" said +Mavering solemnly, as the boy fell sprawling. "Pick the earth-born giant +up, Vulcan, my son." + +The boy was very small for his age; every one saw that the accident had +not been premeditated, and when Vulcan appeared, with an exaggerated +limp, and carried the boy off, a burst of laughter went up from the +company. + +It did not matter what the play was to have been after that; it all +turned upon the accident. Juno came on, and began to reproach Jupiter +for his carelessness. "I've sent Mercury upstairs for the aynica; but he +says it's no use: that boy won't be able to pass ball for a week. How +often have I told you not to sit with your feet out that way! I knew +you'd hurt somebody." + +"I didn't have my feet out," retorted Jupiter. "Besides," he added, with +dignity, and a burlesque of marital special pleading which every wife and +husband recognised, "I always sit with my feet out so, and I always will, +so long as I've the spirit of a god." + +"Isn't he delicious?" buzzed Mrs. Pasmer, leaning backward to whisper to +Mrs. Brinkley; it was not that she thought what Dan had just said was so +very fanny, but people are immoderately applausive of amateur dramatics, +and she was feeling very fond of the young fellow. + +The improvisation went wildly and adventurously on, and the curtains +dropped together amidst the facile acclaim of the audience: + +"It's very well for Jupiter that he happened to think of the curtain," +said Mrs. Brinkley. "They couldn't have kept it up at that level much +longer." + +"Oh, do you think so?" softly murmured Mrs. Pasmer. "It seemed as if +they could have kept it up all night if they liked." + +"I doubt it. Mr. Trevor," said Mrs. Brinkley to the host, who had come +up for her congratulations, "do you always have such brilliant +performances?" + +"Well, we have so far," he answered modestly; and Mrs. Brinkley laughed +with him. This was the first entertainment at Trevor cottage. + +"'Sh!" went up all round them, and Mrs. Trevor called across the room, in +a reproachful whisper loud enough for every one to hear, "My dear!-- +enjoying yourself!" while Mavering stood between the parted curtains +waiting for the attention of the company. + +"On account of an accident to the call-boy and the mental exhaustion of +some of the deities, the next piece will be omitted, and the performance +will begin with the one after. While the audience is waiting, Mercury +will go round and take up a collection for the victim of the recent +accident, who will probably be indisposed for life. The collector will +be accompanied by a policeman, and may be safely trusted." + +He disappeared behind the curtain with a pas and r swirl of his draperies +like the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, and the audience again abandoned +itself to applause. + +"How very witty he is!" said Miss Cotton, who sat near John Munt. "Don't +you think he's really witty?" + +"Yes," Munt assented critically. "But you should have known his father." + +"Oh, do you know his father?" + +"I was in college with him." + +"Oh, do tell me about him, and all Mr. Mavering's family. We're so +interested, you know, on account of--Isn't it pretty to have that little +love idyl going on here? I wonder--I've been wondering all the time-- +what she thinks of all this. Do you suppose she quite likes it?" His +costume is so very remarkable!" Miss Cotton, in the absence of any lady +of her intimate circle, was appealing confidentially to John Munt. + +"Why, do you think there's anything serious between them?" he asked, +dropping his head forward as people do in church when they wish to +whisper to some one in the same pew. + +"Why, yes, it seems so," murmured Miss Cotton. "His admiration is quite +undisguised, isn't it?" + +"A man never can tell," said Munt. "We have to leave those things to you +ladies." + +"Oh, every one's talking of it, I assure you. And you know his family?" + +"I knew his father once rather better than anybody else." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes." Munt sketched rather a flattered portrait of the elder Mavering, +his ability, his goodness, his shyness, which he had always had to make +such a hard fight with. Munt was sensible of an access of popularity in +knowing Dan Mavering's people, and he did not spare his colours. + +"Then it isn't from his father that he gets everything. He isn't in the +least shy," said Miss Cotton. + +"That must be the mother." + +"And the mother?" + +"The mother I don't know." + +Miss Cotton sighed. "Sometimes I wish that he did show a little more +trepidation. It would seem as if he were more alive to the great +difference that there is between Alice Pasmer and other girls." + +Munt laughed a man's laugh. "I guess he's pretty well alive to that, if +he's in love with her." + +"Oh, in a certain way, of course, but not in the highest way. Now, for +instance, if he felt all her fineness as--as we do, I don't believe he'd +be willing to appear before her just like that." The father of the gods +wore a damask tablecloth of a pale golden hue and a classic pattern; his +arms were bare, and rather absurdly white; on his feet a pair of lawn- +tennis shoes had a very striking effect of sandals. + + +"It seems to me," Miss Cotton pursued; "that if he really appreciated her +in the highest way, he would wish never to do an undignified or trivial +thing in her presence." + +"Oh, perhaps it's that that pleases her in him. They say we're always +taken with opposites." + +"Yes--do you think so?" asked Miss Cotton. + +The curtains were flung apart, and the Judgment of Paris followed rather +tamely upon what had gone before, though the two young fellows who did +Juno and Minerva were very amusing, and the dialogue was full of hits. +Some of the audience, an appreciative minority, were of opinion that +Mavering and Miss Anderson surpassed themselves in it; she promised him +the most beautiful and cultured wife in Greece. "That settles it," he +answered. They came out arm in arm, and Paris, having put on a striped +tennis coat over his short-sleeved Greek tunic, moved round among the +company for their congratulations, Venus ostentatiously showing the apple +she had won. + +"I can haydly keep from eating it," she explained to Alice; before whom +she dropped Mavering's arm. "I'm awfully hungry. It's hayd woyk." + +Alice stood with her head drawn back, looking at the excited girl with a +smile, in which seemed to hover somewhere a latent bitterness. + +Mavering, with a flushed face and a flying tongue, was exchanging sallies +with her mother, who smothered him in flatteries. + +Mrs. Trevor came toward the group, and announced supper. "Mr. Paris, +will you take Miss Aphrodite out?" + +Miss Anderson swept a low bow of renunciation, and tacitly relinquished +Mavering to Alice. + +"Oh, no, no!" said Alice, shrinking back from him, with an +intensification of her uncertain smile. "A mere mortal?" + +"Oh, how very good!" said Mrs. Trevor. + +There began to be, without any one's intending it, that sort of tacit +misunderstanding which is all the worse because it can only follow upon a +tacit understanding like that which had established itself between Alice +and Mavering. They laughed and joked together gaily about all that went +on; they were perfectly good friends; he saw that she and her mother were +promptly served; he brought them salad and ice-cream and coffee himself, +only waiting officially upon Miss Anderson first, and Alice thanked him, +with the politest deprecation of his devotion; but if their eyes met, it +was defensively, and the security between them was gone. Mavering +vaguely felt the loss, without knowing how to retrieve it, and it made +him go on more desperately with Miss Anderson. He laughed and joked +recklessly, and Alice began to mark a more explicit displeasure with her. +She made her mother go rather early. + +On her part, Miss Anderson seemed to find reason for resentment in +Alice's bearing toward her. As if she had said to herself that her frank +loyalty had been thrown away upon a cold and unresponsive nature, and +that her harmless follies in the play had been met with unjust +suspicions, she began to make reprisals, she began in dead earnest to +flirt with Mavering. Before the evening passed she had made him seem +taken with her; but how justly she had done this, and with how much fault +of his, no one could have said. There were some who did not notice it at +all, but these were not people who knew Mavering, or knew Alice very +well. + + + + +XX. + +The next morning Alice was walking slowly along the road toward the +fishing village, when she heard rapid, plunging strides down the wooded +hillside on her right. She knew them for Mavering's, and she did not +affect surprise when he made a final leap into the road, and shortened +his pace beside her. + +"May I join you, Miss Pasmer?" + +"I am only going down to the herring-houses," she began. + +"And you'll let me go with you?" said the young fellow. "The fact is-- +you're always so frank that you make everything else seem silly--I've +been waiting up there in the woods for you to come by. Mrs. Pasmer told +me you had started this way, and I cut across lots to overtake you, and +then, when you came in sight, I had to let you pass before I could screw +my courage up to the point of running after you. How is that for open- +mindedness?" + +"It's a very good beginning, I should think." + +"Well, don't you think you ought to say now that you're sorry you were so +formidable?" + +"Am I so formidable?" she asked, and then recognised that she had been +trapped into a leading question. + +"You are to me. Because I would like always to be sure that I had +pleased you, and for the last twelve hours I've only been able to make +sure that I hadn't. That's the consolation I'm going away with. I +thought I'd get you to confirm my impression explicitly. That's why I +wished to join you." + +"Are you--were you going away?" + +"I'm going by the next boat. What's the use of staying? I should only +make bad worse. Yesterday I hoped But last night spoiled everything. +"Miss Pasmer," he broke out, with a rush of feeling, "you must know why I +came up here to Campobello." + +His steps took him a little ahead of her, and he could look back into her +face as he spoke. But apparently he saw nothing in it to give him +courage to go on, for he stopped, and then continued, lightly: "And I'm +going away because I feel that I've made a failure of the expedition. I +knew that you were supremely disgusted with me last night; but it will be +a sort of comfort if you'll tell me so." + +"Oh," said Alice, "everybody thought it was very brilliant, I'm sure." + +"And you thought it was a piece of buffoonery. Well, it was. I wish +you'd say so, Miss Pasmer; though I didn't mean the playing entirely. It +would be something to start from, and I want to make a beginning--turn +over a new leaf. Can't you help me to inscribe a good resolution of the +most iron-clad description on the stainless page? I've lain awake all +night composing one. Wouldn't you like to hear it?" + +"I can't see what good that would do," she said, with some relenting +toward a smile, in which he instantly prepared himself to bask. + +"But you will when I've done it. Now listen!" + +"Please don't go on." She cut him short with a return to her severity, +which he would not recognise. + +"Well, perhaps I'd better not," he consented. "It's rather a long +resolution, and I don't know that I've committed it perfectly yet. But I +do assure you that if you were disgusted last night, you were not the +only one. I was immensely disgusted myself; and why I wanted you to tell +me so, was because when I have a strong pressure brought to bear I can +brace up, and do almost anything," he said, dropping into earnest. Then +he rose lightly again, and added, "You have no idea how unpleasant it is +to lie awake all night throwing dust in the eyes of an accusing +conscience." + +"It must have been, if you didn't succeed," said Alice drily. + +"Yes, that's it--that's just the point. If I'd succeeded, I should be +all right, don't you see. But it was a difficult case." She turned her +face away, but he saw the smile on her cheek, and he laughed as if this +were what he had been trying to make her do. "I got beaten. I had to +give up, and own it. I had to say that I had thrown my chance away, +and I had better take myself off." He looked at her with a real anxiety +in his gay eyes. + +"The boat goes just after lunch, I believe," she said indifferently. + +"Oh yes, I shall have time to get lunch before I go," he said, with +bitterness. "But lunch isn't the only thing; it isn't even the main +thing, Miss Pasmer." + +"No?" She hardened her heart. + +He waited for her to say something more, and then he went on. "The +question is whether there's time to undo last night, abolish it, erase it +from the calendar of recorded time--sponge it out, in short--and get back +to yesterday afternoon." She made no reply to this. "Don't you think it +was a very pleasant picnic, Miss Pasmer?" he asked, with pensive +respectfulness. + +"Very," she answered drily. + +He cast a glance at the woods that bordered the road on either side. +"That weird forest--I shall never forget it." + +"No; it was something to remember," she said. + +"And the blueberry patch? We mustn't forget the blueberry patch." + +"There were a great many blueberries." + +She walked on, and he said, "And that bridge--you don't have that feeling +of having been here before?" + +"No." + +"Am I walking too fast for you, Miss Pasmer?" + +"No; I like to walk fast." + +"But wouldn't you like to sit down? On this wayside log, for example?" +He pointed it out with his stick. "It seems to invite repose, and I know +you must be tired." + +"I'm not tired." + +"Ah, that shows that you didn't lie awake grieving over your follies all +night. I hope you rested well, Miss Pasmer." She said nothing. "If I +thought--if I could hope that you hadn't, it would be a bond of sympathy, +and I would give almost anything for a bond of sympathy just now, Miss +Pasmer. Alice!" he said, with sudden seriousness. "I know that I'm not +worthy even to think of you, and that you're whole worlds above me in +every way. It's that that takes all heart out of me, and leaves me +without a word to say when I'd like to say so much. I would like to +speak--tell you--" + +She interrupted him. "I wish to speak to you, Mr. Mavering, and tell you +that--I'm very tired, and I'm going back to the hotel. I must ask you to +let me go back alone." + +"Alice, I love you." + +"I'm sorry you said it--sorry, sorry." + +"Why?" he asked, with hopeless futility. + +"Because there can be no love between us--not friendship even--not +acquaintance." + +"I shouldn't have asked for your acquaintance, your friendship, if--" +His words conveyed a delicate reproach, and they stung her, because they +put her in the wrong. + +"No matter," she began wildly. "I didn't mean to wound you. But we must +part, and we must never see each other again:" + +He stood confused, as if he could not make it out or believe it. "But +yesterday--" + +"It's to-day now." + +"Ah, no! It's last night. And I can explain." + +"No!" she cried. "You shall not make me out so mean and vindictive. I +don't care for last night, nor for anything that happened." This was not +true, but it seemed so to her at the moment; she thought that she really +no longer resented his association with Miss Anderson and his separation +from herself in all that had taken place. + +"Then what is it?" + +"I can't tell you. But everything is over between us--that's all." + +"But yesterday--and all these days past--you seemed--" + +"It's unfair of you to insist--it's ungenerous, ungentlemanly." + +That word, which from a woman's tongue always strikes a man like a blow +in the face, silenced Mavering. He set his lips and bowed, and they +parted. She turned upon her way, and he kept the path which she had been +going. + +It was not the hour when the piazzas were very full, and she slipped into +the dim hotel corridor undetected, or at least undetained. She flung +into her room, and confronted her mother. + +Mrs. Pasmer was there looking into a trunk that had overflowed from her +own chamber. "What is the matter?" she said to her daughter's excited +face. + +"Mr. Mavering--" + +"Well?" + +"And I refused him." + +Mrs. Pasmer was one of those ladies who in any finality have a keen +retrovision of all the advantages of a different conclusion. She had +been thinking, since she told Dan Mavering which way Alice had gone to +walk, that if he were to speak to her now, and she were to accept him, it +would involve a great many embarrassing consequences; but she had +consoled herself with the probability that he would not speak so soon +after the effects of last night, but would only try at the furthest to +make his peace with Alice. Since he had spoken, though, and she had +refused him, Mrs. Pasmer instantly saw all the pleasant things that would +have followed in another event. "Refused him?" she repeated +provisionally, while she gathered herself for a full exploration of all +the facts. + +"Yes, mamma; and I can't talk about it. I wish never to hear his name +again, or to see him, or to speak to him." + +"Why, of course not," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a fine smile, from the +vantage-ground of her superior years, "if you've refused him." She left +the trunk which she had been standing over, and sat down, while Alice +swept to and fro before her excitedly. "But why did you refuse him, my +dear?" + +"Why? Because he's detestable--perfectly ignoble." + +Her mother probably knew how to translate these exalted expressions into +the more accurate language of maturer life. "Do you mean last night?" + +"Last night?" cried Alice tragically. "No. Why should I care for last +night?" + +"Then I don't understand what you mean," retorted Mrs. Pasmer. "What did +he say?" she demanded, with authority. + +"Mamma, I can't talk about it--I won't." + +"But you must, Alice. It's your duty. Of course I must know about it. +What did he say?" + +Alice walked up and down the room with her lips firmly closed--like +Mavering's lips, it occurred to her; and then she opened them, but +without speaking. + +"What did he say?" persisted her mother, and her persistence had its +effect. + +"Say?" exclaimed the girl indignantly. "He tried to make me say." + +"I see," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Well?" + +"But I forced him to speak, and then--I rejected him. That's all." + +"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "He was afraid of you." + +"And that's what made it the more odious. Do you think I wished him to +be afraid of me? Would that be any pleasure? I should hate myself if I +had to quell anybody into being unlike themselves." She sat down for a +moment, and then jumped up again, and went to the window, for no reason, +and came back. + +"Yes," said her mother impartially, "he's light, and he's roundabout. He +couldn't come straight at anything." + +"And would you have me accept such a--being?" + +Mrs. Pasmer smiled a little at the literary word, and continued: "But +he's very sweet, and he's as good as the day's long, and he's very fond +of you, and--I thought you liked him." + +The girl threw up her arms across her eyes. "Oh, how can you say such a +thing, mamma?" + +She dropped into a chair at the bedside, and let her face fall into her +hands, and cried. + +Her mother waited for the gust of tears to pass before she said, "But if +you feel so about it--" + +"Mamma!" Alice sprang to her feet. + +"It needn't come from you. I could make some excuse to see him--write +him a little note--" + +"Never!" exclaimed Alice grandly. "What I've done I've done from my +reason, and my feelings have nothing to do with it." + +"Oh, very well," said her mother, going out of the room, not wholly +disappointed with what she viewed as a respite, and amused by her +daughter's tragics. "But if you think that the feelings have nothing to +do with such a matter, you're very much mistaken." If she believed that +her daughter did not know her real motives in rejecting Dan Mavering, or +had not been able to give them, she did not say so. + +The little group of Aliceolaters on the piazza, who began to canvass the +causes of Mavering's going before the top of his hat disappeared below +the bank on the path leading to the ferry-boat, were of two minds. One +faction held that he was going because Alice had refused him, and that +his gaiety up to the last moment was only a mask to hide his despair. +The other side contended that, if he and Alice were not actually engaged, +they understood each other, and he was going away because he wanted to +tell his family, or something of that kind. Between the two opinions +Miss Cotton wavered with a sentimental attraction to either. "What do +you really think?" she asked Mrs. Brinkley, arriving from lunch at the +corner of the piazza where the group was seated. + +"Oh, what does it matter, at their age?" she demanded. + +"But they're just of the age when it does happen to matter," suggested +Mrs. Stamwell. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and that's what makes the whole thing so +perfectly ridiculous. Just think of two children, one of twenty and the +other of twenty-three, proposing to decide their lifelong destiny in such +a vital matter! Should we trust their judgment in regard to the smallest +business affair? Of course not. They're babes in arms, morally and +mentally speaking. People haven't the data for being wisely in love till +they've reached the age when they haven't the least wish to be so. Oh, I +suppose I thought that I was a grown woman too when I was twenty; I can +look back and see that I did; and, what's more preposterous still, I +thought Mr. Brinkley was a man at twenty-four. But we were no more fit +to accept or reject each other at that infantile period--" + +"Do you really think so?" asked Miss Cotton, only partially credulous of +Mrs. Brinkley's irony. + +"Yes, it does seem out of all reason," admitted Mrs. Stamwell. + +"Of course it is," said Mrs. Brinkley. "If she has rejected him, she's +done a very safe thing. Nobody should be allowed to marry before fifty. +Then, if people married, it would be because they knew that they loved +each other." + +Miss Cotton reflected a moment. "It is strange that such an important +question should have to be decided at an age when the judgment is so far +from mature. I never happened to look at it in that light before." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley--and she made herself comfortable in an arm +chair commanding a stretch of the bay over which the ferry-boat must +pass--"but it's only part and parcel of the whole affair. I'm sure that +no grown person can see the ridiculous young things--inexperienced, +ignorant, featherbrained--that nature intrusts with children, their +immortal little souls and their extremely perishable little bodies, +without rebelling at the whole system. When you see what most young +mothers are, how perfectly unfit and incapable, you wonder that the whole +race doesn't teeth and die. Yes, there's one thing I feel pretty sure +of--that, as matters are arranged now, there oughtn't to be mothers at +all, there ought to be only grandmothers." + +The group all laughed, even Miss Cotton, but she was the first to become +grave. At the bottom of her heart there was a doubt whether so light a +way of treating serious things was not a little wicked. + +"Perhaps," she said, "we shall have to go back to the idea that +engagements and marriages are not intended to be regulated by the +judgment, but by the affections." + +"I don't know what's intended," said Mrs. Brinkley, "but I know what is. +In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the affections have it their own +way, and I must say I don't think the judgment could make a greater mess +of it. In fact," she continued, perhaps provoked to the excess by the +deprecation she saw in Miss Cotton's eye, "I consider every broken +engagement nowadays a blessing in disguise." + +Miss Cotton said nothing. The other ladies said, "Why, Mrs. Brinkley!" + +"Yes. The thing has gone altogether too far. The pendulum has swung in +that direction out of all measure. We are married too much. And as a +natural consequence we are divorced too much. The whole case is in a +nutshell: if there were no marriages, there would be no divorces, and +that great abuse would be corrected, at any rate." + +All the ladies laughed, Miss Cotton more and more sorrowfully. She liked +to have people talk as they do in genteel novels. Mrs. Brinkley's bold +expressions were a series of violent shocks to her nature, and imparted a +terrible vibration to the fabric of her whole little rose-coloured ideal +world; if they had not been the expressions of a person whom a great many +unquestionable persons accepted, who had such an undoubted standing, she +would have thought them very coarse. As it was, they had a great +fascination for her. "But in a case like that of"--she looked round and +lowered her voice--"our young friends, I'm sure you couldn't rejoice if +the engagement were broken off." + +"Well, I'm not going to be 'a mush of concession,' as Emerson says, Miss +Cotton. And, in the first place, how do you know they're engaged?" + +"Ah, I don't; I didn't mean that they were. But wouldn't it be a little +pathetic if, after all that we've seen going on, his coming here +expressly on her account, and his perfect devotion to her for the past +two weeks, it should end in nothing?" + +"Two weeks isn't a very long time to settle the business of a lifetime." + +"No." + +"Perhaps she's proposed delay; a little further acquaintance." + +"Oh, of course that would be perfectly right. Do you think she did?" + +"Not if she's as wise as the rest of us would have been at her age. But +I think she ought." + +"Yes?" said Miss Cotton semi-interrogatively. + +"Do you think his behaviour last night would naturally impress her with +his wisdom and constancy?" + +"No, I can't say that it would, but--" + +"And this Alice of yours is rather a severe young person. She has her +ideas, and I'm afraid they're rather heroic. She'd be just with him, of +course. But there's nothing a man dreads so much as justice--some men." + +"Yes," pursued Miss Cotton, "but that very disparity--I know they're very +unlike--don't you think--" + +"Oh yes, I know the theory about that. But if they were exactly alike in +temperament, they'd be sufficiently unlike for the purposes of +counterparts. That was arranged once for all when 'male and female +created He them.' I've no doubt their fancy was caught by all the kinds +of difference they find in each other; that's just as natural as it's +silly. But the misunderstanding, the trouble, the quarrelling, the wear +and tear of spirit, that they'd have to go through before they +assimilated--it makes me tired, as the boys say. No: I hope, for the +young man's own sake, he's got his conge." + +"But he's so kind, so good " + +"My dear, the world is surfeited with kind, good men. There are half a +dozen of them at the other end of the piazza smoking; and there comes +another to join them," she added, as a large figure, semicircular in +profile, advanced itself from a doorway toward a vacant chair among the +smokers. "The very soul of kindness and goodness." She beckoned toward +her husband, who caught sight of her gesture. "Now I can tell you all +his mental processes. First, surprise at seeing some one beckoning; then +astonishment that it's I, though who else should beckon him?--then wonder +what I can want; then conjecture that I may want him to come here; then +pride in his conjecture; rebellion; compliance." + +The ladies were in a scream of laughter as Mr. Brinkley lumbered heavily +to their group. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"Do you believe in broken engagements? Now quick--off-hand!" + +"Who's engaged?" + +"No matter." + +"Well, you know Punch's advice to those about to marry?" + +"I know--chestnuts," said his wife scornfully. They dismissed each other +with tender bluntness, and he went in to get a match. + +"Ah, Mrs. Brinkley," said one of the ladies, "it would be of no use for +you to preach broken engagements to any one who saw you and Mr. Brinkley +together." They fell upon her, one after another, and mocked her with +the difference between her doctrine and practice; and they were all the +more against her because they had been perhaps a little put down by her +whimsical sayings. + +"Yes," she admitted. "But we've been thirty years coming to the +understanding that you all admire so much; and do you think it was worth +the time?" + + + + +XXI. + +Mavering kept up until he took leave of the party of young people who had +come over on the ferry-boat to Eastport for the frolic of seeing him off. +It was a tremendous tour de force to accept their company as if he were +glad of it, and to respond to all their gay nothings gaily; to maintain +a sunny surface on his turbid misery. They had tried to make Alice come +with them, but her mother pleaded a bad headache for her; and he had to +parry a hundred sallies about her, and from his sick heart humour the +popular insinuation that there was an understanding between them, and +that they had agreed together she should not come. He had to stand about +on the steamboat wharf and listen to amiable innuendoes for nearly an +hour before the steamer came in from St. John. The fond adieux of his +friends, their offers to take any message back, lasted during the +interminable fifteen minutes that she lay at her moorings, and then he +showed himself at the stern of the boat, and waved his handkerchief in +acknowledgment of the last parting salutations on shore. + +When it was all over, he went down into his state-room, and shut himself +in, and let his misery rollover him. He felt as if there were a flood of +it, and it washed him to and fro, one gall of shame, of self-accusal, of +bitterness, from head to foot. But in it all he felt no resentment +toward Alice, no wish to wreak any smallest part of his suffering upon +her. Even while he had hoped for her love, it seemed to him that he had +not seen her in all that perfection which she now had in irreparable +loss. His soul bowed itself fondly over the thought of her; and, stung +as he was by that last cruel word of hers, he could not upbraid her. +That humility which is love casting out selfishness, the most egotistic +of the passions triumphing over itself--Mavering experienced it to the +full. He took all the blame. He could not see that she had ever +encouraged him to hope for her love, which now appeared a treasure +heaven--far beyond his scope; he could only call himself fool, and fool, +and fool, and wonder that he could have met her in the remoteness of that +morning with the belief that but for the follies of last night she might +have answered him differently. He believed now that, whatever had gone +before, she must still have rejected him. She had treated his +presumption very leniently; she had really spared him. + +It went on, over and over. Sometimes it varied a little, as when he +thought of how, when she should tell her mother, Mrs. Pasmer must laugh. +He pictured them both laughing at him; and then Mr. Pasmer--he had +scarcely passed a dozen words with him-coming in and asking what they +were laughing at, and their saying, and his laughing too. + +At other times he figured them as incensed at his temerity, which must +seem to them greater and greater, as now it seemed to him. He had never +thought meanly of himself, and the world so far had seemed to think well +of him; but because Alice Pasmer was impossible to him, he felt that it +was an unpardonable boldness in him to have dreamed of her. What must +they be saying of his having passed from the ground of society +compliments and light flirtation to actually telling Alice that he loved +her? + +He wondered what Mrs. Pasmer had thought of his telling her that he had +come to Campobello to consider the question whether he should study law +or go into business, and what motive she had supposed he had in telling +her that. He asked himself what motive he had, and tried to pretend that +he had none. He dramatised conversations with Mrs. Pasmer in which he +laughed it off. + +Ho tried to remember all that had passed the day before at the picnic, +and whether Alice had done or said anything to encourage him, and he +could not find that she had. All her trust and freedom was because she +felt perfectly safe with him from any such disgusting absurdity as he had +been guilty of. The ride home through the mist, with its sweet intimacy, +that parting which had seemed so full of tender intelligence, were parts +of the same illusion. There had been nothing of it on her side from the +beginning but a kindliness which he had now flung away for ever. + +He went back to the beginning, and tried to remember the point where he +had started in this fatal labyrinth of error. She had never misled him, +but he had misled himself from the first glimpse of her. + +Whatever was best in his light nature, whatever was generous and self- +denying, came out in this humiliation. From the vision of her derision +he passed to a picture of her suffering from pity for him, and wrung with +a sense of the pain she had given him. He promised himself to write to +her, and beg her not to care for him, because he was not worthy of that. +He framed a letter in his mind, in which he posed in some noble +attitudes, and brought tears into his eyes by his magnanimous appeal to +her not to suffer for the sake of one so unworthy of her serious thought. +He pictured her greatly moved by some of the phrases, and he composed for +her a reply, which led to another letter from him, and so to a +correspondence and a long and tender friendship. In the end he died +suddenly, and then she discovered that she had always loved him. He +discovered that he was playing the fool again, and he rose from the berth +where he had tumbled himself. The state-room had that smell of parboiled +paint which state-rooms have, and reminded him of the steamer in which he +had gone to Europe when a boy, with the family, just after his mother's +health began to fail. + +He went down on the deck near the ladies' saloon, where the second-class +passengers were gathered listening to the same band of plantation negroes +who had amused him so much on the eastward trip. The passengers were +mostly pock marked Provincials, and many of them were women; they lounged +on the barrels of apples neatly piled up, and listened to the music +without smiling. One of the negroes was singing to the banjo, and +another began to do the rheumatic uncle's breakdown. Mavering said to +himself: "I can't stand that. Oh, what a fool I am! Alice, I love you. +O merciful heavens! O infernal jackass! Ow! Gaw!" + +At the bow of the boat he found a gang of Italian labourers returning to +the States after some job in the Provinces. They smoked their pipes and +whined their Neapolitan dialect together. It made Mavering think of +Dante, of the Inferno, to which he passed naturally from his self- +denunciation for having been an infernal jackass. The inscription on the +gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life-- +his desolate, broken life--a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same +time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, +idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out +his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all the +cigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determined to +spend the miserable remnant of his life in going about doing good and +bestowing alms. + +He groaned aloud, so that the Italians noticed it, and doubtless spoke of +it among themselves. He could not understand their dialect, but he +feigned them saying respectfully compassionate things. Then he gnashed +his teeth again, and cursed his folly. When the bell rang for supper he +found himself very hungry, and ate heavily. After that he went out in +front of the cabin, and walked up and down, thinking, and trying not to +think. The turmoil in his mind tired him like a prodigious physical +exertion. + +Toward ten o'clock the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescent +that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows and +wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in +flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came +and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the water +was reflected on their faces, and showed them to each other. + +"Well, I never saw anything like this before. Looks like hell; don't +it?" said the officer. + +"Yes," said Mavering. "Is it uncommon?" + +"Well, I should say so. I guess we're going to have a picnic." + +Mavering thought of blueberries, but he did not say anything. + +"I guess it's going to be a regular circus." + +Mavering did not care. He asked incuriously, "How do you find your +course in such weather?" + +"Well, we guess where we are, and then give her so many turns of the +wheel." The officer laughed, and Mavering laughed too. He was struck by +the hollow note in his laugh; it seemed to him pathetic; he wondered if +he should now always laugh so, and if people would remark it. He tried +another laugh; it sounded mechanical. + +He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began to +dream. A face came up out of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as in +that picture of Vedder's which he calls "Memory," but the hair was not +blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes +were like it. "Horrible! horrible!" he tried to shriek, but he cried, +"Alice, I love you." There was a burglar in the room, and he was running +after Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists +fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long, +washing sound like water. + +Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves. The boat +was pitching frightfully. He struggled out into the saloon, and saw that +it was five o'clock. In five hours more it would be a day since he told +Alice that he loved her; it now seemed very improbable. There were a +good many half-dressed people in the saloon, and a woman came running out +of her state-room straight to Mavering. She was in her stocking feet, +and her hair hung down her back. + +"Oh! are we going down?" she implored him. "Have we struck? Oughtn't we +to pray--somebody? Shall I wake the children?" + +"Mavering reassured her, and told her there was no danger. + +"Well, then," she said, "I'll go back for my shoes." + +"Yes, better get your shoes." + +The saloon rose round him and sank. He controlled his sickness by +planting a chair in the centre and sitting in it with his eyes shut. As +he grew more comfortable he reflected how he had calmed that woman, and +he resolved again to spend his life in doing good. "Yes, that's the only +ticket," he said to himself, with involuntary frivolity. He thought of +what the officer had said, and he helplessly added, "Circus ticket-- +reserved seat." Then he began again, and loaded himself with execration. + +The boat got into Portland at nine o'clock, and Mavering left her, taking +his hand-bag with him, and letting his trunk go on to Boston. + +The officer who received his ticket at the gangplank noticed the +destination on it, and said, "Got enough?" + +"Yes, for one while." Mavering recognised his acquaintance of the night +before. + +"Don't like picnics very much." + +"No," said Mavering, with abysmal gloom. "They don't agree with me. +Never did." He was aware of trying to make his laugh bitter. The +officer did not notice. + +Mavering was surprised, after the chill of the storm at sea, to find it +rather a warm, close morning in Portland. The restaurant to which the +hackman took him as the best in town was full of flies; they bit him +awake out of the dreary reveries he fell into while waiting for his +breakfast. In a mirror opposite he saw his face. It did not look +haggard; it looked very much as it always did. He fancied playing a part +through life--hiding a broken heart under a smile. "0 you incorrigible +ass!" he said to himself, and was afraid he had said it to the young lady +who brought him his breakfast, and looked haughtily at him from under her +bang. She was very thin, and wore a black jersey. + +He tried to find out whether he had spoken aloud by addressing her +pleasantly. "It's pretty cold this morning." + +"What say?" + +"Pretty cool." + +"Oh yes. But it's pretty clo-ose," she replied, in her Yankee +cantillation. She went away and left him to the bacon and eggs he had +ordered at random. There was a fly under one of the slices of bacon, and +Mavering confined himself to the coffee. + +A man came up in a white cap and jacket from a basement in the front of +the restaurant, where confectionery was sold, and threw down a mass of +malleable candy on a marble slab, and began to work it. Mavering watched +him, thinking fuzzily all the time of Alice, and holding long, fatiguing +dialogues with the people at the Ty'n-y-Coed, whose several voices he +heard. + +He said to himself that it was worse than yesterday. He wondered if it +would go on getting worse every day. + +He saw a man pass the door of the restaurant who looked exactly like +Boardman as he glanced in. The resemblance was explained by the man's +coming back, and proving to be really Boardman. + + + + +XXII. + +Mavering sprang at him with a demand for the reason of his being there. + +"I thought it was you as I passed," said Boardman, "but I couldn't make +sure--so dark back here." + +"And I thought it was you, but I couldn't believe it," said Mavering, +with equal force, cutting short an interior conversation with Mr. Pasmer, +which had begun to hold itself since his first glimpse of Boardman. + +"I came down here to do a sort of one-horse yacht race to-day," Boardman +explained. + +"Going to be a yacht race? Better have some breakfast. Or better not-- +here. Flies under your bacon." + +"Rough on the flies," said Boardman, snapping the bell which summoned the +spectre in the black jersey, and he sat down. "What are you doing in +Portland?" + +Mavering told him, and then Boardman asked him how he had left the +Pasmers. Mavering needed no other hint to speak, and he spoke fully, +while Boardman listened with an agreeable silence, letting the hero of +the tale break into self-scornful groans and doleful laughs, and ease his +heart with grotesque, inarticulate noises, and made little or no +comments. + +By the time his breakfast came, Boardman was ready to say, "I didn't +suppose it was so much of a mash." + +"I didn't either," said Mavering, "when I left Boston. Of course I knew +I was going down there to see her, but when I got there it kept going on, +just like anything else, up to the last moment. I didn't realise till it +came to the worst that I had become a mere pulp." + +"Well, you won't stay so," said Boardman, making the first vain attempt +at consolation. He lifted the steak he had ordered, and peered beneath +it. All right this time, any way." + +"I don't know what you mean by staying so," replied Mavering, with gloomy +rejection of the comfort offered. + +"You'll see that it's all for the best; that you're well out of it. If +she could throw you over, after leading you on--" + +"But she didn't lead me on!" exclaimed Mavering. "Don't you understand +that it was all my mistake from the first? If I hadn't been perfectly +besotted I should have seen that she was only tolerating me. Don't you +see? Why, hang it, Boardman, I must have had a kind of consciousness of +it under my thick-skinned conceit, after all, for when I came to the +point--when I did come to the point--I hadn't the sand to stick to it +like a man, and I tried to get her to help me. Yes, I can see that I did +now. I kept fooling about, and fooling about, and it was because I had +that sort of prescience--of whatever you call it--that I was mistaken +about it from the very beginning." + +He wished to tell Boardman about the events of the night before; but he +could not. He said to himself that he did not care about their being +hardly to his credit; but he did not choose to let Alice seem to have +resented anything in them; it belittled her, and claimed too much for +him. So Boardman had to proceed upon a partial knowledge of the facts. + +"I don't suppose that boomerang way of yours, if that's what you mean, +was of much use," he said. + +"Use? It ruined me! But what are you going to do?" How are you going +to presuppose that a girl like Miss Pasmer is interested in an idiot like +you? I mean me, of course." Mavering broke off with a dolorous laugh. +"And if you can't presuppose it, what are you going to do when it comes +to the point? You've got to shillyshally, and then you've got to go it +blind. I tell you it's a leap in the dark." + +"Well, then, if you've got yourself to blame--" + +"How am I to blame, I should like to know?" retorted Mavering, rejecting +the first offer from another of the censure which he had been heaping +upon himself: the irritation of his nerves spoke. "I did speak out at +last--when it was too late. Well, let it all go," he groaned aimlessly. +"I don't care. But she isn't to blame. I don't think I could admire +anybody very much who admired me. No, sir. She did just right. I was a +fool, and she couldn't have treated me differently." + +"Oh, I guess it'll come out all right," said Boardman, abandoning himself +to mere optimism. + +"How come all right?" demanded Mavering, flattered by the hope he +refused. "It's come right now. I've got my deserts; that's all." + +"Oh no, you haven't. What harm have you done? It's all right for you to +think small beer of yourself, and I don't see how you could think +anything else just at present. But you wait awhile. When did it +happen?" + +Mavering took out his watch. "One day, one hour, twenty minutes, and +fifteen seconds ago." + +"Sure about the seconds? I suppose you didn't hang round a great while +afterward?" + +"Well, people don't, generally," said Mavering, with scorn. + +"Never tried it," said Boardman, looking critically at his fried potatoes +before venturing upon them. "If you had stayed, perhaps she might have +changed her mind," he added, as if encouraged to this hopeful view by the +result of his scrutiny. + +"Where did you get your fraudulent reputation for common-sense, +Boardman?" retorted Mavering, who had followed his examination of the +potatoes with involuntary interest. "She won't change her mind; she +isn't one of that kind. But she's the one woman in this world who could +have made a man of me, Boardman." + +"Is that so?" asked Boardman lightly. "Well, she is a good-looking +girl." + +"She's divine!" + +"What a dress that was she had on Class Day!" + +"I never think what she has on. She makes everything perfect, and then +makes you forget it." + +"She's got style; there's no mistake about that." + +"Style!" sighed Mavering; but he attempted no exemplification. + +"She's awfully graceful. What a walk she's got!" + +"Oh, don't, don't, Boardman! All that's true, and all that's nothing-- +nothing to her goodness. She's so good, Boardman! Well, I give it up! +She's religious. You wouldn't think that, may be; you can't imagine a +pretty girl religious. And she's all the more intoxicating when she's +serious; and when she's forgotten your whole worthless existence she's +ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girl when she's going +right for you. There's a kind of look comes into her eyes--kind of +absence, rapture, don't you know--when she's serious, that brings your +heart right into your mouth. She makes you think of some of those +pictures--I want to tell you what she said the other day at a picnic when +we were off getting blueberries, and you'll understand that she isn't +like other girls--that she has a soul fall of--of--you know what, +Boardman. She has high thoughts about everything. I don't believe she's +ever had a mean or ignoble impulse--she couldn't have." In the business +of imparting his ideas confidentially, Mavering had drawn himself across +the table toward Boardman, without heed to what was on it. + +"Look out! You'll be into my steak first thing you know." + +"0h, confound your steak?" cried Mavering, pushing the dish away. What +difference does it make? I've lost her, anyway." + +"I don't believe you've lost her," said Boardman. + +"What's the reason you don't?" retorted Mavering, with contempt. + +"Because, if she's the serious kind of a girl you say she is, she +wouldn't let you come up there and dangle round a whole fortnight without +letting you know she didn't like it, unless she did like it. Now you +just go a little into detail." + +Mavering was quite willing. He went so much into detail that he left +nothing to Boardman's imagination. He lost the sense of its calamitous +close in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiled and +blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described Miss Anderson +and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladies on the margin +of a newspaper, and the tears came into his eyes when he repeated the +cruel words which Alice had used at their last meeting. + +"Oh, well, you must brace up," said Boardman. "I've got to go now. She +didn't mean it, of course." + +"Mean what?" + +"That you were ungentlemanly. Women don't know half the time how hard +they're hitting." + +"I guess she meant that she didn't want me, anyway," said Mavering +gloomily. + +"Ah, I don't know about that. You'd better ask her the next time you see +her. Good-bye." He had risen, and he offered his hand to Mavering, who +was still seated. + +"Why, I've half a mind to go with you." + +"All right, come along. But I thought you might be going right on to +Boston." + +"No; I'll wait and go on with you. How, do you go to the race?" + +"In the press boat." + +"Any women?" + +"No; we don't send them on this sort of duty." + +"That settles it. I have got all I want of that particular sex for the +time being." Mavering wore a very bitter air as he said this; it seemed +to him that he would always be cynical; he rose, and arranged to leave +his bag with the restaurateur, who put it under the counter, and then he +went out with his friend. + +The sun had come out, and the fog was burning away; there was life and +lift in the air, which the rejected lover could not refuse to feel, and +he said, looking round, and up and down the animated street. "I guess +you're going to have a good day for it." + +The pavement was pretty well filled with women who had begun shopping. +Carriages were standing beside the pavement; a lady crossed the pavement +from a shop door toward a coupe just in front of them, with her hand full +of light packages; she dropped one of them, and Mavering sprang forward +instinctively and picked it up for her. + +"Oh, thank you!" she said, with the deep gratitude which society +cultivates for the smallest services. Then she lifted her drooped +eyelashes, and, with a flash of surprise, exclaimed, "Mr. Mavering!" and +dropped all her packages that she might shake hands with him. + +Boardman sauntered slowly on, but saw with a backward glance Mavering +carrying the lady's packages to the coupe for her; saw him lift his hat +there, and shake hands with somebody in the coupe, and then stand talking +beside it. He waited at the corner of the block for Mavering to come up, +affecting an interest in the neck-wear of a furnisher's window. + +In about five minutes Mavering joined him. + +"Look here, Boardman! Those ladies have snagged onto me." + +"Are there two of them?" + +"Yes, one inside. And they want me to go with then to see the race. +Their father's got a little steam-yacht. They want you to go too." + +Boardman shook his head. + +"Well, that's what I told them--told them that you had to go on the press +boat. They said they wished they were going on the press boat too. But +I don't see how I can refuse. They're ladies that I met Class Day, and I +ought to have shown them a little more attention then; but I got so taken +up with--" + +"I see," said Boardman, showing his teeth, fine and even as grains of +pop-corn, in a slight sarcastic smile. "Sort of poetical justice," he +suggested. + +"Well, it is--sort of," said Mavering, with a shamefaced consciousness. +"What train are you going back on?" + +"Seven o'clock." + +"I'll be there." + +He hurried back to rejoin the ladies, and Boardman saw him, after some +parley and laughter, get into the coupe, from which he inferred that they +had turned down the little seat in front, and made him take it; and he +inferred that they must be very jolly, sociable girls. + +He did not see Mavering again till the train was on its way, when he came +in, looking distraughtly about for his friend. He was again very +melancholy, and said dejectedly that they had made him stay to dinner, +and had then driven him down to the station, bag and all. "The old +gentleman came too. I was in hopes I'd find you hanging round somewhere, +so that I could introduce you. They're awfully nice. None of that +infernal Boston stiffness. The one you saw me talking with is married, +though." + +Boardman was writing out his report from a little book with shorthand +notes in it. There were half a dozen other reporters in the car busy +with their work. A man who seemed to be in authority said to one of +them, "Try to throw in a little humour." + +Mavering pulled his hat over his eyes, and leaned his head on the back of +his seat, and tried to sleep. + + + + +XXIII. + +At his father's agency in Boston he found, the next morning, a letter +from him saying that he expected to be down that day, and asking Dan to +meet him at the Parker House for dinner. The letter intimated the elder +Mavering's expectation that his son had reached some conclusion in the +matter they had talked of before he left for Campobello. + +It gave Dan a shiver of self-disgust and a sick feeling of hopelessness. +He was quite willing now to do whatever his father wished, but he did not +see haw he could face him and own his defeat. + +When they met, his father did not seem to notice his despondency, and he +asked him nothing about the Pasmers, of course. That would not have been +the American way. Nothing had been said between the father and son as to +the special advantages of Campobello for the decision of the question +pending when they saw each other last; but the son knew that the father +guessed why he chose that island for the purpose; and now the elder knew +that if the younger had anything to tell him he would tell it, and if he +had not he would keep it. It was tacitly understood that there was no +objection on the father's part to Miss Pasmer; in fact, there had been a +glimmer of humorous intelligence in his eye when the son said he thought +he should run down to Bar Harbour, and perhaps to Campobello, but he had +said nothing to betray his consciousness. + +They met in the reading-room at Parker's, and Dan said, "Hello, father," +and his father answered, "Well, Dan;" and they shyly touched the hands +dropped at their sides as they pressed together in the crowd. The father +gave his boy a keen glance, and then took the lead into the dining-room, +where he chose a corner table, and they disposed of their hats on the +window-seat. + +"All well at home?" asked the young fellow, as he took up the bill of +fare to order the dinner. His father hated that, and always made him do +it. + +"Yes, yes; as usual, I believe. Minnie is off for a week at the +mountains; Eunice is at home." + +"Oh! How would you like some green goose, with apple-sauce, sweet- +potatoes, and succotash?" + +"It seems to me that was pretty good, the last time. All right, if you +like it." + +"I don't know that I care for anything much. I'm a little off my feed. +No soup," he said, looking up at the waiter bending over him; and then he +gave the order. "I think you may bring me half a dozen Blue Points, if +they're good," he called after him. + +"Didn't Bar Harbour agree with you--or Campobello?" asked Mr. Mavering, +taking the opening offered him. + +"No, not very well," said Dan; and he said no more about it, leaving his +father to make his own inferences as to the kind or degree of the +disagreement. + +"Well, have you made up your mind?" asked the father, resting his elbows +on either side of his plate, and putting his hands together softly, while +he looked across them with a cheery kindness at his boy. + +"Yes, I have," said Dan slowly. + +"Well?" + +"I don't believe I care to go into the law." + +"Sure?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, that's all right, then. I wished you to choose freely, and I +suppose you've done so." + +"Oh Yes." + +"I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off my +mind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in the +law; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great deal +of Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like." + +"I shouldn't mind going there," said Dan listlessly. + +"It won't be necessary--at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. I +want you to look up the business at this end a little." + +Dan gave a start. "In Boston?" + +"Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a +place of our own, and to put you in charge." Something in the young +man's face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, "Would that +be distasteful to you?" + +"Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care to +be in Boston." He lifted his face and looked his father full in the +eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the +father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong. + +The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they +could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and +cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind, he +withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk. + +"Well," said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Boston +had no particular significance for him, "I don't know that I care to have +you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to have you +look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, and see +their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in our ways. +I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of the business, +but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from your grandfather; +your mother has it." + +"Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting," said Dan. + +"Well, go to France, and see how those fellows do it. Go to London, and +look up William Morris." + +"Yes, that would be very nice," admitted the young fellow, beginning to +catch on. "But I didn't suppose--I didn't expect to begin life with a +picnic." He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but at +the last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He said to +himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay and +bright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he had +noticed the undercurrent yesterday when he was laughing and joking with +those girls at Portland. + +"Oh, I don't want you to buckle down at once," said his father, smiling. +"If you'd decided upon the law, I should have felt that you'd better not +lose time. But as you're going into the business, I don't mind your +taking a year off. It won't be lost time if you keep your eyes open. I +think you'd better go down into Italy and Spain. Look up the old +tapestries and stamped leathers. You may get some ideas. How would you +like it?" + +"First-rate. I should like it," said Dan, rising on the waft of his +father's suggestion, but gloomily lapsing again. Still, it was pleasing +to picture himself going about through Europe with a broken heart, and he +did not deny himself the consolation of the vision. + +"Well, there's nobody to dislike it," said his father cheerily. He was +sure now that Dan had been jilted; otherwise he would have put forth some +objection to a scheme which must interrupt his lovemaking. "There's no +reason why, with our resources, we shouldn't take the lead in this +business." + +He went on to speak more fully of his plans, and Dan listened with a +nether reference of it all to Alice, but still with a surface +intelligence on which nothing was lost. + +"Are you going home with me to-morrow?" asked his father as they rose +from the table. + +"Well, perhaps not to-morrow. I've got some of my things to put together +in Cambridge yet, and perhaps I'd better look after them. But I've a +notion I'd better spend the winter at home, and get an idea of the +manufacture before I go abroad. I might sail in January; they say it's a +good month." + +"Yes, there's sense in that," said his father. + +"And perhaps I won't break up in Cambridge till I've been to New York and +Philadelphia. What do you think? It's easier striking them from here." + +"I don't know but you're right," said his father easily. + +They had come out of the dining-room, and Dan stopped to get some +cigarettes in the office. He looked mechanically at the theatre bills +over the cigar case. "I see Irving's at the 'Boston.'" + +"Oh, you don't say!" said his father. "Let's go and see him." + +"If you wish it, sir," said Dan, with pensive acquiescence. All the +Maverings were fond of the theatre, and made any mood the occasion or the +pretext of going to the play. If they were sad, they went; if they were +gay, they went. As long as Dan's mother could get out-of-doors she used +to have herself carried to a box in the theatre whenever she was in town; +now that she no longer left her room, she had a dominant passion for +hearing about actors and acting; it was almost a work of piety in her +husband and children to see them and report to her. + +His father left him the next afternoon, and Dan, who had spent the day +with him looking into business for the first time, with a running +accompaniment of Alice in all the details, remained to uninterrupted +misery. He spent the evening in his room, too wretched even for the +theatre. It is true that he tried to find Boardman, but Boardman was +again off on some newspaper duty; and after trying at several houses in +the hope, which he knew was vain, of finding any one in town yet, he shut +himself up with his thoughts. They did not differ from the thoughts of +the night before, and the night before that, but they were calmer, and +they portended more distinctly a life of self-abnegation and solitude +from that time forth. He tested his feelings, and found that it was not +hurt vanity that he was suffering from: it was really wounded affection. +He did not resent Alice's cruelty; he wished that she might be happy; he +could endure to see her happy. + +He wrote a letter to the married one of the two ladies he had spent the +day with in Portland, and thanked them for making pass pleasantly a day +which he would not otherwise have known how to get through. He let a +soft, mysterious melancholy pervade his letter; he hinted darkly at +trouble and sorrow of which he could not definitely speak. He had the +good sense to tear his letter up when he had finished it, and to send a +short, sprightly note instead, saying that if Mrs. Frobisher and her +sister came to Boston at the end of the month, as they had spoken of +doing, they must be sure to let him know. Upon the impulse given him by +this letter he went more cheerfully to bed, and fell instantly asleep. + +During the next three weeks he bent himself faithfully to the schemes +of work his father had outlined for him. He visited New York and +Philadelphia, and looked into the business and the processes there; and +he returned to Ponkwasset Falls to report and compare his facts +intelligently with those which he now examined in his father's +manufactory for the first time. He began to understand how his father, +who was a man of intellectual and artistic interests, should be fond of +the work. + +He spent a good deal of time with his mother, and read to her, and got +upon better terms with her than they usually were. They were very much +alike, and she objected to him that he was too light and frivolous. He +sat with his sisters, and took an interest in their pursuits. He drove +them about with his father's sorrels, and resumed something of the old +relations with them which the selfish years of his college life had +broken off. As yet he could not speak of Campobello or of what had +happened there; and his mother and sisters, whatever they thought, made +no more allusion to it than his father had done. + +They mercifully took it for granted that matters must have gone wrong +there, or else he would speak about them, for there had been some gay +banter among them concerning the objects of his expedition before he left +home. They had heard of the heroine of his Class Day, and they had their +doubts of her, such as girls have of their brothers' heroines. They were +not inconsolably sorry to have her prove unkind; and their mother found +in the probable event another proof of their father's total want of +discernment where women were concerned, for the elder Mavering had come +home from Class Day about as much smitten with this mysterious Miss +Pasmer as Dan was. She talked it over indignantly with her daughters; +they were glad of Dan's escape, but they were incensed with the girl who +could let him escape, and they inculpated her in a high degree of +heartless flirtation. They knew how sweet Dan was, and they believed him +most sincere and good. He had been brilliantly popular in college, and +he was as bright as he could be. What was it she chose not to like in +him? They vexed themselves with asking how or in what way she thought +herself better. They would not have had her love Dan, but they were hot +against her for not loving him. + +They did not question him, but they tried in every way to find out how +much he was hurt, and they watched him in every word and look for signs +of change to better or worse, with a growing belief that he was not very +much hurt. + +It could not be said that in three weeks he forgot Alice, or had begun to +forget her; but he had begun to reconcile himself to his fate, as people +do in their bereavements by death. His consciousness habituated itself +to the facts as something irretrievable. He no longer framed in his mind +situations in which the past was restored. He knew that he should never +love again, but he had moments, and more and more of them, in which he +experienced that life had objects besides love. There were times when he +tingled with all the anguish of the first moment of his rejection, when +he stopped in whatever he was doing, or stood stock-still, as a man does +when arrested by a physical pang, breathless, waiting. There were other +times when he went about steeped in gloom so black that all the world +darkened with it, and some mornings when he woke he wished that the night +had lasted for ever, and felt as if the daylight had uncovered his misery +and his shame to every one. He never knew when he should have these +moods, and he thought he should have them as long as he lived. He +thought this would be something rather fine. He had still other moods, +in which he saw an old man with a grey moustache, like Colonel Newcome, +meeting a beautiful white-haired lady; the man had never married, and he +had not seen this lady for fifty years. He bent over, and kissed her +hand. + +"You idiot!" said Mavering to himself. Throughout he kept a good +appetite. In fact, after that first morning in Portland, he had been +hungry three times a day with perfect regularity. He lost the idea of +being sick; he had not even a furred tongue. He fell asleep pretty +early, and he slept through the night without a break. He had to laugh a +great deal with his mother and sisters, since he could not very well mope +without expecting them to ask why, and he did not wish to say why. But +there were some laughs which he really enjoyed with the Yankee foreman of +the works, who was a droll, after a common American pattern, and said +things that were killingly funny, especially about women, of whom his +opinions were sarcastic. + +Dan Mavering suffered, but not solidly. His suffering was short, and +crossed with many gleams of respite and even joy. His disappointment +made him really unhappy, but not wholly so; it was a genuine sorrow, but +a sorrow to which he began to resign himself even in the monotony of +Ponkwasset Falls, and which admitted the thought of Mrs. Frobisher's +sister by the time business called him to Boston. + + + + +XXIV. + +Before the end of the first week after Dan came back to town, that which +was likely to happen whenever chance brought him and Alice together had +taken place. + +It was one of the soft days that fall in late October, when the impending +winter seems stayed, and the warm breath of the land draws seaward and +over a thousand miles of Indian summer. The bloom came and went in quick +pulses over the girl's temples as she sat with her head thrown back in +the corner of the car, and from moment to moment she stirred slightly as +if some stress of rapture made it hard for her to get her breath; a +little gleam of light fell from under her fallen eyelids into the eyes of +the young man beside her, who leaned forward slightly and slanted his +face upward to meet her glances. They said some words, now and then, +indistinguishable to the others; in speaking they smiled slightly. +Sometimes her hand wavered across her lap; in both their faces there was +something beyond happiness--a transport, a passion, the brief splendour +of a supreme moment. + +They left the car at the Arlington Street corner of the Public Garden, +and followed the winding paths diagonally to the further corner on +Charles Street. + +"How stupid we were to get into that ridiculous horse-car!" she said. +"What in the world possessed us to do it?" + +"I can't imagine," he answered. "What a waste of time it was! If we had +walked, we might have been twice as long coming. And now you're going to +send me off so soon!" + +"I don't send you," she murmured. + +"But you want me to go." + +"Oh no! But you'd better." + +"I can't do anything against your wish." + +"I wish it--for your own good." + +"Ah, do let me go home with you, Alice?" + +"Don't ask it, or I must say yes." + +"Part of the way, then?" + +"No; not a step! You must take the first car for Cambridge. What time +is it now?" + +"You can see by the clock on the Providence Depot." + +"But I wish you to go by your watch, now. Look!" + +"Alice!" he cried, in pure rapture. + +"Look!" + +"It's a quarter of one." + +"And we've been three hours together already! Now you must simply fly. +If you came home with me I should be sure to let you come in, and if I +don't see mamma alone first, I shall die. Can't you understand?" + +"No; but I can do the next best thing: I can misunderstand. You want to +be rid of me." + +"Shall you be rid of me when we've parted?" she asked, with an inner +thrill of earnestness in her gay tone. + +"Alice!" + +"You know I didn't mean it, Dan." + +"Say it again." + +"What?" + +"Dan." + +"Dan, love! Dan, dearest!" + +"Will that car of yours never come? I've promised myself not to leave +you till it does, and if I stay here any longer I shall go wild. I can't +believe it's happened. Say it again!" + +"Say what?" + +"That--" + +"That I love you? That we're engaged?" + +"I don't believe it. I can't." She looked impatiently up the street. +"Oh, there comes your car! Run! Stop it!" + +"I don't run to stop cars." He made a sign, which the conductor obeyed, +and the car halted at the further crossing. + +She seemed to have forgotten it, and made no movement to dismiss him. +"Oh, doesn't it seem too good to be standing here talking in this way, +and people think it's about the weather, or society?" She set her head a +little on one side, and twirled the open parasol on her shoulder. + +"Yes, it does. Tell me it's true, love!" + +"It's true. How splendid you are!" She said it with an effect for the +world outside of saying it was a lovely day. + +He retorted, with the same apparent nonchalance, "How beautiful you are! +How good! How divine!" + +The conductor, seeing himself apparently forgotten, gave his bell a +vicious snap, and his car jolted away. + +She started nervously. "There! you've lost your car, Dan." + +"Have I?" asked Mavering, without troubling himself to look after it. + +She laughed now, with a faint suggestion of unwillingness in her laugh. +"What are you going to do?" + +"Walk home with you." + +"No, indeed; you know I can't let you." + +"And are you going to leave me here alone on the street corner, to be run +over by the first bicycle that comes along?" + +"You can sit down in the Garden, and wait for the next car." + +"No; I would rather go back to the Art Museum, and make a fresh start." + +"To the Art Museum?" she murmured, tenderly. + +"Yes. Wouldn't you like to see it again?" + +"Again? I should like to pass my whole life in it!" + +"Well, walk back with me a little way. There's no hurry about the car." + +"Dan!" she said, in a helpless compliance, and they paced very, very +slowly along the Beacon Street path in the Garden. "This is ridiculous." + +"Yes, but it's delightful." + +"Yes, that's what I meant. Do you suppose any one ever--ever--" + +"Made love there before?" + +"How can you say such things? Yes. I always supposed it would be-- +somewhere else." +It was somewhere else--once." + +"Oh, I meant--the second time." + +"Then you did think there was going to be a second time?" + +"How do I know? I wished it. Do you like me to say that?" + +"I wish you would never say anything else." + +"Yes; there can't be any harm in it now. I thought that if you had ever- +-liked me, you would still--" + +"So did I; but I couldn't believe that you--" + +"Oh, I could." + +"Alice!" + +"Don't you like my confessing it! You asked me to." + +"Like it!" + +"How silly we are!" + +"Not half so silly as we've been for the last two months. I think we've +just come to our senses. At least I have." + +"Two months!" she sighed. "Has it really been so long as that?" + +"Two years! Two centuries! It was back in the Dark Ages when you +refused me." + +"Dark Ages! I should think so! But don't say refused. It wasn't +refusing, exactly." + +"What was it, then?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Don't speak of it now." + +"But, Alice, why did you refuse me?" + +"Oh, I don't know. You mustn't ask me now. I'll tell you some time." + +"Well, come to think of it," said Mavering, laughing it all lightly away, +"there's no hurry. Tell me why you accepted me to-day." + +"I--I couldn't help it. When I saw you I wanted to fall at your feet." + +"What an idea! I didn't want to fall at yours. I was awfully mad. I +shouldn't have spoken to you if you hadn't stopped me and held out your +hand." + +"Really? Did you really hate me, Dan?" + +"Well, I haven't exactly doted on you since we last met." + +She did not seem offended at this. "Yes, I suppose so. And I've gone on +being fonder and fonder of you every minute since that day. I wanted to +call you back when you had got half-way to Eastport." + +"I wouldn't have come. It's bad luck to turn back." + +She laughed at his drolling. "How funny you are! Now I'm of rather a +gloomy temperament. Did, you know it?" + +"You don't look it." + +"Oh, but I am. Just now I'm rather excited and--happy." + +"So glad!" + +"Go on! go on! I like you to make fun of me." + +The benches on either side were filled with nursemaids in charge of baby- +carriages, and of young children who were digging in the sand with their +little beach shovels, and playing their games back and forth across the +walk unrebuked by the indulgent policemen. A number of them had enclosed +a square in the middle of the path with four of the benches, which they +made believe was a fort. The lovers had to walk round it; and the +children, chasing one another, dashed into them headlong, or, backing off +from pursuit, bumped up against them. They did not seem to know it, but +walked slowly on without noticing: they were not aware of an occasional +benchful of rather shabby young fellows who stared hard at the stylish +girl and well-dressed young man talking together in such intense low +tones, with rapid interchange of radiant glances. + +"Oh, as to making fun of you, I was going to say--" Mavering began, and +after a pause he broke off with a laugh. "I forget what I was going to +say." + +"Try to remember." + +"I can't." + +How strange that we should have both happened to go to the Museum this +morning!" she sighed. Then, "Dan," she broke in, "do you suppose that +heaven is any different from this?" + +"I hope not--if I'm to go there." + +"Hush, dear; you mustn't talk so." + +"Why, you provoked me to it." + +"Did I? Did I really? Do you think I tempted you to do it? Then I must +be wicked, whether I knew I was doing it or not. Yes." + +The break in her voice made him look more keenly at her, and he saw the +tears glimmer in her eyes. "Alice!" + +"No; I'm not good enough for you. I always said that." + +"Then don't say it any more. That's the only thing I won't let you say." + +"Do you forbid it, really? Won't you let me even think it?" + +"No, not even think it." + +"How lovely you are! Oh! I like to be commanded by you." + +"Do you? You'll have lots of fun, then. I'm an awfully commanding +spirit." + +"I didn't suppose you were so humorous--always. I'm afraid you won't +like me. I've no sense of fun." + +"And I'm a little too funny sometimes, I'm afraid." + +"No, you never are. When?" + +"That night at the Trevors'. You didn't like it." + +"I thought Miss Anderson was rather ridiculous," said Alice. "I don't +like buffoonery in women." + +"Nor I in men," said Mavering, smiling. "I've dropped it." + +"Well, now we must part. I must go home at once," said Alice. "It's +perfectly insane." + +"Oh no, not yet; not till we've said something else; not till we've +changed the subject." + +"What subject?" + +"Miss Anderson." + +Alice laughed and blushed, but she was not vexed. She liked to have him +understand her. "Well, now," she said, as if that were the next thing, +"I'm going to cross here at once and walk up the other pavement, and you +must go back through the Garden; or else I shall never get away from +you." + +May I look over at you?" + +You may glance, but you needn't expect me to return your glance." + +"Oh no." + +"And I want you to take the very first Cambridge car that comes along. I +command you to." + +"I thought you wanted me to do the commanding." + +"So I do--in essentials. If you command me not to cry when I get home, I +won't." + +She looked at him with an ecstasy of self-sacrifice in her eyes. + +"Ah, I sha'n't do that. I can't tell what would open. But--Alice!" + +"Well, what?" She drifted closely to him, and looked fondly up into his +face. In walking they had insensibly drawn nearer together, and she had +been obliged constantly to put space between them. Now, standing at the +corner of Arlington Street, and looking tentatively across Beacon, she +abandoned all precautions. + +"What! I forget. Oh yes! I love you!" + +"But you said that before, dearest!" + +"Yes; but just now it struck me as a very novel idea. What if your +mother shouldn't like the idea?" + +"Nonsense! you know she perfectly idolises you. She did from the first. +And doesn't she know how I've begin behaving about you ever since I--lost +you?" + +"How have you behaved? Do tell me, Alice?" + +"Some time; not now," she said; and with something that was like a gasp, +and threatened to be a sob, she suddenly whipped across the road. He +walked back to Charles Street by the Garden path, keeping abreast of her, +and not losing sight of her for a moment, except when the bulk of a +string team watering at the trough beside the pavement intervened. He +hurried by, and when he had passed it he found himself exactly abreast of +her again. Her face was turned toward him; they exchanged a smile, lost +in space. At the corner of Charles Street he deliberately crossed over +to her. + +"O dearest love! why did you come?" she implored. + +"Because you signed to me." + +"I hoped you wouldn't see it. If we're both to be so weak as this, what +are we going to do?" But I'm glad you came. Yes: I was frightened. +They must have overheard us there when we were talking." + +"Well, I didn't say anything I'm ashamed of. Besides, I shouldn't care +much for the opinion of those nurses and babies." + +"Of course not. But people must have seen us. Don't stand here talking, +Dan! Do come on!" She hurried him across the street, and walked him +swiftly up the incline of Beacon Street. There, in her new fall suit, +with him, glossy-hatted, faultlessly gloved, at a fit distance from her +side, she felt more in keeping with the social frame of things than in +the Garden path, which was really only a shade better than the Beacon +Street Mall of the Common. "Do you suppose anybody saw us that knew us?" + +"I hope so! Don't you want people to know it?" + +"Yes, of course. They will have to know it--in the right way. Can you +believe that it's only half a year since we met? It won't be a year till +Class Day." + +"I don't believe it, Alice. I can't recollect anything before I knew +you." + +"Well, now, as time is so confused, we must try to live for eternity. We +must try to help each other to be good. Oh, when I think what a happy +girl I am, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful person under the +sun not to be good. Let's try to make our lives perfect--perfect! They +can be. And we mustn't live for each other alone. We must try to do +good as well as be good. We must be kind and forbearing with every one." + +He answered, with tender seriousness, "My life's in your hands, Alice. +It shall be whatever you wish." + +They were both silent in their deep belief of this. When they spoke +again, she began gaily: "I shall never get over the wonder of it. How +strange that we should meet at the Museum!" They had both said this +already, but that did not matter; they had said nearly everything two or +three times. "How did you happen to be there?" she asked, and the +question was so novel that she added, "I haven't asked you before." + +He stopped, with a look of dismay that broke up in a hopeless laugh. +"Why, I went there to meet some people--some ladies. And when I saw you +I forgot all about them." + +Alice laughed to; this was a part of their joy, their triumph. + +"Who are they?" she asked indifferently, and only to heighten the +absurdity by realising the persons. + +"You don't know them," he said. "Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, of +Portland. I promised to meet them there and go out to Cambridge with +them." + +"What will they think?" asked Alice. "It's too amusing." + +"They'll think I didn't come," said Mavering, with the easy conscience of +youth and love; and again they laughed at the ridiculous position +together. "I remember now I was to be at the door, and they were to take +me up in their carriage. I wonder how long they waited? You put +everything else out of my head." + +"Do you think I'll keep it out?" she asked archly. + +"Oh yes; there is nothing else but you now." + +The eyes that she dropped, after a glance at him, glistened with tears. + +A lump came into his throat. "Do you suppose," he asked huskily, "that +we can ever misunderstand each other again?" + +"Never. I see everything clearly now. We shall trust each other +implicitly, and at the least thing that isn't clear we can speak. +Promise me that you'll speak." + +"I will, Alice. But after this all will be clear. We shall deal with +each other as we do with ourselves." + +"Yes; that will be the way." + +"And we mustn't wait for question from each other. We shall know--we +shall feel--when there's any misgiving, and then the one that's caused it +will speak." + +"Yes," she sighed emphatically. "How perfectly you say it? But that's +because you feel it, because you are good." + +They walked on, treading the air in a transport of fondness for each +other. Suddenly he stopped. + +"Miss Pasmer, I feel it my duty to warn you that you're letting me go +home with you." + +"Am I? How noble of you to tell me, Dan; for I know you don't want to +tell. Well, I might as well. But I sha'n't let you come in. You won't +try, will you? Promise me you won't try." + +"I shall only want to come in the first door." + +"What for?" + +"What for? Oh, for half a second." + +She turned away her face. + +He went on. "This engagement has been such a very public affair, so far, +that I think I'd like to see my fiancee alone for a moment." + +"I don't know what in the world you can have to say more." + +He went into the first door with her, and then he went with her upstairs +to the door of Mrs. Pasmer's apartment. The passages of the Cavendish +were not well lighted; the little lane or alley that led down to this +door from the stairs landing was very dim. + +"So dark here!" murmured Alice, in a low voice, somewhat tremulous. + +"But not too dark." + + + + +XXV. + +She burst into the room where her mother sat looking over some +housekeeping accounts. His kiss and his name were upon her lips; her +soul was full of him. + +"Mamma!" she panted. + +Her mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of the +vital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing the +first autumn month's provision bill with that of the last spring month, +and trying to account for the difference. + +The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother's +hands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemed +suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's rapture +burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect +outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across +the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a +storm of tears. + +"Alice!" cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to rescue +women from the terror of any sudden shock. "What is the matter with +you?--what do you mean?" She dropped both of the provision bills to the +floor, and started toward her daughter. + +"Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room." She tried to +reach the door beyond her mother. + +"Indeed you shall not!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I will not have you behaving +so! What has happened to you?" Tell me. You have frightened me half +out of my senses." + +The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa, +with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother +began to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mother +she knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was, +must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them. +She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a +little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and +dropped a light shawl over the girl's shoulders, so that she should not +take cold. + +Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering +somewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him. +During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling in +regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of +them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every +woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter's ordeal in +an affair of the heart which she has favoured. + +The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting off +the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found it +hard to utter it. + +"What is it, Alice?--what is it?" urged her mother. + +"Nothing. I--Mr. Mavering--we met--I met him at the Museum, and--we're +engaged! It's really so. It seems like raving, but it's true. He came +with me to the door; I wouldn't let him come in. Don't you believe it? +Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma?" You know I couldn't +have lived without him." + +She trembled on the verge of another outbreak. + +Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, and +returned quietly: "Glad, Alice! You know that I think he's the sweetest +and best fellow in the world." + +"O mamma!" + +"But are you sure--" + +"Yes, Yes. I'm not crazy; it isn't a dream. he was there--and I met him- +-I couldn't run away--I put out my hand; I couldn't help it--I thought I +should give way; and he took it; and then--then we were engaged. I don't +know what we said: I went in to look at the 'Joan of Arc' again, and there +was no one else there. He seemed to feel just as I did. I don't know +whether either of us spoke. But we, knew we were engaged, and we began to +talk." + +Mrs. Pasmer began to laugh. To her irreverent soul only the droll side of +the statement appeared. + +"Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice piteously. + +"No, no; I won't. But I hope Dan Mavering will be a little more definite +about it when I'm allowed to see him. Why couldn't he have come in with +you?" + +"It would have killed me. I couldn't let him see me cry, and I knew I +should break down." + +"He'll have to see you cry a great many times, Alice," said her mother, +with almost unexampled seriousness. + +"Yes, but not yet--not so soon. He must think I'm very gloomy, and I want +to be always bright and cheerful with him. He knows why I wouldn't let +him come in; he knew I was going to have a cry." + +Mrs. Pasmer continued to laugh. + +Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice. + +"No, I won't," replied her mother, as before. "I suppose he was +mystified. But now, if it's really settled between you, he'll be coming +here soon to see your papa and me." + +"Yes--to-night." + +"Well, it's very sudden," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Though I suppose these +things always seem so." + +"Is it too sudden?" asked Alice, with misgiving. "It seemed so to me when +it was going on, but I couldn't stop it." + +Her mother laughed at her simplicity. "No, when it begins once, nothing +can stop it. But you've really known each other a good while, and for the +last six weeks at least you've known you own mind about him pretty +clearly. It's a pity you couldn't have known it before." + +"Yes, that's what he says. He says it was such a waste of time. Oh, +everything he says is perfectly fascinating!" + +Her mother laughed and laughed again. + +"What is it, mamma? Are you laughing at me?" + +"Oh no. What an idea!" + +"He couldn't seem to understand why I didn't say Yes the first time, if I +meant it." She looked down dreamily at her hands in her lap, and then she +said, with a blush and a start, "They're very queer, don't you think?" + +"Who?" + +"Young men." + +"Oh, very." + +"Yes," Alice went on musingly. "Their minds are so different. Everything +they say and do is so unexpected, and yet it seems to be just right." + +Mrs. Pasmer asked herself if this single-mindedness was to go on for ever, +but she had not the heart to treat it with her natural levity. Probably +it was what charmed Mavering with the child. Mrs. Pasmer had the firm +belief that Mavering was not single-minded, and she respected him for it. +She would not spoil her daughter's perfect trust and hope by any of the +cynical suggestions of her own dark wisdom, but entered into her mood, as +such women are able to do, and flattered out of her every detail of the +morning's history. This was a feat which Mrs. Pasmer enjoyed for its own +sake, and it fully satisfied the curiosity which she naturally felt to +know all. She did not comment upon many of the particulars; she opened +her eyes a little at the notion of her daughter sitting for two or three +hours and talking with a young man in the galleries of the Museum, and she +asked if anybody they knew had come in. When she heard that there were +only strangers, and very few of them, she said nothing; and she had the +same consolation in regard to the walking back and forth in the Garden. +She was so full of potential escapades herself, so apt to let herself go +at times, that the fact of Alice's innocent self-forgetfulness rather +satisfied a need of her mother's nature; she exulted in it when she +learned that there were only nurses and children in the Garden. + +"And so you think you won't take up art this winter?" she said, when, in +the process of her cross-examination, Alice had left the sofa and got as +far as the door, with her hat in her hand and her sacque on her arm. + +"No." + +"And the Sisters of St. James--you won't join them either?" + +The girl escaped from the room. + +"Alice! Alice!" her mother called after her; she came back. You haven't +told me how he happened to be there." + +"Oh, that was the most amusing part of it. He had gone there to keep an +appointment with two ladies from Portland. They were to take him up in +their carriage and drive out to Cambridge, and when he saw me he forgot +all about them." + +"And what became of them?" + +"We don't know. Isn't it ridiculous?" + +If it appeared other or more than this to Mrs. Pasmer, she did not say. +She merely said, after a moment, "Well, it was certainly devoted, Alice," +and let her go. + + + + +XXVI. + +Mavering came in the evening, rather excessively well dressed, and with a +hot face and cold hands. While he waited, nominally alone, in the little +drawing room for Mr. Pasmer, Alice flew in upon him for a swift embrace, +which prolonged itself till the father's step was heard outside the door, +and then she still had time to vanish by another: the affair was so nicely +adjusted that if Mavering had been in his usual mind he might have fancied +the connivance of Mrs. Pasmer. + +He did not say what he had meant to say to Alice's father, but it seemed +to serve the purpose, for he emerged presently from the sound of his own +voice, unnaturally clamorous, and found Mr. Pasmer saying some very civil +things to him about his character and disposition, so far as they had been +able to observe it, and their belief and trust in him. There seemed to be +something provisional or probational intended, but Dan could not make out +what it was, and finally it proved of no practical effect. He merely +inferred that the approval of his family was respectfully expected, and he +hastened to say, "Oh, that's all right, sir." Mr. Pasmer went on with +more civilities, and lost himself in dumb conjecture as to whether +Mavering's father had been in the class before him or the class after him +in Harvard. He used his black eyebrows a good deal during the interview, +and Mavering conceived an awe of him greater than he had felt at +Campobello, yet not unmixed with the affection in which the newly accepted +lover embraces even the relations of his betrothed. From time to time Mr. +Pasmer looked about with the vague glance of a man unused to being so long +left to his own guidance; and one of these appeals seemed at last to bring +Mrs. Pasmer through the door, to the relief of both the men, for they had +improvidently despatched their business, and were getting out of talk. +Mr. Pasmer had, in fact, already asked Dan about the weather outside when +his wife appeared. + +Dan did not know whether he ought to kiss her or not, but Mrs. Pasmer did +not in the abstract seem like a very kissing kind of person, and he let +himself be guided by this impression, in the absence of any fixed +principle applying to the case. She made some neat remark concerning the +probable settlement of the affair with her husband, and began to laugh and +joke about it in a manner that was very welcome to Dan; it did not seem to +him that it ought to be treated so solemnly. + +But though Mrs. Pasmer laughed and joked; he was aware of her meaning +business--business in the nicest sort of a way, but business after all, +and he liked her for it. He was glad to be explicit about his hopes and +plans, and told what his circumstances were so fully that Mrs. Pasmer, +whom his frankness gratified and amused, felt obliged to say that she had +not meant to ask so much about his affairs, and he must excuse her if she +had seemed to do so. She had her own belief that Mavering would +understand, but she did not mind that. She said that, of course, till his +own family had been consulted, it must not be considered seriously--that +Mr. Pasmer insisted upon that point; and when Dan vehemently asserted the +acquiescence of his family beforehand, and urged his father's admiration +for Alice in proof, she reminded him that his mother was to be considered, +and put Mr. Pasmer's scruples forward as her own reason for obduracy. In +her husband's presence she attributed to him, with his silent assent, all +sorts of reluctances and delicate compunctions; she gave him the +importance which would have been naturally a husband's due in such an +affair, and ingratiated herself more and more with the young man. She +ignored Mr. Pasmer's withdrawal when it took place, after a certain lapse +of time, and as the moment had come for that, she began to let herself go. +She especially approved of the idea of going abroad and confessed her +disappointment with her present experiment of America, where it appeared +there was no leisure class of men sufficiently large to satisfy the social +needs of Mr. Pasmer's nature, and she told Dan that he might expect them +in Europe before long. Perhaps they might all three meet him there. At +this he betrayed so clearly that he now intended his going to Europe +merely as a sequel to his marrying Alice, while he affected to fall in +with all Mrs. Pasmer said, that she grew fonder than ever of him for his +ardour and his futile duplicity. If it had been in Dan's mind to take +part in the rite, Mrs. Pasmer was quite ready at this point to embrace him +with motherly tenderness. Her tough little heart was really in her throat +with sympathy when she made an errand for the photograph of an English +vicarage, which they had hired the summer of the year before, and she sent +Alice back with it alone. + +It seemed so long since they had met that the change in Alice did not +strike him as strange or as too rapidly operated. They met with the +fervour natural after such a separation, and she did not so much assume as +resume possession of him. It was charming to have her do it, to have her +act as if they had always been engaged, to have her try to press down the +cowlick that started capriciously across his crown, and to straighten his +necktie, and then to drop beside him on the sofa; it thrilled and awed +him; and he silently worshipped the superior composure which her sex has +in such matters. Whatever was the provisional interpretation which her +father and mother pretended to put upon the affair, she apparently had no +reservations, and they talked of their future as a thing assured. The +Dark Ages, as they agreed to call the period of despair for ever closed +that morning, had matured their love till now it was a rapture of pure +trust. They talked as if nothing could prevent its fulfilment, and they +did not even affect to consider the question of his family's liking it or +not liking it. She said that she thought his father was delightful, and +he told her that his father had taken the greatest fancy to her at the +beginning, and knew that Dan was in love with her. She asked him about +his mother, and she said just what he could have wished her to say about +his mother's sufferings, and the way she bore them. They talked about +Alice's going to see her. + +"Of course your father will bring your sisters to see me first." + +"Is that the way?" he asked: "You may depend upon his doing the right +thing, whatever it is." + +"Well, that's the right thing," she said. "I've thought it out; and that +reminds me of a duty of ours, Dan!" + +"A duty?"" he repeated, with a note of reluctance for its untimeliness. + +"Yes. Can't you think what?" + +"No; I didn't know there was a duty left in the world." + +"It's full of them." + +"Oh, don't say that, Alice!" He did not like this mood so well as that of +the morning, but his dislike was only a vague discomfort--nothing +formulated or distinct. + +"Yes," she persisted; "and we must do them. You must go to those ladies +you disappointed so this morning, and apologise--explain." + +Dan laughed. "Why, it wasn't such a very ironclad engagement as all that, +Alice. They said they were going to drive out to Cambridge over the +Milldam, and I said I was going out there to get some of my traps +together, and they could pick me up at the Art Museum if they liked. +Besides, how could I explain?" + +She laughed consciously with him. "Of course. But," she added ruefully, +"I wish you hadn't disappointed them." + +"Oh, they'll get over it. If I hadn't disappointed them, I shouldn't be +here, and I shouldn't like that. Should you?" + +"No; but I wish it hadn't happened. It's a blot, and I didn't want a blot +on this day." + +"Oh, well, it isn't very much of a blot, and I can easily wipe it off. +I'll tell you what, Alice! I can write to Mrs. Frobisher, when our +engagement comes out, and tell her how it was. She'll enjoy the joke, and +so will Miss Wrayne. They're jolly and easygoing; they won't mind." + +"How long have you known them?" + +"I met them on Class Day, and then I saw them--the day after I left +Campobello." Dan laughed a little. + +"How, saw them?" + +"Well, I went to a yacht race with them. I happened to meet them in the +street, and they wanted me to go; and I was all broken up, and--I Went." + +"Oh!" said Alice. "The day after I--you left Campobello?" + +"Well--yes." + +"And I was thinking of you all that day as--And I couldn't bear to look at +anybody that day, or speak!" + +"Well, the fact is, I--I was distracted, and I didn't know what I was +doing. I was desperate; I didn't care." + +"How did you find out about the yacht race?" + +"Boardman told me. Boardman was there." + +"Did he know the ladies? Did he go too?" + +"No. He was there to report the race for the Events. He went on the +press boat." + +"Oh!" said Alice. "Was there a large party?" + +"No, no. Not very. Just ourselves, in fact. They were awfully kind. +And they made me go home to dinner with them." + +"They must have been rather peculiar people," said Alice. "And I don't +see how--so soon--" She could not realise that Mavering was then a +rejected man, on whom she had voluntarily renounced all claim. A +retroactive resentment which she could not control possessed her with the +wish to punish those bold women for being agreeable to one who had since +become everything to her, though then he was ostensibly nothing. + +In a vague way, Dan felt her displeasure with that passage of his history, +but no man could have fully imagined it. + +"I couldn't tell half the time what I was saying or eating. I talked at +random and ate at random. I guess they thought something was wrong; they +asked me who was at Campobello." + +"Indeed!" + +"But you may be sure I didn't give myself away. I was awfully broken up," +he concluded inconsequently. + +She liked his being broken up, but she did not like the rest. She would +not press the question further now. She only said rather gravely, "If +it's such a short acquaintance, can you write to them in that familiar +way?" + +"Oh yes,! Mrs. Frobisher is one of that kind." + +Alice was silent a moment before she said, "I think you'd better not +write. Let it go," she sighed. + +"Yes, that's what I think," said Dan. "Better let it go. I guess it will +explain itself in the course of time. But I don't want any blots around." +He leaned over and looked her smilingly in the face. + +"Oh no," she murmured; and then suddenly she caught him round the neck, +crying and sobbing. "It's only--because I wanted it to be--perfect. Oh, +I wonder if I've done right? Perhaps I oughtn't to have taken you, after +all; but I do love you--dearly, dearly! And I was so unhappy when I'd +lost you. And now I'm afraid I shall be a trial to you--nothing but a +trial." + +The first tears that a young man sees a woman shed for love of him are +inexpressibly sweeter than her smiles. Dan choked with tender pride and +pity. When he found his voice, he raved out with incoherent endearments +that she only made him more and more happy by her wish to have the affair +perfect, and that he wished her always to be exacting with him, for that +would give him a chance to do something for her, and all that he desired, +as long as he lived, was to do just what she wished. + +At the end of his vows and entreaties, she lifted her face radiantly, and +bent a smile upon him as sunny as that with which the sky after a summer +storm denies that there has ever been rain in the world. + +"Ah! you--" He could say no more. He could not be more enraptured than +he was. He could only pass from surprise to surprise, from delight to +delight. It was her love of him which wrought these miracles. It was all +a miracle, and no part more wonderful than another. That she, who had +seemed as distant as a star, and divinely sacred from human touch, should +be there in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, where his kiss could +reach her lips, not only unforbidden, but eagerly welcome, was impossible, +and yet it was true.. But it was no more impossible and no truer, than +that a being so poised, so perfectly self-centred as she, should already +be so helplessly dependent upon him for her happiness. In the depths of +his soul he invoked awful penalties upon himself if ever he should betray +her trust, if ever he should grieve that tender heart in the slightest +thing, if from that moment he did not make his whole life a sacrifice and +an expiation. + +He uttered some of these exalted thoughts, and they did not seem to appear +crazy to her. She said yes, they must make their separate lives offerings +to each other, and their joint lives an offering to God. The tears came +into his eyes at these words of hers: they were so beautiful and holy and +wise. He agreed that one ought always to go to church, and that now he +should never miss a service. He owned that he had been culpable in the +past. He drew her closer to him--if that were possible--and sealed his +words with a kiss. + +But he could not realise his happiness then, or afterward, when he walked +the streets under the thinly misted moon of that Indian summer night. + +He went down to the Events office when he left Alice, and found Boardman, +and told him that he was engaged, and tried to work Boardman up to some +sense of the greatness of the fact. Boardman shoved his fine white teeth +under his spare moustache, and made acceptable jokes, but he did not ask +indiscreet questions,.and Dan's statement of the fact did not seem to give +it any more verity than it had before. He tried to get Boardman to come +and walk with him and talk it over; but Boardman said he had just been +detailed to go and work up the case of a Chinaman who had suicided a +little earlier in the evening. + +"Very well, then; I'll go with you," said Mavering. "How can you live in +such a den as this?" he asked, looking about the little room before +Boardman turned down his incandescent electric. "There isn't anything big +enough to hold me but all outdoors." + +In the street he linked his arm through his friend's, and said he felt +that he had a right to know all about the happy ending of the affair, +since he had been told of that miserable phase of it at Portland. But +when he came to the facts he found himself unable to give them with the +fulness he had promised. He only imparted a succinct statement as to the +where and when of the whole matter, leaving the how of it untold. + +The sketch was apparently enough for Boardman. For all comment, he +reminded Mavering that he had told him at Portland it would come out all +right. + +"Yes, you did, Boardman; that's a fact," said Dan; and he conceived a +higher respect for the penetration of Boardman than he had before. + +They stopped at a door in a poor court which they had somehow reached +without Mavering's privity. "Will you come in?" asked Boardman. + +"What for?" + +"Chinaman." + +"Chinaman?" Then Mavering remembered. "Good heavens! no. What have I +got to do with him?" + +"Both mortal," suggested the reporter. + +The absurdity of this idea, though a little grisly, struck Dan as a good +joke. He hit the companionable Boardman on the shoulder, and then gave +him a little hug, and remounted his path of air, and walked off in it. + + + + +XXVII. + +Mavering first woke in the morning with the mechanical recurrence of that +shame and grief which each day had brought him since Alice refused him. +Then with a leap of the heart came the recollection of all that had +happened yesterday. Yet lurking within his rapture was a mystery of +regret: a reasonless sense of loss, as if the old feeling had been +something he would have kept. Then this faded, and he had only the +longing to see her, to realise in her presence and with her help the fact +that she was his. An unspeakable pride filled him, and a joy in her love. +He tried to see some outward vision of his bliss in the glass; but, like +the mirror which had refused to interpret his tragedy in the Portland +restaurant, it gave back no image of his transport: his face looked as it +always did, and he and the refection laughed at each other: + +He asked himself how soon he could go and see her. It was now seven +o'clock: eight would be too early, of course--it would be ridiculous; and +nine--he wondered if he might go to see her at nine. Would they have done +breakfast? Had he any right to call before ten? He was miserable at the +thought of waiting till ten: it would be three hours. He thought of +pretexts--of inviting her to go somewhere, but that was absurd, for he +could see her at home all day if he liked; of carrying her a book, but +there could be no such haste about a book; of going to ask if he had left +his cane, but why should he be in such a hurry for his cane? All at once +he thought he could take her some flowers--a bouquet to lay beside her +plate at breakfast. He dramatised himself charging the servant who should +take it from him at the door not to say who left it; but Alice would know, +of course, and they would all know; it would be very pretty. He made Mrs. +Pasmer say some flattering things of him; and he made Alice blush +deliciously to hear them. He could not manage Mr. Pasmer very well, and +he left him out of the scene: he imagined him shaving in another room; +then he remembered his wearing a full beard. + +He dressed himself as quickly as he could, and went down into the hotel +vestibule, where he had noticed people selling flowers the evening before, +but there was no one there with them now, and none of the florists' shops +on the street were open yet. He could not find anything till he went to +the Providence Depot, and the man there had to take some of his +yesterday's flowers out of the refrigerator where he kept them; he was not +sure they would be very fresh; but the heavy rosebuds had fallen open, and +they were superb. Dan took all there were, and when they had been +sprinkled with water, and wrapped in cotton batting, and tied round with +paper, it was still only quarter of eight, and he left them with the man +till he could get his breakfast at the Depot restaurant. There it had a +consoling effect of not being so early; many people were already +breakfasting, and when Dan said, with his order, "Hurry it up, please," he +knew that he was taken for a passenger just arrived or departing. By a +fantastic impulse he ordered eggs and bacon again; he felt, it a fine +derision of the past and a seal of triumph upon the present to have the +same breakfast after his acceptance as he had ordered after his rejection; +he would tell Alice about it, and it would amuse her. He imagined how he +would say it, and she would laugh; but she would be full of a ravishing +compassion for his past suffering. They were long bringing the breakfast; +when it came he despatched it so quickly that it was only half after eight +when he paid his check at the counter. He tried to be five minutes more +getting his flowers, but the man had them all ready for him, and it did +not take him ten seconds. He had said he would carry them at half-past +nine; but thinking it over on a bench in the Garden, he decided that he +had better go sooner; they might breakfast earlier, and there would be no +fun if Alice did not find the roses beside her plate: that was the whole +idea. It was not till he stood at the door of the Pasmer apartment that. +he reflected that he was not accomplishing his wish to see Alice by +leaving her those flowers; he was a fool, for now he would have to +postpone coming a little, because he had already come. + +The girl who answered the bell did not understand the charge he gave her +about the roses, and he repeated his words. Some one passing through the +room beyond seemed to hesitate and pause at the sound of his voice. Could +it be Alice? Then he should see her, after all! The girl looked over her +shoulder, and said, "Mrs. Pasmer." + +Mrs. Pasmer came forward, and he fell into a complicated explanation and +apology. At the end she said, "You had better give them yourself. She +will be here directly." They were in the room now, and Mrs. Pasmer made +the time pass in rapid talk; but Dan felt that he ought to apologise from +time to time. "No!" she said, letting herself go. "Stay and breakfast +with us, Mr. Mavering. We shall be so glad to have you." + +At last Alice came in, and they decorously shook hands. Mrs. Pasmer +turned away a smile at their decorum. "I will see that there's a place +for you," she said, leaving them. + +They were instantly in each other's arms. It seemed to him that all this +had happened because he had so strongly wished it. + +"What is it, Dan?" What did you come for?" she asked. + +"To see if it was really true, Alice. I couldn't believe it." + +"Well--let me go--you mustn't--it's too silly. Of course it's true." She +pulled herself free. "Is my hair tumbled? You oughtn't to have come; +it's ridiculous; but I'm glad you came. I've been thinking it all over, +and I've got a great many things to say to you. But come to breakfast +now." + +She had a business-like way of treating the situation that was more +intoxicating than sentiment would have been, and gave it more actuality. + +Mrs. Pasmer was alone at the table, and explained that Alice's father +never breakfasted with them, or very seldom. "Where are your flowers?" +she asked Alice. + +"Flowers? What flowers?" + +"That Mr. Mavering brought." + +They all looked at one another. Dan ran out and brought in his roses. + +"They were trying to get away in the excitement, I guess, Mrs. Pasmer; I +found them behind the door." He had flung them there, without knowing it, +when Mrs. Pasmer left him with Alice. + +He expected her to join him and her mother in being amused at this, but he +was as well pleased to have her touched at his having brought them, and to +turn their gaiety off in praise of the roses. She got a vase for them, +and set it on the table. He noticed for the first time the pretty house- +dress she had on, with its barred corsage and under-skirt, and the heavy +silken rope knotted round it at the waist, and dropping in heavy tufts or +balls in front. + +The breakfast was Continental in its simplicity, and Mrs. Pasmer said that +they had always kept up their Paris habit of a light breakfast, even in +London, where it was not so easy to follow foreign customs as it was in +America. She was afraid he might find it too light. Then he told all +about his morning's adventure, ending with his breakfast at the Providence +Depot. Mrs. Pasmer entered into the fun of it, but she said it was for +only once in a way, and he must not expect to be let in if he came at that +hour another morning. He said no; he understood what an extraordinary +piece of luck it was for him to be there; and he was there to be bidden to +do whatever they wished. He said so much in recognition of their +goodness, that he became abashed by it. Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of +the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted +from him by an insuperable moral distance. A warm flush seemed to rise +from his heart into his throat and stifle him. He wished to shed tears. +His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he +would not have any more coffee. "Then," she said, "we will go into the +drawing-room;" but she allowed him and Alice to go alone. + +He was still in that illusion of awe and of distance, and he submitted to +the interposition of another table between their chairs. + +"I wish to talk with you," she said, so seriously that he was frightened, +and said to himself: "Now she is going to break it off. She has thought +it over, and she finds she can't endure me." + +"Well?" he said huskily. + +You oughtn't to have come here, you know, this morning." + +"I know it," he vaguely conceded. "But I didn't expect to get in." + +"Well, now you're here, we may as well talk. You must tell your family at +once." + +"Yes; I'm going to write to them as soon as I get back to my room. I +couldn't last night." + +"But you mustn't write; you must go--and prepare their minds." + +"Go?" he echoed. "Oh, that isn't necessary! My father knew about it from +the beginning, and I guess they've all talked it over. Their minds are +prepared." The sense of his immeasurable superiority to any one's +opposition began to dissipate Dan's unnatural awe; at the pleading face +which Alice put on, resting one cheek against the back of one of her +clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be +teased by that silken rope round her waist. + +"But you don't understand, dear," she said; and she said "dear" as if they +were old married people. "You must go to see them, and tell them; and +then some of them must come to see me--your father and sisters." + +"Why, of course." His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy silken +balls. + +"And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn't we?" + +"It'll be very nice of you--yes. You know she can't come to you." + +"Yes, that's what I thought, and--What are you looking at?" she drew +herself back from the table and followed the direction of his eye with a +woman's instinctive apprehension of disarray. + +He was ashamed to tell. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking." + +"What?" + +"Well, I don't know. That it seems so strange any one else should have +any to do with it--my family and yours. But I suppose they must. Yes, +it's all right." + +"Why, of course. If your family didn't like it--" + +"It wouldn't make any difference to me," said Dan resolutely. + +"It would to me," she retorted, with tender reproach. "Do you suppose it +would be pleasant to go into a family that didn't like yon? Suppose papa +and mamma didn't like you?" + +"But I thought they did," said Mavering, with his mind still partly on the +rope and the fluffy ball, but keeping his eyes away. + +"Yes, they do," said Alice. "But your family don't know me at all; and +your father's only seen me once. Can't you understand? I'm afraid we +don't look at it seriously enough--earnestly--and oh, I do wish to have +everything done as it should be! Sometimes, when I think of it, it makes +me tremble. I've been thinking about it all the morning, and--and-- +praying." + +Dan wanted to fall on his knees to her. The idea of Alice in prayer was +fascinating + +"I wish our life to begin with others, and not with ourselves. If we're +intrusted with so much happiness, doesn't it mean that we're to do good +with it--to give it to others as if it were money?" + +The nobleness of this thought stirred Dan greatly; his eyes wandered back +to the silken rope; but now it seemed to him an emblem of voluntary +suffering and self-sacrifice, like a devotee's hempen girdle. He +perceived that the love of this angelic girl would elevate him and hallow +his whole life if he would let it. He answered her, fervently, that he +would be guided by her in this as in everything; that he knew he was +selfish, and he was afraid he was not very good; but it was not because he +had not wished to be so; it was because he had not had any incentive. He +thought how much nobler and better this was than the talk he had usually +had with girls. He said that of course he would go home and tell his +people; he saw now that it would make them happier if they could hear it +directly from him. He had only thought of writing because he could not +bear to think of letting a day pass without seeing her; but if he took the +early morning train he could get back the same night, and still have three +hours at Ponkwasset Falls, and he would go the next day, if she said so. + +"Go to-day, Dan," she said, and she stretched out her hand impressively +across the table toward him. He seized it with a gush of tenderness, and +they drew together in their resolution to live for others. He said he +would go at once. But the next train did not leave till two o'clock, and +there was plenty of time. In the meanwhile it was in the accomplishment +of their high aims that they sat down on the sofa together and talked of +their future; Alice conditioned it wholly upon his people's approval of +her, which seemed wildly unnecessary to Mavering, and amused him +immensely. + +"Yes," she said, "I know you will think me strange in a great many things; +but I shall never keep anything from you, and I'm going to tell you that I +went to matins this morning." + +"To matins?" echoed Dan. He would not quite have liked her a Catholic; he +remembered with relief that she had said she was not a Roman Catholic; +though when he came to think, he would not have cared a great deal. +Nothing could have changed her from being Alice. + +"Yes, I wished to consecrate the first morning of our engagement; and I'm +always going. I determined that I would go before breakfast--that was +what made breakfast so late. Don't you like it?" she asked timidly. + +"Like it!" he said. "I'm going with you:" + +"Oh no!" she turned upon him. "That wouldn't do." She became grave +again. "I'm glad you approve of it, for I should feel that there was +something wanting to our happiness. If marriage is a sacrament, why +shouldn't an engagement be?" + +"It is," said Dan, and he felt that it was holy; till then he had never +realised that marriage was a sacrament, though he had often heard the +phrase. + +At the end of an hour they took a tender leave of each other, hastened by +the sound of Mrs. Pasmer's voice without. Alice escaped from one door +before her mother entered by the other. Dan remained, trying to look +unconcerned, but he was sensible of succeeding so poorly that he thought +he had better offer his hand to Mrs. Pasmer at once. He told her that he +was going up to Ponkwasset Falls at two o'clock, and asked her to please +remember him to Mr. Pasmer. + +She said she would, and asked him if he were to be gone long. + +"Oh no; just overnight--till I can tell them what's happened." He felt it +a comfort to be trivial with Mrs. Pasmer, after bracing up to Alice's +ideals. "I suppose they'll have to know." + +"What an exemplary son!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "Yes, I suppose they will." + +"I supposed it would be enough if I wrote, but Alice thinks I'd better +report in person." + +"I think you had, indeed! And it will be a good thing for you both to +have the time for clarifying your ideas. Did she tell you she had been at +matins this morning?" A light of laughter trembled in Mrs. Pasmer's eyes, +and Mavering could not keep a responsive gleam out of his own. In an +instant the dedication of his engagement by morning prayer ceased to be a +high and solemn thought, and became deliciously amusing; and this laughing +Alice over with her mother did more to realise the fact that she was his +than anything else had yet done. + +In that dark passage outside he felt two arms go tenderly round his neck; +and a soft shape strain itself to his heart. "I know you have been +laughing about me. But you may. I'm yours now, even to laugh at, if you +want." + +"You are mine to fall down and worship," he vowed, with an instant +revulsion of feeling. + +Alice didn't say anything; he felt her hand fumbling about his coat lapel. +"Where is your breast pocket?" she asked; and he took hold of her hand, +which left a carte-de-visite-shaped something in his. + +"It isn't very good," she murmured, as well as she could, with her lips +against his cheek, "but I thought you'd like to show them some proof of my +existence. I shall have none of yours while you're gone." + +"O Alice! you think of everything!" + +His heart was pierced by the soft reproach implied in her words; he had +not thought to ask her for her photograph, but she had thought to give it; +she must have felt it strange that he had not asked for it, and she had +meant to slip it in his pocket and let him find it there. But even his +pang of self-upbraiding was a part of his transport. He seemed to float +down the stairs; his mind was in a delirious whirl. "I shall go mad," he +said to himself in the excess of his joy--"I shall die!" + + + + +XXVIII. + +The parting scene with Alice persisted in Mavering's thought far on the +way to Ponkwasset Falls. He now succeeded in saying everything to her: +how deeply he felt her giving him her photograph to cheer him in his +separation from her; how much he appreciated her forethought in providing +him with some answer when his mother and sisters should ask him about her +looks. He took out the picture, and pretended to the other passengers to +be looking very closely at it, and so managed to kiss it. He told her +that now he understood what love really was; how powerful; how it did +conquer everything; that it had changed him and made him already a better +man. He made her refuse all merit in the work. + +When he began to formulate the facts for communication to his family, love +did not seem so potent; he found himself ashamed of his passion, or at +least unwilling to let it be its own excuse even; he had a wish to give it +almost any other appearance. Until he came in sight of the station and +the Works, it had not seemed possible for any one to object to Alice. He +had been going home as a matter of form to receive the adhesion of his +family. But now he was forced to see that she might be considered +critically, even reluctantly. This would only be because his family did +not understand how perfect Alice was; but they might not understand. + +With his father there would be no difficulty. His father had seen Alice +and admired her; he would be all right. Dan found himself hoping this +rather anxiously, as if from the instinctive need of his father's support +with his mother and sisters. He stopped at the Works when he left the +train, and found his father in his private office beyond the book-keeper's +picket-fence, which he penetrated, with a nod to the accountant. + +"Hello, Dan!" said his father, looking up; and "Hello, father!" said Dan. +Being alone, the father and son not only shook hands, but kissed each +other, as they used to do in meeting after an absence when Dan was +younger. + +He had closed his father's door with his left hand in giving his right, +and now he said at once, "Father, I've come home to tell you that I'm +engaged to be married." + +Dan had prearranged his father's behaviour at this announcement, but he +now perceived that he would have to modify the scene if it were to +represent the facts. His father did not brighten all over and demand, +"Miss Pasmer, of course?" he contrived to hide whatever start the news had +given him, and was some time in asking, with his soft lisp, "Isn't that +rather sudden, Dan?" + +"Well, not for me," said Dan, laughing uneasily. It's--you know her, +father--Miss Pasmer." + +"Oh yes," said his father, certainly not with displeasure, and yet not +with enthusiasm. + +"I've had ever since Class Day to think it over, and it--came to a climax +yesterday." + +"And then you stopped thinking," said his father--to gain time, it +appeared to Dan. + +"Yes, sir," said Dan. "I haven't thought since." + +"Well," said his father, with an amusement which was not unfriendly. He +added, after a moment, "But I thought that had been broken off," and Dan's +instinct penetrated to the lurking fact that his father must have talked +the rupture over with his mother, and not wholly regretted it. + +"There was a kind of--hitch at one time," he admitted; "but it's all right +now." + +"Well, well," said his father, "this is great news--great news," and he +seemed to be shaping himself to the new posture of affairs, while giving +it a conditional recognition. "She's a beautiful creature." + +"Isn't she?" cried Dan, with a little break in his voice, for he had found +his father's manner rather trying. "And she's good too. I assure you +that she is--she is simply perfect every way." + +"Well," said the elder Mavering, rising and pulling down the rolling top +of his desk, "I'm glad to hear it, for your sake, Dan. Have you been up +at the house yet?" + +"No; I'm just off the train." + +"How is her mother--how is Mrs. Pasmer? All well?" + +"Yes, sir," said Dan; "they're all very well. You don't know Mr. Pasmer, +I believe, sir, do you?" + +"Not since college. What sort of person is he?" + +"He's very refined and quiet. Very handsome. Very courteous. Very nice +indeed." + +"Ah! that's good," said Elbridge Mavering, with the effect of not having +been very attentive to his son's answer. + +They walked up the long slope of the hillside on which the house stood, +overlooking the valley where the Works were, and fronting the plateau +across the river where the village of operatives' houses was scattered. +The paling light of what had been a very red sunset flushed them, and +brought out the picturesqueness which the architect, who designed them for +a particular effect in the view from the owner's mansion, had intended. + +A good carriage road followed the easiest line of ascent towards this +edifice, and reached a gateway. Within it began to describe a curve +bordered with asphalted footways to the broad verandah of the house, and +then descended again to the gate. The grounds enclosed were planted with +deciduous shrubs, which had now mostly dropped their leaves, and clumps of +firs darkening in the evening light with the gleam of some garden statues +shivering about the lawn next the house. The breeze grew colder and +stiffer as the father and son mounted toward the mansion which Dan used to +believe was like a chateau, with its Mansard-roof and dormer windows and +chimneys. It now blocked its space sharply out of the thin pink of the +western sky, and its lights sparkled with a wintry keenness which had +often thrilled Dan when he climbed the hill from the station in former +homecomings. Their brilliancy gave him a strange sinking of the heart for +no reason. He and his father had kept up a sort of desultory talk about +Alice, and he could not have said that his father had seemed indifferent; +he had touched the affair only too acquiescently; it was painfully like +everything else. When they came in full sight of the house, Dan left the +subject, as he realised presently, from a reasonless fear of being +overheard. + +"It seems much later here, sir, than it does in Boston," he said, glancing +round at the maples, which stood ragged, with half their leaves blown from +them. + +"Yes; we're in the hills, and we're further north," answered his father. +"There's Minnie." + +Dan had seen his sister on the verandah, pausing at sight of him, and +puzzled to make out who was with her father. He had an impulse to hail +her with a shout, but he could not. In his last walk with her he had told +her that he should never marry, and they had planned to live together. It +was a joke; but now he felt as if he had come to rob her of something, and +he walked soberly on with his father. + +"Why, Dan, you good-for-nothing fellow!" she called out when he came near +enough to be unmistakable, and ran down the steps to kiss him. "What in +the world are you doing here? When did you come? Why didn't you hollo, +instead of letting me stand here guessing? You're not sick, are you?" + +The father got himself indoors unnoticed in the excitement of the +brother's arrival. This would have been the best moment for Dan to tell +his sister of his engagement; he knew it, but he parried her curiosity +about his coming; and then his sister Eunice came out, and he could not +speak. They all went together into the house flaming with naphtha gas, +and with the steam heat already on, and Dan said he would take his bag to +his room, and then come down again. He knew that he had left them to +think that there was something very mysterious in his coming, and while he +washed away the grime of his journey he was planning how to appear +perfectly natural when he should get back to his sisters. He recollected +that he had not asked either them or his father how his mother was, but it +was certainly not because his mind was not full of her. Alice now seemed +very remote from him, further even than his gun, or his boyish collection +of moths and butterflies, on which his eye fell in roving about his room. +For a bitter instant it seemed to him as if they were all alike toys, and +in a sudden despair he asked himself what had become of his happiness. It +was scarcely half a day since he had parted in transport from Alice. + +He made pretexts to keep from returning at once to his sisters, and it was +nearly half an hour before he went down to them. By that time his father +was with them in the library, and they were waiting tea for him. + + + + +XXIX. + +A family of rich people in the country, apart from intellectual interests, +is apt to gormandise; and the Maverings always sat down to a luxurious +table, which was most abundant and tempting at the meal they called tea, +when the invention of the Portuguese man-cook was taxed to supply the +demands of appetites at once eager and fastidious. They prolonged the +meal as much as possible in winter, and Dan used to like to get home just +in time for tea when he came up from Harvard; it was always very jolly, +and he brought a boy's hunger to its abundance. The dining-room, full of +shining light, and treated from the low-down grate, was a pleasant place. +But now his spirits failed to rise with the physical cheer; he was almost +bashfully silent; he sat cowed in the presence of his sisters, and +careworn in the place where he used to be so gay and bold. They were +waiting to have him begin about himself, as he always did when he had been +away, and were ready to sympathise with his egotism, whatever new turn it +took. He mystified them by asking about them and their affairs, and by +dealing in futile generalities, instead of launching out with any business +that he happened at the time to be full of. But he did not attend to +their answers to his questions; he was absent-minded, and only knew that +his face was flushed, and that he was obviously ill at ease. + +His younger sister turned from him impatiently at last. "Father, what is +the matter with Dan?" + +Her bold recognition of their common constraint broke it down. Dan looked +at his father with helpless consent, and his father said quietly, "He +tells me he's engaged." + +"What nonsense!" said his sister Eunice. + +"Why, Dan!" cried Minnie; and he felt a reproach in her words which the +words did not express. A silence followed, in which the father along went +on with his supper. The girls sat staring at Dan with incredulous eyes. +He became suddenly angry. + +"I don't know what's so very extraordinary about it, or why there should +be such a pother," he began; and he knew that he was insolently ignoring +abundant reasons for pother, if there had been any pother. "Yes, I'm +engaged." + +He expected now that they would believe him, and ask whom he was engaged +to; but apparently they were still unable to realise it. He was obliged +to go on. "I'm engaged to Miss Pasmer." + +"To Miss Pasmer!" repeated Eunice. + +"But I thought--" Minnie began, and then stopped. + +Dan commanded his temper by a strong effort, and condescended to explain. +"There was a misunderstanding, but it's all right now; I only met her +yesterday, and--it's all right." He had to keep on ignoring what had +passed between him and his sisters during the month he spent at home after +his return from Campobello. He did not wish to do so; he would have been +glad to laugh over that epoch of ill-concealed heart-break with them; but +the way they had taken the fact of his engagement made it impossible. He +was forced to keep them at a distance; they forced him. "I'm glad," he +added bitterly, "that the news seems to be so agreeable to my family. +Thank you for your cordial congratulations." He swallowed a large cup of +tea, and kept looking down. + +"How silly!" said Eunice, who was much the oldest of the three. "Did you +expect us to fall upon your neck before we could believe it wasn't a hoax +of father's?" + +"A hoax!" Dan burst out. + +"I suppose," said Minnie, with mock meekness, "that if we're to be +devoured, it's no use saying we didn't roil the brook. I'm sure I +congratulate you, Dan, with all my heart," she added, with a trembling +voice. + +"I congratulate Miss Pasmer," said Eunice, "on securing such a very +reasonable husband." + +When Eunice first became a young lady she was so much older than Dan that +in his mother's absence she sometimes authorised herself to box his ears, +till she was finally overthrown in battle by the growing boy. She still +felt herself so much his tutelary genius that she could not let the idea +of his engagement awe her, or keep her from giving him a needed lesson. +Dan jumped to his feet, and passionately threw his napkin on his chair. + +"There, that will do, Eunice!" interposed the father. "Sit down, Dan, and +don't be an ass, if you are engaged. Do you expect to come up here with a +bombshell in your pocket, and explode it among us without causing any +commotion? We all desire your happiness, and we are glad if you think +you've found it, but we want to have time to realise it. We had only +adjusted our minds to the apparent fact that you hadn't found it when you +were here before." His father began very severely, but when he ended with +this recognition of what they had all blinked till then, they laughed +together. + +"My pillow isn't dry yet, with the tears I shed for you, Dan," said Minnie +demurely. + +"I shall have to countermand my mourning," said Eunice, "and wear louder +colours than ever. Unless," she added, "Miss Pasmer changes her mind +again." + +This divination of the past gave them all a chance for another laugh, and +Dan's sisters began to reconcile themselves to the fact of his engagement, +if not to Miss Pasmer. In what was abstractly so disagreeable there was +the comfort that they could joke about his happiness; they had not felt +free to make light of his misery when he was at home before. They began +to ask all the questions they could think of as to how and when, and they +assimilated the fact more and more in acquiring these particulars and +making a mock of them and him. + +"Of course you haven't got her photograph," suggested Eunice. "You know +we've never had the pleasure of meeting the young lady yet." + +"Yes," Dan owned, blushing, "I have. She thought I might like to show it +to mother: But it isn't--" + +"A very good one--they never are," said Minnie. + +"And it was taken several years ago--they always are," said Eunice. + +"And she doesn't photograph well, anyway." + +"And this one was just after a long fit of sickness." + +Dan drew it out of his pocket, after some fumbling for it, while he +tolerated their gibes. + +Eunice put her nose to it. "I hope it's your cigarettes it smells of," +she said. + +"Yes; she doesn't use the weed," answered Dan. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that, exactly," returned his sister, holding the +picture off at arm's length, and viewing it critically with contracted +eyes. + +Dan could not help laughing. "I don't think it's been near any other +cigar-case," he answered tranquilly. + +Minnie looked at it very near to, covering all but the face with her hand. +"Dan, she's lovely!" she cried, and Dan's heart leaped into his throat As +he gratefully met his sister's eyes. + +"You'll like her, Min." + +Eunice took the photograph from her for a second scrutiny. "She's +certainly very stylish. Rather a beak of a nose, and a little too bird-- +like on the whole. But she isn't so bad. Is it like her?" she asked with +a glance at her father. + +"I might say--after looking," he replied. + +"True! I didn't know but Dan had shown it to you as soon as you met. He +seemed to be in such a hurry to let us all know." + +The father said, "I don't think it flatters her," and he looked at it more +carefully. "Not much of her mother there?" he suggested to Dan. + +"No, sir; she's more like her father." + +"Well, after all this excitement, I believe I'll have another cup of tea, +and take something to eat, if Miss Pasmer's photograph doesn't object," +said Eunice, and she replenished her cup and plate. + +"What coloured hair and eyes has she, Dan?" asked Minnie. + +He had to think so as to be exact. "Well, you might say they were black, +her eyebrows are so dark. But I believe they're a sort of greyish-blue." + +"Not an uncommon colour for eyes," said Eunice, "but rather peculiar for +hair." + +They got to making fun of the picture, and Dan told them about Alice and +her family; the father left them at the table, and then came back with +word from Dan's mother that she was ready to see him. + + + + +XXX. + +By eight o'clock in the evening the pain with which every day began for +Mrs. Mavering was lulled, and her jarred nerves were stayed by the opiates +till she fell asleep about midnight. In this interval the family gathered +into her room, and brought her their news and the cheer of their health. +The girls chattered on one side of her bed, and their father sat with his +newspaper on the other, and read aloud the passages which he thought would +interest her, while she lay propped among her pillows, brilliantly eager +for the world opening this glimpse of itself to her shining eyes. That +was on her good nights, when the drugs did their work, but there were +times when they failed, and the day's agony prolonged itself through the +evening, and the sleep won at last was a heavy stupor. Then the +sufferer's temper gave way under the stress; she became the torment she +suffered, and tore the hearts she loved. Most of all, she afflicted the +man who had been so faithful to her misery, and maddened him to reprisals, +of which he afterward abjectly repented. Her tongue was sharpened by +pain, and pitilessly skilled to inculpate and to punish; it pierced and +burned like fire but when a good day came again she made it up to the +victims by the angelic sweetness and sanity which they felt was her real +self; the cruelty was only the mask of her suffering. + +When she was better they brought to her room anybody who was staying with +them, and she liked them to be jolly in the spacious chamber. The +pleasantest things of the house were assembled, and all its comforts +concentrated, in the place which she and they knew she should quit but +once. It was made gay with flowers and pictures; it was the salon for +those fortunate hours when she became the lightest and blithest of the +company in it, and made the youngest guest forget that there was sickness +or pain in the world by the spirit with which she ignored her own. Her +laugh became young again; she joked; she entered into what they were doing +and reading and thinking, and sent them away full of the sympathy which in +this mood of hers she had for every mood in others. Girls sighed out +their wonder and envy to her daughters when they left her; the young men +whom she captivated with her divination of their passions or ambitions +went away celebrating her supernatural knowledge of human nature. The +next evening after some night of rare and happy excitement, the family saw +her nurse carrying the pictures and flowers and vases out of her room, in +sign of her renunciation of them all, and assembled silently, shrinkingly, +in her chamber, to take each their portion of her anguish, of the blame +and the penalty. The household adjusted itself to her humours, for she +was supreme in it. + +When Dan used to come home from Harvard she put on a pretty cap for him, +and distinguished him as company by certain laces hiding her wasted frame, +and giving their pathetic coquetry to her transparent wrists. He was her +favourite, and the girls acknowledged him so, and made their fun of her +for spoiling him. He found out as he grew up that her broken health dated +from his birth, and at first this deeply affected him; but his young life +soon lost the keenness of the impression, and he loved his mother because +she loved him, and not because she had been dying for him so many years. + +As he now came into her room, and the waiting-woman went out of it with +her usual, "Well, Mr. Dan!" the tenderness which filled him at sight of +his mother was mixed with that sense of guilt which had tormented him at +times ever since he met his sisters. He was going to take himself from +her; he realised that. + +"Well, Dan!" she called, so gaily that he said to himself, "No, father +hasn't told her anything about it," and was instantly able to answer her +as cheerfully, "Well, mother!" + +He bent over her to kiss her, and the odour of the clean linen mingling +with that of the opium, and the cologne with which she had tried to banish +its scent, opened to him one of those vast reaches of associations which +perfumes can unlock, and he saw her lying there through those years of +pain, as many as half his life, and suddenly the tears gushed into his +eyes, and he fell on his knees, and hid his face in the bed-clothes and +sobbed. + +She kept smoothing his head, which shook under her thin hand, and saying, +"Poor Dan! poor Dan!" but did not question him. He knew that she knew +what he had come to tell her, and that his tears, which had not been meant +for that, had made interest with her for him and his cause, and that she +was already on his side. + +He tried boyishly to dignify the situation when he lifted his face, and he +said, "I didn't mean to come boohooing to you in this way, and I'm ashamed +of myself." + +"I know, Dan; but you've been wrought up, and I don't wonder. You mustn't +mind your father and your sisters. Of course, they're rather surprised, +and they don't like your taking yourself from them--we, none of us do." + + +At these honest words Dan tried to become honest too. At least he dropped +his pretence of dignity, and became as a little child in his simple greed +for sympathy. "But it isn't necessarily that; is it, mother?" + +"Yes, it's all that, Dan; and it's all right, because it's that. We don't +like it, but our not liking it has nothing to do with its being right or +wrong." + +"I supposed that father would have been pleased, anyway; for he has seen +her, and--and . Of course the girls haven't, but I think they might have +trusted my judgment a little. I'm not quite a fool." + +His mother smiled. "Oh, it isn't a question of the wisdom of your choice; +it's the unexpectedness. We all saw that you were very unhappy when you +were here before, and we supposed it had gone wrong." + +"It had, mother," said Dan. "She refused me at Campobello. But it was a +misunderstanding, and as soon as we met--" + +"I knew you had met again, and what you had come home for, and I told your +father so, when he came to say you were here." + +"Did you, mother?" he asked, charmed at her having guessed that. + +"Yes. She must be a good girl to send you straight home to tell us." + +"You knew I wouldn't have thought of that myself," said Dan joyously. "I +wanted to write; I thought that would do just as well. I hated to leave +her, but she made me come. She is the best, and the wisest, and the most +unselfish - O mother, I can't tell you about her! You must see her. You +can't realise her till you see her, mother. You'll like each other, I'm +sure of that. You're just alike." It seemed to Dan that they were +exactly alike. + +"Then perhaps we sha'n't," suggested his mother. "Let me see her +picture." + +"How did you know I had it? If it hadn't been for her, I shouldn't have +brought any. She put it into my pocket just as I was leaving. She said +you would all want to see what she looked like." + +He had taken it out of his pocket, and he held it, smiling fondly upon it. +Alice seemed to smile back at him. He had lost her in the reluctance of +his father and sisters; and now his mother--it was his mother who had +given her to him again. He thought how tenderly he loved his mother. + +When he could yield her the photograph, she looked long and silently at +it. "She has a great deal of character, Dan." + +"There you've hit it, mother! I'd rather you would have said that than +anything else. But don't you think she's beautiful? She's the gentlest +creature, when you come to know her! I was awfully afraid of her at +first. I thought she was very haughty. But she isn't at all. She's +really very self-depreciatory; she thinks she isn't good enough for me. +You ought to hear her talk, mother, as I have. She's full of the noblest +ideals--of being of some use in the world, of being self-devoted, and--all +that kind of thing. And you can see that she's capable of it. Her aunt's +in a Protestant sisterhood," he said, with a solemnity which did not seem +to communicate itself to his mother, for Mrs. Mavering smiled. Dan smiled +too, and said: "But I can't tell you about Alice, mother. She's perfect." +His heart overflowed with proud delight in her, and he was fool enough to +add, "She's so affectionate!" + +His mother kept herself from laughing. "I dare say she is, Dan--with +you." Then she hid all but her eyes with the photograph, and gave way. + +"What a donkey!" said Dan, meaning himself. "If I go on, I shall disgust +you with her. What I mean is that she isn't at all proud, as I used to +think she was." + +"No girl is, under the circumstances. She has all she can do to be proud +of you." + +"Do you think so, mother?" " he said, enraptured with the notion. "I've +done my best--or my worst--not to give her any reason to be so." + +"She doesn't 'want any--the less the better. You silly boy! Don't you +suppose she wants to make you out of whole cloth just as you do with her? +She doesn't want any facts to start with; they'd be in the way. Well, +now, I can make out, with your help, what the young lady is; but what are +the father and mother? They're rather important in these cases." + +"Oh, they're the nicest kind of people," said Dan, in optimistic +generalisation. "You'd like Mrs. Pasmer. She's awfully nice." + +"Do you say that because you think I wouldn't?" asked his mother. "Isn't +she rather sly and hum-bugging?" + +"Well, yes, she is, to a certain extent," Dan admitted, with a laugh. +"But she doesn't mean any harm by it. She's extremely kind-hearted." + +"To you? I dare say. And Mr. Pasmer is rather under her thumb?" + +"Well, yes, you might say thumb," Dan consented, feeling it useless to +defend the Pasmers against this analysis. + +"We won't say heel," returned his mother; "we're too polite. And your +father says he had the reputation in college of being one of the most +selfish fellows in the world. He's never done anything since but lose +most of his money. He's been absolutely idle and useless all his days." +She turned her vivid blue eyes suddenly upon her son's. + +Dan winced. "You know how hard father is upon people who haven't done +anything. It's a mania of his. Of course Mr. Pasmer doesn't show to +advantage where there's no--no leisure class." + +"Poor man!" + +Dan was going to say, "He's very amiable, though," but he was afraid of +his mother's retorting, "To you?" and he held his peace, looking +chapfallen. + +Whether his mother took pity on him or not, her next sally was consoling. +"But your Alice may not take after either of them. Her father is the +worst of his breed, it seems; the rest are useful people, from what your +father knows, and there's a great deal to be hoped for collaterally. She +had an uncle in college at the same time who was everything that her +father was not." + +"One of her aunts is in one of those Protestant religious houses in +England," repeated Dan. + +"Oh!" said his mother shortly, "I don't know that I like that +particularly. But probably she isn't useless there. Is Alice very +religious?" + +"Well, I suppose," said Dan, with a smile for the devotions that came into +his thought, " she's what would be called 'Piscopal pious." + +Mrs. Mavering referred to the photograph, which she still held in her +hand. "Well, she's pure and good, at any rate. I suppose you look +forward to a long engagement?" + +Dan was somewhat taken aback at a supposition so very contrary to what was +in his mind. "Well, I don't know. Why?" + +"It might be said that you are very young. How old is Agnes--Alice, I +mean?" + +"Twenty-one. But now, look here, mother! It's no use considering such a +thing in the abstract, is it?" + +"No," said his mother, with a smile for what might be coming. + +"This is the way I've been viewing it; I may say it's the way Alice has +been viewing it--or Mrs. Pasmer, rather." + +"Decidedly Mrs. Pasmer, rather. Better be honest, Dan." + +"I'll do my best. I was thinking, hoping, that is, that as I'm going +right into the business--have gone into it already, in fact--and could +begin life at once, that perhaps there wouldn't be much sense in waiting a +great while." + +"Yes?" + +"That's all. That is, if you and father are agreed." He reflected upon +this provision, and added, with a laugh of confusion and pleasure: "It +seems to be so very much more of a family affair than I used to think it +was." + +"You thought it concerned just you and her?" said his mother, with arch +sympathy. + +"Well, yes." + +"Poor fellow! She knew better than that, you may be sure. At any rate, +her mother did." + +"What Mrs. Pasmer doesn't know isn't probably worth knowing," said Dan, +with an amused sense of her omniscience. + +"I thought so," sighed his mother, smiling too. "And now you begin to +find out that it concerns the families in all their branches on both +sides." + +"Oh, if it stopped at the families and their ramifications! But it seems +to take in society and the general public." + +"So it does--more than you can realise. You can't get married to yourself +alone, as young people think; and if you don't marry happily, you sin +against the peace and comfort of the whole community." + +"Yes, that's what I'm chiefly looking out for now. I don't want any of +those people in Central Africa to suffer. That's the reason I want to +marry Alice at the earliest opportunity. But I suppose there'll have to +be a Mavering embassy to the high contracting powers of the other part +now?" + +"Your father and one of the girls had better go down." + +"Yes?" + +"And invite Mr. and Mrs. Pasmer and their daughter to come up here." + +"All on probation?" + +"Oh no. If you're pleased, Dan--" + +I am, mother--measurably." They both laughed at this mild way of putting +it. + +"Why, then it's to be supposed that we're all pleased. You needn't bring +the whole Pasmer family home to live with you, if you do marry them all." + +"No," said Dan, and suddenly be became very distraught. It flashed +through him that his mother was expecting him to come home with Alice to +live, and that she would not be at all pleased with his scheme of a +European sojourn, which Mrs. Pasmer had so cordially adopted. He was +amazed that he had not thought of that, but he refused to see any +difficulty which his happiness could not cope with. + +"No, there's that view of it," he said jollily; and he buried his +momentary anxiety out of sight, and, as it were, danced upon its grave. +Nevertheless, he had a desire to get quickly away from the spot. "I hope +the Mavering embassy won't be a great while getting ready to go," he said. +"Of course it's all right; but I shouldn't want an appearance of +reluctance exactly, you know, mother; and if there should be much of an +interval between my getting back and their coming on, don't you know, why, +the cat might let herself out of the bag." + +"What cat?" asked his mother demurely. + +"Well, you know, you haven't received my engagement with unmingled +enthusiasm, and--and I suppose they would find it out from me--from my +manner; and--and I wish they'd come along pretty soon, mother." + +"Poor boy! I'm afraid the cat got out of the bag when Mrs. Pasmer came to +the years of discretion. But you sha'n't be left a prey to her. They +shall go back with you. Ring the bell, and let's talk it over with them +now." + +Dan joyfully obeyed. He could see that his mother was all on fire with +interest in his affair, and that the idea of somehow circumventing Mrs. +Pasmer by prompt action was fascinating her. + +His sisters came up at once, and his father followed a moment later. They +all took their cue from the mother's gaiety, and began talking and +laughing, except the father, who sat looking on with a smile at their +lively spirits and the jokes of which Dan became the victim. Each family +has its own fantastic medium, in which it gets affairs to relieve them of +their concrete seriousness, and the Maverings now did this with Dan's +engagement, and played with it as an airy abstraction. They debated the +character of the embassy which was to be sent down to Boston on their +behalf, and it was decided that Eunice had better go with her father, as +representing more fully the age and respectability of the family: at first +glance the Pasmers would take her for Dan's mother, and this would be a +tremendous advantage. + +"And if I like the ridiculous little chit," said Eunice, "I think I shall +let Dan marry her at once. I see no reason why he shouldn't and I +couldn't stand a long engagement; I should break it off." + +"I guess there are others who will have something to say about that," +retorted the younger sister. "I've always wanted a long engagement in +this family, and as there seems to be no chance for it with the ladies, I +wish to make the most of Dan's. I always like it where the hero gets sick +and the heroine nurses him. I want Dan to get sick, and have Alice come +here and take care of him." + +"No; this marriage must take place at once. What do you say, father?" +asked Eunice. + +Her father sat, enjoying the talk, at the foot of the bed, with a tendency +to doze. "You might ask Dan," he said, with a lazy cast of his eye toward +his son. + +"Dan has nothing to do with it." + +"Dan shall not be consulted." + +The two girls stormed upon their father with their different reasons. + +"Now I will tell you Girls, be still!" their mother broke in. "Listen +to me: I have an idea." + +"Listen to her: she has an idea!" echoed Eunice, in recitative. + +"Will you be quiet?" demanded the mother. + +"We will be du-u-mb!" + +When they became so, at the verge of their mother's patience, of which +they knew the limits, she went on: "I think Dan had better get married at +once." + +"There, Minnie!" + +"But what does Dan say?" + +"I will--make the sacrifice," said Dan meekly. + +"Noble boy! That's exactly what Washington said to his mother when she +asked him not to go to sea," said Minnie. + +"And then he went into the militia, and made it all right with himself +that way," said Eunice. "Dan can't play his filial piety on this family. +Go on, mother." + +"I want him to bring his wife home, and live with us," continued his +mother. + +"In the L part!" cried Minnie, clasping her hands in rapture. "I've +always said what a perfect little apartment it was by itself." + +"Well, don't say it again, then," returned her sister. "Always is often +enough. Well, in the L part Go on, mother! Don't ask where you were, +when it's so exciting." + +"I don't care whether it's in the L part or not. There's plenty of room +in the great barn of a place everywhere." + +"But what about his taking care of the business in Boston?" suggested +Eunice, looking at her father. + +"There's no hurry about that." + +"And about the excursion to aesthetic centres abroad?" Minnie added. + +"That could be managed," said her father, with the same ironical smile. + +The mother and the girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him. It +was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take his +part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the +bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he +had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself +buoyantly at last that it would come out all right. His mother would give +in, or else Alice could reconcile her mother to whatever seemed really +best. + +He parted from his mother with fond gaiety. His sisters came out of the +room with him. + +"I'm perfectly sore with laughing," said Minnie. "It seems like old +times--doesn't it, Dan?--such a gale with mother." + + + + +XXXI. + +An engagement must always be a little incredible at first to the families +of the betrothed, and especially to the family of the young man; in the +girl's, the mother, at least, will have a more realising sense of the +situation. If there are elder sisters who have been accustomed to regard +their brother as very young, he will seem all the younger because in such +a matter he has treated himself as if he were a man; and Eunice Mavering +said, after seeing the Pasmers, "Well, Dan, it's all well enough, I +suppose, but it seems too ridiculous." + +"What's ridiculous about it, I should like to know?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I don't know. Who'll look after you when you're married? Oh, I +forgot Ma'am Pasmer!" + +"I guess we shall be able to look after ourselves," said Dan; a little +sulkily. + +"Yes, if you'll be allowed to," insinuated his sister. + +They spoke at the end of a talk in which he had fretted at the reticence +of both his sister and his father concerning the Pasmers, whom they had +just been to see. He was vexed with his father, because he felt that he +had been influenced by Eunice, and had somehow gone back on him. He was +vexed and he was grieved because his father had left them at the door of +the hotel without saying anything in praise of Alice, beyond the +generalities that would not carry favour with Eunice; and he was depressed +with a certain sense of Alice's father and mother, which seemed to have +imparted itself to him from the others, and to be the Mavering opinion of +them. He could no longer see Mrs. Pasmer harmless if trivial, and good- +hearted if inveterately scheming; he could not see the dignity and +refinement which he had believed in Mr. Pasmer; they had both suffered a +sort of shrinkage or collapse, from which he could not rehabilitate them. +But this would have been nothing if his sister's and his father's eyes, +through which he seemed to have been looking, had not shown him Alice in a +light in which she appeared strange and queer almost to eccentricity. He +was hurt at this effect from their want of sympathy, his pride was +touched, and he said to himself that he should not fish for Eunice's +praise; but he found himself saying, without surprise, "I suppose you will +do what you can to prejudice mother and Min." + +"Isn't that a little previous?" asked Eunice. "Have I said anything +against Miss Pasmer?" + +"You haven't because you couldn't," said Dan, with foolish bitterness. + +"Oh, I don't know about that. She's a human being, I suppose--at least +that was the impression I got from her parentage." + +"What have you got to say against her parents?" demanded Dan savagely. + +"Oh, nothing. I didn't come down to Boston to denounce the Pasmer +family." + +"I suppose you didn't like their being in a flat; you'd have liked to find +them in a house on Commonwealth Avenue or Beacon Street." + +"I'll own I'm a snob," said Eunice, with maddening meekness. "So's +father." + +"They are connected with the best families in the city, and they are in +the best society. They do what they please, and they live where they +like. They have been so long in Europe that they don't care for those +silly distinctions. But what you say doesn't harm them. It's simply +disgraceful to you; that's all," said Dan furiously. + +"I'm glad it's no worse, Dan," said his sister, with a tranquil smile. +"And if you'll stop prancing up and down the room, and take a seat, and +behave yourself in a Christian manner, I'll talk with you; and if you +don't, I won't. Do you suppose I'm going to be bullied into liking them?" + +"You can like them or not, as you please," said Dan sullenly; but he sat +down, and waited decently for his sister to speak. "But you can't abuse +them--at least in my presence." + +"I didn't know men lost their heads as well as their hearts," said Eunice. +"Perhaps it's only an exchange, though, and it's Miss Pasmer's head." Dan +started, but did not say anything, and Eunice smoothly continued: "No, I +don't believe it is. She looked like a sensible girl, and she talked +sensibly. I should think she had a very good head. She has good manners, +and she's extremely pretty, and very graceful. I'm surprised she should +be in love with such a simpleton." + +"Oh, go on! Abuse me as much as you like," said Dan. He was at once +soothed by her praise of Alice. + +"No, it isn't necessary to go on; the case is a little too obvious. But I +think she will do very well. I hope you're not marrying the whole family, +though. I suppose that it's always a question of which shall be scooped +up. They will want to scoop you up, and we shall want to scoop her up. I +dare say Ma'am Pasmer has her little plan; what is it?" + +Dan started at this touch on the quick, but he controlled himself, and +said, with dignity, "I have my own plans." + +"Well, you know what mother's are," returned Eunice easily. "You seem so +cheerful that I suppose yours are quite the same, and you're just keeping +them for a surprise." She laughed provokingly, and Dan burst forth again-- + +"You seem to live to give people pain. You take a fiendish delight in +torturing others. But if you think you can influence me in the slightest +degree, you're very much mistaken." + +"Well, well, there! It sha'n't be teased any more, so it sha'n't! It +shall have its own way, it shall, and nobody shall say a word against its +little girly's mother." Eunice rose from her chair, and patted Dan on the +head as she passed to the adjoining room. He caught her hand, and flung +it violently away; she shrieked with delight in his childish resentment, +and left him sulking. She was gone two or three minutes, and when she +came back it was in quite a different mood, as often happens with women in +a little lapse of time. + +"Dan, I think Miss Pasmer is a beautiful girl, and I know we shall all +like her, if you don't set us against her by your arrogance. Of course we +don't know anything about her yet, and you don't, really; but she seems a +very lovable little thing, and if she's rather silent and undemonstrative, +why, she'll be all the better for you: you've got demonstration enough for +twenty. And I think the family are well enough. Mrs. Pasmer is +thoroughly harmless; and Mr. Pasmer is a most dignified personage; his +eyebrows alone are worth the price of admission." Dan could not help +smiling. "All that there is about it is, you mustn't expect to drive +people into raptures about them, and expect them to go grovelling round on +their knees because you do." + +"Oh, I know I'm an infernal idiot," said Dan, yielding to the mingled +sarcasm and flattery. "It's because I'm so anxious; and you all seem so +confoundedly provisional about it. Eunice, what do you suppose father +really thinks?" + +Eunice seemed tempted to a relapse into her teasing, but she did not +yield. "Oh,father's all right--from your point of view. He's been +ridiculous from the first; perhaps that's the reason he doesn't feel +obliged to expatiate and expand a great deal at present." + +"Do you think so?" cried Dan, instantly adopting her as an ally. + +"Well, if I sad so, oughtn't it to be enough?" + +"It depends upon what else you say. Look here, now, Eunice!" Dan said, +with a laughing mixture of fun and earnest, "what are you going to say to +mother? It's no use, being disagreeable, is it? Of course, I don't +contend for ideal perfection anywhere, and I don't expect it. But there +isn't anything experimental about this thing, and don't you think we had +better all make the best of it?" + +"That sounds very impartial." + +"It is impartial. I'm a purely disinterested spectator." + +"Oh, quite." + +"And don't you suppose I understand Mr. and Mrs. Pasmer quite as well as +you do? All I say is that Alice is simply the noblest girl that ever +breathed, and--" + +"Now you're talking sense, Dan!" + +"Well, what are you going to say when you get home, Eunice? Come!" + +"That we had better make the best of it." + +"And what else?" + +"That you're hopelessly infatuated; and that she will twist you round her +finger." + +"Well?" + +"But that you've had your own way so much, it will do you good to have +somebody else's a while." + +"I guess you're pretty solid," said Dan, after thinking it over for a +moment. "I don't believe you're going to make it hard for me, and I know +you can make it just what you please. But I want you to be frank with +mother. Of course I wish you felt about the whole affair just as I do, +but if you're right on the main question, I don't care for the rest. I'd +rather mother would know just how you feel about it," said Dan, with a +sigh for the honesty which he felt to be not immediately attainable in his +own case. + +"Well, I'll see what can be done," Eunice finally assented. + +Whatever her feelings were in regard to the matter, she must have +satisfied herself that the situation was not to be changed by her +disliking it, and she began to talk so sympathetically with Dan that she +soon had the whole story of his love out of him. They laughed a good deal +together at it, but it convinced her that he had not been hoodwinked into +the engagement. It is always the belief of a young man's family, +especially his mother and sisters, that unfair means have been used to win +him, if the family of his betrothed are unknown to them; and it was a +relief, if not exactly a comfort, for Eunice Mavering to find that Alice +was as great a simpleton as Dan, and perhaps a sincerer simpleton. + + + + +XXXII. + +A week later, in fulfilment of the arrangement made by Mrs. Pasmer and +Eunice Mavering, Alice and her mother returned the formal visit of Dan's +people. + +While Alice stood before the mirror in one of the sumptuously furnished +rooms assigned them, arranging a ribbon for the effect upon Dan's mother +after dinner, and regarding its relation to her serious beauty, Mrs. +Pasmer came out of her chamber adjoining, and began to inspect the formal +splendour of the place. + +"What a perfect man's house!" she said, peering about. "You can see that +everything has been done to order. They have their own taste; they're +artistic enough for that--or the father is--and they've given orders to +have things done so and so, and the New York upholsterer has come up and +taken the measure of the rooms and done it. But it isn't like New York, +and it isn't individual. The whole house is just like those girls' +tailor-made costumes in character. They were made in New York, but they +don't wear them with the New York style; there's no more atmosphere about +them than if they were young men dressed up. There isn't a thing lacking +in the house here; there's an awful completeness; but even the ornaments +seem laid on, like the hot and cold water. I never saw a handsomer, more +uninviting room than that drawing room. I suppose the etching will come +some time after supper. What do you think of it all, Alice?" + +"Oh, I don't know. They must be very rich," said the girl indifferently. + +"You can't tell. Country people of a certain kind are apt to put +everything on their backs and their walls and floors. Of course such a +house here doesn't mean what it would in town." She examined the texture +of the carpet more critically, and the curtains; she had no shame about a +curiosity that made her daughter shrink. + +"Don't, mamma!" pleaded the girl. "What if they should come?" + +"They won't come," said Mrs. Pasmer; and her notice being called to Alice, +she made her take off the ribbon. "You're better without it." + +"I'm so nervous I don't know what I'm doing," said Alice, removing it, +with a whimper. + +"Well, I can't have you breaking down!" cried her mother warningly: she +really wished to shake her, as a culmination of her own conflicting +emotions. "Alice, stop this instant! Stop it, I say!" + +"But if I don't like her?" whimpered Alice. + +You're not going to marry her. Now stop! Here, bathe your eyes; they're +all red. Though I don't know that it matters. Yes, they'll expect you to +have been crying," said Mrs. Pasmer, seeing the situation more and more +clearly. "It's perfectly natural." But she took some cologne on a +handkerchief, and recomposed Alice's countenance for her. "There, the +colour becomes you, and I never saw your eyes look so bright." + +There was a pathos in their brilliancy which of course betrayed her to the +Mavering girls. It softened Eunice, and encouraged Minnie, who had been a +little afraid of the Pasmers. They both kissed Alice with sisterly +affection. Their father merely saw how handsome she looked, and Dan's +heart seemed to melt in his breast with tenderness. + +In recognition of the different habits of their guests, they had dinner +instead of tea. The Portuguese cook had outdone himself, and course +followed course in triumphal succession. Mrs. Pasmer praised it all with +a sincerity that took away a little of the zest she felt in making +flattering speeches. + +Everything about the table was perfect, but in a man's fashion, like the +rest of the house. It lacked the atmospheric charm, the otherwise +indefinable grace, which a woman's taste gives. It was in fact Elbridge +Mavering's taste which had characterised the whole; the daughters simply +accepted and approved. + +"Yes," said Eunice, "we haven't much else to do; so we eat. And Joe does +his best to spoil us." + +"Joe?" + +"Joe's the cook. All Portuguese cooks are Joe." + +"How very amusing!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "You must let me speak of your +grapes. I never saw anything so--well!--except your roses." + +"There you touched father in two tender spots. He cultivates both." + +"Really? Alice, did you ever see anything like these roses?" + +Alice looked away from Dan a moment, and blushed to find that she had been +looking so long at him. + +"Ah, I have," said Mavering gallantly. + +"Does he often do it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer, in an obvious aside to Eunice. + +Dan answered for him. "He never had such a chance before." + +Between coffee, which they drank at table, and tea, which they were to +take in Mrs. Mavering's room, they acted upon a suggestion from Eunice +that her father should show Mrs. Pasmer his rose-house. At one end of the +dining-room was a little apse of glass full of flowering plants growing +out of the ground, and with a delicate fountain tinkling in their midst. +Dan ran before the rest, and opened two glass doors in the further side of +this half-bubble, and at the same time with a touch flashed up a +succession of brilliant lights in some space beyond, from which there +gushed in a wave of hothouse fragrance, warm, heavy, humid. It was a +pretty little effect for guests new to the house, and was part of Elbridge +Mavering's pleasure in this feature of his place. Mrs. Pasmer responded +with generous sympathy, for if she really liked anything with her whole +heart, it was an effect, and she traversed the half-bubble by its pebbled +path, showering praises right and left with a fulness and accuracy that +missed no detail, while Alice followed silently, her hand in Minnie +Mavering's, and cold with suppressed excitement. The rose-house was +divided by a wall, pierced with frequent doorways, over which the trees +were trained and the roses hung; and on either side were ranks of rare and +costly kinds, weighed down with bud and bloom. The air was thick with +their breath and the pungent odours of the rich soil from which they grew, +and the glass roof was misted with the mingled exhalations. + +Mr. Mavering walked beside Alice, modestly explaining the difficulties of +rose culture, and his method of dealing with the red spider. He had a +stout knife in his hand, and he cropped long, heavy-laden stems of roses +from the walls and the beds, casually giving her their different names, +and laying them along his arm in a massive sheaf. + +Mrs. Pasmer and Eunice had gone forward with Dan, and were waiting for +them at the thither end of the rose-house. + +"Alice! just imagine: the grapery is beyond this," cried the girl's +mother. + +"It's a cold grapery," said Mr. Mavering. "I hope you'll see it to- +morrow." + +"Oh, why not to-night?" shouted Dan. + +"Because it's a cold grapery," said Eunice; "and after this rose-house, +it's an Arctic grapery. You're crazy, Dan." + +"Well, I want Alice to see it anyway," he persisted wilfully. "There's +nothing like a cold grapery by starlight. I'll get some wraps." They all +knew that he wished to be alone with her a moment, and the three women, +consenting with their hearts, protested with their tongues, following him +in his flight with their chorus, and greeting his return. He muffled her +to the chin in a fur-lined overcoat, which he had laid hands on the first +thing; and her mother, still protesting, helped to tie a scarf over her +hair so as not to disarrange it. "Here," he pointed, "we can run through +it, and it's worth seeing. Better come," he said to the others as he +opened the door, and hurried Alice down the path under the keen sparkle of +the crystal roof, blotched with the leaves and bunches of the vines. +Coming out of the dense, sensuous, vaporous air of the rose-house into +this clear, thin atmosphere, delicately penetrated with the fragrance, +pure and cold, of the fruit, it was as if they had entered another world. +His arm crept round her in the odorous obscurity. + +"Look up! See the stars through the vines! But when she lifted her face +he bent his upon it for a wild kiss. + +"Don't! don't!" she murmured. "I want to think; I don't know what I'm +doing." + +"Neither do I. I feel as if I were a blessed ghost." + +Perhaps it is only in these ecstasies of the senses that the soul ever +reaches self-consciousness on earth; and it seems to be only the man-soul +which finds itself even in this abandon. The woman-soul has always +something else to think of. + +"What shall we do," said the girl, "if we--Oh, I dread to meet your +mother! Is she like either of your sisters?" + +"No," he cried joyously; "she's like me. If you're not afraid of me, and +you don't seem to be " + +"You're all I have--you're all I have in the world. Do you think she'll +like me? Oh, do you love me, Dan? + +"You darling! you divine--" The rest was a mad embrace. "If you're not +afraid of me, you won't mind mother. I wanted you here alone for just a +last word, to tell you you needn't be afraid; to tell you to-- But I +needn't tell you how to act. You mustn't treat her as an invalid--you +must treat her like any one else; that's what she likes. But you'll know +what's best, Alice. Be yourself, and she'll like you well enough. I'm +not afraid." + + + + +XXXIII: + +When she entered Mrs. Mavering's room Alice first saw the pictures, the +bric-a-brac, the flowers, the dazzle of lights, and then the invalid +propped among her pillows, and vividly expectant of her. She seemed all +eager eyes to the girl, aware next of the strong resemblance to Dan in her +features, and of the careful toilet the sick woman had made for her. To +youth all forms of suffering are abhorrent, and Alice had to hide a +repugnance at sight of this spectre of what had once been a pretty woman. +Through the egotism with which so many years of flattering subjection in +her little world had armed her, Mrs. Mavering probably did not feel the +girl's shrinking, or, if she did, took it for the natural embarrassment +which she would feel. She had satisfied herself that she was looking her +best, and that her cap and the lace jacket she wore were very becoming, +and softened her worst points; the hangings of her bed and the richly +embroidered crimson silk coverlet were part of the coquetry of her +costume, from which habit had taken all sense of ghastliness; she was +proud of them, and she was not aware of the scent of drugs that insisted +through the odour of the flowers. + +She lifted herself on her elbow as Dan approached with Alice, and the girl +felt as if an intense light had been thrown upon her from head to foot in +the moment of searching scrutiny that followed. The invalid's set look +broke into a smile, and she put out her hand, neither hot nor cold, but of +a dry neutral, spiritual temperature, and pulled Alice down and kissed +her. + +"Why, child, your hand's like ice!" she exclaimed without preamble. "We +used to say that came from a warm heart." + +"I guess it comes from a cold grapery in this case, mother," said Dan, +with his laugh. "I've just been running Alice through it. And perhaps a +little excitement--" + +"Excitement?" echoed his mother. "Cold grapery, I dare say, and very +silly of you, Dan; but there's no occasion for excitement, as if we were +strangers. Sit down in that chair, my dear. And, Dan, you go round to +the other side of the bed; I want Alice all to myself. I saw your +photograph a week ago, and I've thought about you for ages since, and +wondered whether you would approve of your old friend." + +"Oh yes," whispered the girl, suppressing a tremor; and Dan's eyes were +suffused with grateful tears at his mother's graciousness. + +Alice's reticence seemed to please the invalid. "I hope you'll like all +your old friends here; you've begun with the worst among us, but perhaps +you like him the best because he is the worst; I do." + +"You may believe just half of that, Alice," cried Dan. + +"Then believe the best half, or the half you like best," said Mrs. +Mavering. "There must be something good in him if you like him. Have +they welcomed you home, my dear?" + +We've all made a stagger at it," said Dan, while Alice was faltering over +the words which were so slow to come. + +"Don't try to answer my formal stupidities. You are welcome, and that's +enough, and more than enough of speeches. Did you have a comfortable +journey up?" + +"Oh, very." + +"Was it cold?" + +"Not at all. The cars were very hot." + +"Have you had any snow yet at Boston?" + +"No, none at all yet." + +"Now I feel that we're talking sense. I hope you found everything in your +room?" I can't look after things as I would like, and so I inquire." + +"There's everything," said Alice. "We're very comfortable." + +"I'm very glad. I had Dan look, he's my housekeeper; he understands me +better than my girls; he's like me, more. That's what makes us so fond of +each other; it's a kind of personal vanity. But he has his good points, +Dan has. He's very amiable, and I was too, at his age--and till I came +here. But I'm not going to tell you of his good points; I dare say you've +found them out. I'll tell you about his bad ones. He says you're very +serious. Are you?" She pressed the girl's hand, which she had kept in +hers, and regarded her keenly. + +Alice dropped her eyes at the odd question. "I don't know," she faltered. +"Sometimes." + +"Well, that's good. Dan's frivolous." + +"Oh, sometimes--only sometimes!" he interposed. + +"He's frivolous, and he's very light-minded; but he's none the worse for +that." + +"Oh, thank you," said Dan; and Alice, still puzzled, laughed +provisionally. + +"No; I want you to understand that. He's light-hearted too, and that's a +great thing in this world. If you're serious you'll be apt to be +heavyhearted, and then you'll find Dan of use. And I hope he'll know how, +to turn your seriousness to account too. he needs something to keep him +down--to keep him from blowing away. "Yes, it's very well for people to +be opposites. Only they must understand each other, If they do that, then +they get along. Light-heartedness or heavy-heartedness comes to the same +thing if they know how to use it for each other. You see, I've got to be +a great philosopher lying here; nobody dares contradict me or interrupt me +when I'm constructing my theories, and so I get them perfect." + +"I wish I could hear them all," said Alice, with sincerity that made Mrs. +Mavering laugh as light-heartedly as Dan himself, and that seemed to +suggest the nest thing to her. + +"You can for the asking, almost any time. Are you a very truthful person, +my dear? Don't take the trouble to deny it if you are," she added, at +Alice's stare. "You see, I'm not at all conventional and you needn't be. +Come! tell the truth for once, at any rate. Are you habitually truthful?" + +"Yes, I think I am," said Alice, still staring. + +"Dan's not," said his mother quietly. + +"Oh, see here, now, mother! Don't give me away!" + +"He'll tell the truth in extremity, of course, and he'll tell it if it's +pleasant, always; but if you don't expect much more of him you won't be +disappointed; and you can make him of great use." + +"You see where I got it, anyway, Alice," said Dan, laughing across the bed +at her. + +"Yes, you got it from me: I own it. A great part of my life was made up +of making life pleasant to others by fibbing. I stopped it when I came +here." + +"Oh, not altogether, mother!" urged her son. "You mustn't be too hard on +yourself." + +She ignored his interruption: "You'll find Dan a great convenience with +that agreeable habit of his. You can get him to make all your verbal +excuses for you (he'll, do it beautifully), and dictate all the thousand +and one little lying notes you'll have to write; he won't mind it in the +least, and it will save you a great wear-and-tear of conscience." + +"Go on, mother, go on," said Dan, with delighted eyes, that asked of Alice +if it were not all perfectly charming. + +"And you can come in with your habitual truthfulness where Dan wouldn't +know what to do, poor fellow. You'll have the moral courage to come right +to the point when he would like to shillyshally, and you can be frank +while he's trying to think how to make y-e-s spell no." + +"Any other little compliments, mother?" suggested Dan. + +"No," said Mrs. Mavering; "that's all. I thought I'd better have it off +my mind; I knew you'd never get it off yours, and Alice had better know +the worst. It is the worst, my dear, and if I talked of him till doomsday +I couldn't say any more harm of him. I needn't tell you how sweet he is; +you know that, I'm sure; but you can't know yet how gentle and forbearing +he is, how patient, how full of kindness to every living soul, how +unselfish, how--" + +She lost her voice. "Oh, come now, mother," Dan protested huskily. + +Alice did not say anything; she bent over, without repugnance, and +gathered the shadowy shape into her strong young arms, and kissed the +wasted face whose unearthly coolness was like the leaf of a flower against +her lips. "He never gave me a moment's trouble," said the mother, "and +I'm sure he'll make you happy. How kind of you not to be afraid of me--" + +"Afraid!" cried the girl, with passionate solemnity. "I shall never feel +safe away from you!" + +The door opened upon the sound of voices, and the others came in. + +Mrs. Pasmer did not wait for an introduction, but with an affectation of +impulse which she felt Mrs. Mavering would penetrate and respect, she went +up to the bed and presented herself. Dan's mother smiled hospitably upon +her, and they had some playful words about their children. Mrs. Pasmer +neatly conveyed the regrets of her husband, who had hoped up to the last +moment that the heavy cold he had taken would let him come with her; and +the invalid made her guest sit down on the right hand of her bed, which +seemed to be the place of honour, while her husband took Dan's place on +the left, and admired his wife's skill in fence. At the end of her +encounter with Mrs. Pasmer she called out with her strong voice, "Why +don't you get your banjo, Molly, and play something?" + +"A banjo? Oh, do!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "It's so picturesque and +interesting! I heard that young ladies had taken it up, and I should so +like to hear it!" She had turned to Mrs. Mavering again, and she now +beamed winningly upon her. + +Alice regarded the girl with a puzzled frown as she brought her banjo in +from another room and sat down with it. She relaxed the severity of her +stare a little as Molly played one wild air after another, singing some of +them with an evidence of training in her naive effectiveness. There were +some Mexican songs which she had learned in a late visit to their country, +and some Creole melodies caught up in a winter's sojourn to Louisiana. +The elder sister accompanied her on the piano, not with the hard, resolute +proficiency which one might have expected of Eunice Mavering, but with a +sympathy which was perhaps the expression of her share of the family +kindliness. + +"Your children seem to have been everywhere," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a +sigh of flattering envy. "Oh, you're not going to stop!" she pleaded, +turning from Mrs. Mavering to Molly. + +"I think Dan had better do the rheumatic uncle now," said Eunice, from the +piano. + +"Oh yes! the rheumatic uncle--do," said Mrs. Pasmer. "We know the +rheumatic uncle," she added, with a glance at Alice. Dan looked at her +too, as if doubtful of her approval; and then he told in character a +Yankee story which he had worked up from the talk of his friend the +foreman. It made them all laugh. + +Mrs. Pasmer was the gayest; she let herself go, and throughout the evening +she flattered right and left, and said, in her good-night to Mrs. +Mavering, that she had never imagined so delightful a time. "0 Mrs. +Mavering, I don't wonder your children love their home. It's a +revelation." + + + + +XXXIV. + +"She's a cat, Dan," said his mother quietly, and not without liking, when +he looked in for his goodnight kiss after the rest were gone; "a perfect +tabby. But your Alice is sublime." + +"O mother--" + +"She's a little too sublime for me. But you're young, and you can stand +it." + +Dan laughed with delight. "Yes, I think I can, mother. All I ask is the +chance." + +"Oh, you're very much in love, both of you; there's no doubt about that. +What I mean is that she's very high strung, very intense. She has ideals- +-any one can see that." + +Dan took it all for praise. "Yes," he said eagerly, "that's what I told +you. And that will be the best thing about it for me. I have no ideals." + +"Well, you must find out what hers are, and live up to them." + +"Oh, there won't be any trouble about that," said Dan buoyantly. + +"You must help her to find them out too." He looked puzzled. " You +mustn't expect the child to be too definite at first, nor to be always +right, even when she's full of ideals. You must be very patient with her, +Dan." + +"Oh, I will, mother! You know that. How could I ever be impatient with +Alice?" + +"Very forbearing, and very kind, and indefatigably forgiving. Ask your +father how to behave." + +Dan promised to do so, with a laugh at the joke. It had never occurred to +him that his father was particularly exemplary in these things, or that +his mother idolised him for what seemed to Dan simply a matter-of-course +endurance of her sick whims and freaks and moods. He broke forth into a +vehement protest of his good intentions, to which his mother did not seem +very attentive. After a while she asked-- + +"Is she always so silent, Dan?" + +"Well, not with me, mother. Of course she was a little embarrassed; she +didn't know exactly what to say, I suppose--" + +"Oh, I rather liked that. At least she isn't a rattle-pate. And we shall +get acquainted; we shall like each other. She will understand me when you +bring her home here to live with us, and--" + +"Yes," said Dan, rising rather hastily, and stooping over to his mother. +"I'm not going to let you talk any more now, or we shall have to suffer +for it to-morrow night." + +He got gaily away before his mother could amplify a suggestion which +spoiled a little of his pleasure in the praises--he thought they were +unqualified and enthusiastic praises--she had been heaping upon Alice. He +wished to go to bed with them all sweet and unalloyed in his thought, to +sleep, to dream upon his perfect triumph. + +Mrs. Pasmer was a long time in undressing, and in calming down after the +demands which the different events of the evening had made upon her +resources. + +"It has certainly been a very mixed evening, Alice," she said, as she took +the pins out of her back hair and let it fall; and she continued to talk +as she went back and forth between their rooms. "What do you think of +banjo-playing for young ladies? Isn't it rather rowdy? Decidedly rowdy, +I think. And Dan's Yankee story! I expected to see the old gentleman get +up and perform some trick." + +"I suppose they do it to amuse Mrs. Mavering," said Alice, with cold +displeasure. + +"Oh, it's quite right," tittered Mrs. Pasmer. "It would be as much as +their lives are worth if they didn't. You can see that she rules them +with a rod of iron. What a will! I'm glad you're not going to come under +her sway; I really think you couldn't be safe from her in the same +hemisphere; it's well you're going abroad at once. They're a very self- +concentrated family, don't you think--very self-satisfied? Of course +that's the danger of living off by themselves as they do: they get to +thinking there's nobody else in the world. You would simply be absorbed +by them: it's a hair-breadth escape. + +How splendidly Dan contrasts with the others! Oh, he's delightful; he's a +man of the world. Give me the world, after all! And he's so considerate +of their rustic conceit! What a house! It's perfectly baronial--and +ridiculous. In any other country it would mean something--society, +entertainments, troops of guests; but here it doesn't mean anything but +money. Not that money isn't a very good thing; I wish we had more of it. +But now you see how very little it can do by itself. You looked very +well, Alice, and behaved with great dignity; perhaps too much. You ought +to enter a little more into the spirit of things, even if you don't +respect them. That oldest girl isn't particularly pleased, I fancy, +though it doesn't matter really." + +Alice replied to her mother from time to time with absent Yeses and Noes; +she sat by the window looking out on the hillside lawn before the house; +the moon had risen, and poured a flood of snowy light over it, in which +the cold statues dimly shone, and the firs, in clumps and singly, +blackened with an inky solidity. Beyond wandered the hills, their bare +pasturage broken here and there by blotches of woodland. + +After her mother had gone to bed she turned her light down and resumed her +seat by the window, pressing her hot forehead against the pane, and losing +all sense of the scene without in the whirl of her thoughts. + +After this, evening of gay welcome in Dan's family, and those moments of +tenderness with him, her heart was troubled. She now realised her +engagement as something exterior to herself and her own family, and +confronted for the first time its responsibilities, its ties, and its +claims. It was not enough to be everything to Dan; she could not be that +unless she were something to his family. She did not realise this +vividly, but with the remoteness which all verities except those of +sensation have for youth. + +Her uneasiness was full of exultation, of triumph; she knew she had been +admired by Dan's family, and she experienced the sweetness of having +pleased them for his sake; his happy eyes shone before her; but she was +touched in her self-love by what her mother had coarsely characterised in +them. They had regarded her liking them as a matter of course; his mother +had ignored her even in pretending to decry Dan to her. But again this +was very remote, very momentary. It was no nearer, no more lasting on the +surface of her happiness, than the flying whiff's of thin cloud that +chased across the moon and lost themselves in the vast blue around it. + + + + +XXXV. + +People came to the first of Mrs. James Bellingham's receptions with the +expectation of pleasure which the earlier receptions of the season awaken +even in the oldest and wisest. But they tried to dissemble their +eagerness in a fashionable tardiness. "We get later and later," said Mrs. +]Brinkley to John Munt, as she sat watching the slow gathering of the +crowd. By half-past eleven it had not yet hidden Mrs. Bellingham, where +she stood near the middle of the room, from the pleasant corner they had +found after accidentally arriving together. Mr. Brinkley had not come; he +said he might not be too old for receptions, but he was too good; in +either case he preferred to stay at home. "We used to come at nine +o'clock, and now we come at I'm getting into a quotation from Mother +Goose, I think." + +"I thought it was Browning," said Munt, with his witticism manner. +Neither he nor Mrs. Brinkley was particularly glad to be together, but at +Mrs. James Bellingham's it was well not to fling any companionship away +till you were sure of something else. Besides, Mrs. Brinkley was indolent +and good-natured, and Munt was active and good-natured, and they were well +fitted to get on for ten or fifteen minutes. While they talked she kept +an eye out for other acquaintance, and he stood alert to escape at the +first chance. "How is it we are here so early--or rather you are?" she +pursued irrelevantly. + +"Oh, I don't know," said Munt, accepting the implication of his superior +fashion with pleasure. "I never mind being among the first. It's rather +interesting to see people come in--don't you think?" + +"That depends a good deal on the people. I don't find a great variety in +their smirks and smiles to Mrs. Bellingham; I seem to be doing them all +myself. And there's a monotony about their apprehension and helplessness +when they're turned adrift that's altogether too much like my own. No, +Mr. Munt, I can't agree with you that it's interesting to see people come +in. It's altogether too autobiographical. What else have you to +suggest?" + +"I'm afraid I'm at the end of my string," said Munt. "I suppose we shall +see the Pasmers and young Mavering here to-night." + +Mrs. Brinkley turned and looked sharply at him. + +"You've heard of the engagement?" he asked. + +"No, decidedly, I haven't. And after his flight from Campobello it's the +last thing I expected to hear of. When did it come out?" + +"Only within a few days. They've been keeping it rather quiet. Mrs. +Pasmer told me herself." + +Mrs. Brinkley gave herself a moment for reflection. "Well, if he can +stand it, I suppose I can." + +"That isn't exactly what people are saying to Mrs. Pasmer, Mrs. Brinkley," +suggested Munt, with his humorous manner. + +"I dare say they're trying to make her believe that her daughter is +sacrificed. That's the way. But she knows better." + +"There's no doubt but she's informed herself. She put me through my +catechism about the Maverings the day of the picnic down there." + +"Do you know them?" + +"Bridge Mavering and I were at Harvard together." + +"Tell me about them." Mrs. Brinkley listened to Munt's praises of his old +friend with an attention superficially divided with the people to whom she +bowed and smiled. The room was filling up. "Well," she said at the end, +"he's a sweet young fellow. I hope he likes his Pasmers." + +"I guess there's no doubt about his liking one of them--the principal +one." + +"Yes, if she is the principal one." There was an implication in +everything she said that Dan Mavering had been hoodwinked by Mrs. Pasmer. +Mature ladies always like to imply something of the sort in these cases. +They like to ignore the prime agency of youth and love, and pretend that +marriage is a game that parents play at with us, as if we were in an old +comedy; it is a tradition. "Will he take her home to live?" + +"No. I heard that they're all going abroad--for a year, or two at least." + +"Ah! I thought so," cried Mrs. Brinkley. She looked up with whimsical +pleasure in the uncertainty of an old gentleman who is staring hard at her +through his glasses. "Well," she said with a pleasant sharpness, "do you +make me out?" + +"As nearly as my belief in your wisdom will allow," said the old +gentleman, as distinctly as his long white moustache and an apparent +absence of teeth behind it would let him. John Munt had eagerly abandoned +the seat he was keeping at Mrs. Brinkley's side, and had launched himself +into the thickening crowd. The old gentleman, who was lank and tall, +folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquilly as if seated quite +alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that his voice, with the senile +crow in it, made itself heard by others. "I'm always surprised to find +sensible people at these things of Jane's. They're most extraordinary +things. Jane's idea of society is to turn a herd of human beings loose in +her house, and see what will come of it. She has no more sense of +hospitality or responsibility than the Elements or Divine Providence. You +may come here and have a good time--if you can get it; she won't object; +or you may die of solitude and inanition; she'd never know it. I don't +know but it's rather sublime in her. It's like the indifference of fate; +but it's rather rough on those who don't understand it. She likes to see +her rooms filled with pretty dresses, but she has no social instincts and +no social inspiration whatever. She lights and heats and feeds her +guests, and then she leaves them to themselves. She's a kind woman--Jane +is a very good-natured woman, and I really think she'd be grieved if she +thought any one went away unhappy, but she does nothing to make them at +home in her house--absolutely nothing." + +"Perhaps she does all they deserve for them. I don't know that any one +acquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it's impossible to be +personally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd." + +Yes, I've sometimes taken that view of it. And yet if you ask a stranger +to your house, you establish a tacit understanding with him that you won't +forget him after you have him there. I like to go about and note the +mystification of strangers who've come here with some notion of a little +attention. It's delightfully poignant; I suffer with them; it's a cheap +luxury of woe; I follow them through all the turns and windings of their +experience. Of course the theory is that, being turned loose here with +the rest, they may speak to anybody; but the fact is, they can't. +Sometimes I should like to hail some of these unfriended spirits, but I +haven't the courage. I'm not individually bashful, but I have a thousand +years of Anglo-Saxon civilisation behind me. There ought to be policemen, +to show strangers about and be kind to them. I've just seen two pretty +women cast away in a corner, and clinging to a small water-colour on the +wall with a show of interest that would melt a heart of stone. Why do you +come, Mrs. Brinkley? I should like to know. You're not obliged to." + +"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, lowering her voice instinctively, as if to bring +his down. "I suppose I come from force of habit I've been coming a long +time, you know. Why do you come?" + +"Because I can't sleep. If I could sleep, I should be at home in bed." A +weariness came into his thin face and dim eyes that was pathetic, and +passed into a whimsical sarcasm. "I'm not one of the great leisure class, +you know, that voluntarily turns night into day. Do you know what I go +about saying now?" + +"Something amusing, I suppose." + +"You'd better not be so sure of that. I've discovered a fact, or rather +I've formulated an old one. I've always been troubled how to classify +people here, there are so many exceptions; and I've ended by broadly +generalising them as women and men." + +Mrs. Brinkley was certainly amused at this. "It seems to me that there +you've been anticipated by nature--not to mention art." + +"Oh, not in my particular view. The women in America represent the +aristocracy which exists everywhere else in both sexes. You are born to +the patrician leisure; you have the accomplishments and the clothes and +manners and ideals; and we men are a natural commonalty, born to business, +to newspapers, to cigars, and horses. This natural female aristocracy of +ours establishes the forms, usages, places, and times of society. The +epicene aristocracies of other countries turn night into day in their +social pleasures, and our noblesse sympathetically follows their example. +You ladies, who can lie till noon next day, come to Jane's reception at +eleven o'clock, and you drag along with you a herd of us brokers, bankers, +merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who must be at our offices and counting- +rooms before nine in the morning. The hours of us work-people are +regulated by the wholesome industries of the great democracy which we're a +part of; and the hours of our wives and daughters by the deleterious +pleasures of the Old World aristocracy. That's the reason we're not all +at home in bed." + +"I thought you were not at home in bed because you couldn't sleep." + +"I know it. And you've no idea how horrible a bed is that you can't sleep +in." The old man's voice broke in a tremor. "Ah, it's a bed of torture! +I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence his gridiron. +But what do you think of my theory?" + +"It's a very pretty theory. My only objection to it is that it's too +flattering. You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set up as +a natural aristocracy--I don't know that I can quite agree to that, even +to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law's reception." + +"You're too modest, Mrs. Brinkley." + +"No, really. There ought to be some men among us--men without morrows. +Now, why don't you and my husband set an example to your sex? Why don't +you relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being at +your offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habits +of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the +higher civilisation?" + +Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her satire. +Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live +restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by the +smallest exertion. + +"Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?" + +"No, I can't encourage you with that idea. You must get on without Mr. +Pasmer; he's going back to Europe with his son-in-law." + +"Do you mean that their girl's married?" + +"No-engaged. It's just out." + +"Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time." He too liked to +imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young +people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction dies +hard. "Who is the young man?" + +Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at +Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. "Mr. Munt was +telling me about them as you came up." + +"Why, was that John Munt?" + +"Yes; didn't you know him?" + +"No," said Corey sadly. "I don't know anybody nowadays. I seem to be +going to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very great +age." + +"Not at all!" cried Mrs. Brinkley. "I'm fifty-four myself, and Brinkley's +sixty." + +"But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do I +don't know 'em. My head's in a cloud." He let it hang heavily; then he +lifted it, and said: "He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Why +didn't he stop and talk a bit?" + +"Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the +third that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit +at these things. They're afraid of boring or being bored." + +"Yes, they're all in as unnatural a mood as if they were posing for a +photograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know," said +the old man, "that I think it's rather worse with us than with any other +people? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, not +gregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched away from our +firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gilded saloons, we +feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston being abandons himself-- +or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation into something quite +lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens her heart with talk +that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing," said Corey, staring round him +purblindly at the groups and files of people surging and eddying past the +corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley. + +"No; it's shocking," said his companion. "At any rate, you mustn't say +such things, even if you think them. I can't let you go too far, you +know. These young people think it heavenly, here." + +She took with him the tone that elderly people use with those older than +themselves who have begun to break; there were authority and patronage in +it. At the bottom of her heart she thought that Bromfield Corey should +not have been allowed to come; but she determined to keep him safe and +harmless as far as she could. + +From time to time the crowd was a stationary mass in front of them; then +it dissolved and flowed away, to gather anew; there were moments when the +floor near them was quite vacant; then it was inundated again with silken +trains. From another part of the house came the sound of music, and most +of the young people who passed went two and two, as if they were partners +in the dance, and had come out of the ball-room between dances. There was +a good deal of nervous talk, politely subdued among them; but it was not +the note of unearthly rapture which Mrs. Brinkley's conventional claim had +implied; it was self-interested, eager, anxious; and was probably not +different from the voice of good society anywhere. + + + + +XXXVI. + +"Why, there's Dan Mavering now!" said Mrs. Brinkley, rather to herself +than to her companion. "And alone!" + +Dan's face showed above most of the heads and shoulders about him; it was +flushed, and looked troubled and excited. He caught sight of Mrs. +Brinkley, and his eyes brightened joyfully. He slipped quickly through +the crowd, and bowed over her hand, while he stammered out, without giving +her a chance for reply till the end: "0 Mrs. Brinkley, I'm so glad to see +you! I'm going--I want to ask a great favour of you, Mrs. Brinkley. I +want to bring--I want to introduce some friends of mine to you--some +ladies, Mrs. Brinkley; very nice people I met last summer at Portland. +Their father--General Wrayne--has been building some railroads down East, +and they're very nice people; but they don't know any one--any ladies--and +they've been looking at the pictures ever since they came. They're very +good pictures; but it isn't an exhibition!" He broke down with a laugh. + +"Why, of course, Mr. Mavering; I shall be delighted," said Mrs. Brinkley, +with a hospitality rendered reckless by her sympathy with the young +fellow. "By all means!" + +"Oh; thanks!--thank you aver so much!" said Dan. "I'll bring them to you +--they'll understand!" He slipped into the crowd again. + +Corey made an offer of going. Mrs. Brinkley stopped him with her fan. +"No--stay, Mr. Corey. Unless you wish to go. I fancy it's the people you +were talking about, and you must help me through with them." + +"I ask nothing better," said the old man, unresentful of Dan's having not +even seemed to see him, in his generous preoccupation. "I should like to +see how you'll get on, and perhaps I can be of use." + +"Of course you can--the greatest." + +"But why hasn't he introduced them to his Pasmers? What? Eh? Oh!" +Corey made these utterances in response to a sharper pressure of Mrs. +Brinkley's fan on his arm. + +Dan was opening a way through the crowd before them for two ladies, whom +he now introduced. "Mrs. Frobisher, Mrs. Brinkley; and Miss Wrayne." + +Mrs. Brinkley cordially gave her hand to the ladies, and said, "May I +introduce Mr. Corey? Mr. Mavering, let me introduce you to Mr. Corey." +The old man rose and stood with the little group. + +Dan's face shone with flattered pride and joyous triumph. He bubbled out +some happy incoherencies about the honour and pleasure, while at the same +time he beamed with tender gratitude upon Mrs. Brinkley, who was behaving +with a gracious, humorous kindliness to the aliens cast upon her mercies. +Mrs. Frobisher, after a half-hour of Boston society, was not that presence +of easy gaiety which crossed Dan's path on the Portland pavement the +morning of his arrival from Campobello; but she was still a handsome, +effective woman, of whom you would have hesitated to say whether she was +showy or distinguished. Perhaps she was a little of both, with an air of +command bred of supremacy in frontier garrisons; her sister was like her +in the way that a young girl may be like a young matron. They blossomed +alike in the genial atmosphere of Mrs. Brinkley and of Mr. Corey. He +began at once to make bantering speeches with them both. The friendliness +of an old man and a stout elderly woman might not have been their ideal of +success at an evening party, used as they were to the unstinted homage of +young captains and lieutenants, but a brief experience of Mrs. +Bellingham's hospitality must have taught them humility; and when a stout, +elderly gentleman, whose baldness was still trying to be blond, joined the +group, the spectacle was not without its points of resemblance to a social +ovation. Perhaps it was a Boston social ovation. + +"Hallo, Corey!" said this stout gentleman, whom Mrs. Brinkley at once +introduced as Mr. Bellingham, and whose salutation Corey returned with +"Hallo, Charles!" of equal intimacy. + +Mr. Bellingham caught at the name of Frobisher. "Mrs. Major Dick +Frobisher?" + +"Mrs. Colonel now, but Dick always," said the lady, with immediate +comradery. "Do you know my husband?" + +"I should think so!" said Bellingham; and a talk of common interest and +mutual reminiscence sprang up between them. Bellingham graphically +depicted his meeting with Colonel Frobisher the last time he was out on +the Plains, and Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne discovered to their great +satisfaction that he was the brother of Mrs. Stephen Blake, of Omaba, who +had come out to the fort once with her husband, and captured the garrison, +as they said. Mrs. Frobisher accounted for her present separation from +her husband, and said she had come on for a while to be with her father +and sister, who both needed more looking after than the Indians. Her +father had left the army, and was building railroads. + +Miss Wrayne, when she was not appealed to for confirmation or recollection +by her sister, was having a lively talk with Corey and Mrs. Brinkley; she +seemed to enter into their humour; and no one paid much attention to Dan +Mavering. He hung upon the outskirts of the little group; proffering +unrequited sympathy and applause; and at last he murmured something about +having to go back to some friends, and took himself off. Mrs. Frobisher +and Miss Wrayne let him go with a certain shade--the lightest, and yet +evident--of not wholly satisfied pique: women know how to accept a +reparation on account, and without giving a receipt in full. + +Mrs. Brinkley gave him her hand with an effect of compassionate +intelligence and appreciation of the sacrifice he must have made in +leaving Alice. "May I congratulate you?" she murmured. + +"Oh yes, indeed; thank you, Mrs. Brinkley," he gushed tremulously; and he +pressed her hand hard, and clung to it, as if he would like to take her +with him. + +Neither of the older men noticed his going. They were both taken in their +elderly way with these two handsome young women, and they professed regret +--Bellingham that his mother was not there, and Corey that neither his +wife nor daughters had come, whom they might otherwise have introduced. +They did not offer to share their acquaintance with any one else, but they +made the most of it themselves, as if knowing a good thing when they had +it. Their devotion to Mrs. Frobisher and her sister heightened the +curiosity of such people as noticed it, but it would be wrong to say that +it moved any in that self-limited company with a strong wish to know the +ladies. The time comes to every man, no matter how great a power he may +be in society, when the general social opinion retires him for senility, +and this time had come for Bromfield Corey. He could no longer make or +mar any success; and Charles Bellingham was so notoriously amiable, so +deeply compromised by his inveterate habit of liking nearly every one, +that his notice could not distinguish or advantage a newcomer. + +He and Corey took the ladies down to supper. Mrs. Brinkley saw them there +together, and a little later she saw old Corey wander off; forgetful of +Miss Wrayne. She saw Dan Mavering, but not the Pasmers, and then, when +Corey forgot Miss Wrayne, she saw Dan, forlorn and bewildered looking, +approach the girl, and offer her his arm for the return to the drawing- +room; she took it with a bright, cold smile, making white rings of +ironical deprecation around the pupils of her eyes. + +"What is that poor boy doing, I wonder?" said Mrs. Brinkley to herself. + + + + +XXXVII. + +The next morning Dan Mavering knocked at Boardman's door before the +reporter was up. This might have been any time before one o'clock, but it +was really at half-past nine. Boardman wanted to know who was there, and +when Mavering had said it was he, Boardman seemed to ponder the fact +awhile before Mavering heard him getting out of bed and coming barefooted +to the door. He unlocked it, and got back into bed; then he called out, +"Come in," and Mavering pushed the door open impatiently. But he stood +blank and silent, looking helplessly at his friend. A strong glare of +winter light came in through the naked sash--for Boardman apparently not +only did not close his window-blinds, but did not pull down his curtains, +when he went to bed--and shone upon his gay, shrewd face where he lay, +showing his pop-corn teeth in a smile at Mavering. + +"Prefer to stand?" he asked by and by, after Mavering had remained +standing in silence, with no signs of proposing to sit down or speak. +Mavering glanced at the only chair in the room: Boardman's clothes dripped +and dangled over it. "Throw 'em on the bed," he said, following +Mavering's glance. + +"I'll take the bed myself," said Mavering; and he sat down on the side of +it, and was again suggestively silent. + +Boardman moved his head on the pillow, as he watched Mavering's face, with +the agreeable sense of personal security which we all feel in viewing +trouble from the outside: "You seem balled up about something." + +Mavering sighed heavily. "Balled up? It's no word for it. Boardman, I'm +done for. Yesterday I was the happiest fellow in the world, and now--Yes, +it's all over with me, and it's my own fault, as usual. Look; at that!" +He jerked Boardman a note which he had been holding fast in his band, and +got up and went to look himself at the wide range of chimney-pots and +slated roofs which Boardman's dormer-window commanded. + +"Want me to read it?" Boardman asked; and Mavering nodded without glancing +round. It dispersed through the air of Boardman's room, as he unfolded +it, a thin, elect perfume, like a feminine presence, refined and strict; +and Boardman involuntarily passed his hand over his rumpled hair, as if to +make himself a little more personable before reading the letter. + +"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--I enclose the ring you gave me the other day, and I +release you from the promise you gave with it. I am convinced that you +wronged yourself in offering either without your whole heart, and I care +too much for your happiness to let you persist in your sacrifice. + +"In begging that you will not uselessly attempt to see me, but that you +will consider this note final, I know you will do me the justice not to +attribute an ungenerous motive to me. I shall rejoice to hear of any good +that may befall you; and I shall try not to envy any one through whom it +comes.--Yours sincerely," "ALICE PASMER." + +"P.S.--I say nothing of circumstances or of persons; I feel that any +comment of mine upon them would be idle." + + +Mavering looked up at the sound Boardman made in refolding the letter. +Boardman grinned, with sparkling eyes. "Pretty neat," he said. + +"Pretty infernally neat," roared Mavering. + +"Do you suppose she means business?" + +"Of course she means business. Why shouldn't she?" + +"I don't know. Why should she?" + +"Well, I'll tell you, Boardman. I suppose I shall have to tell you if I'm +going to get any good out of you; but it's a dose." He came away from +the window, and swept Boardman's clothes off the chair preparatory to +taking it. + +Boardman lifted his head nervously from the pillow. + +"Oh; I'll put them on the bed, if you're so punctilious!" cried Mavering. + +"I don't mind the clothes," said Boardman. "I thought I heard my watch +knock on the floor in my vest pocket. Just take it out, will you, and see +if you've stopped it?" + +"Oh, confound your old Waterbury! All the world's stopped; why shouldn't +your watch stop too?" Mavering tugged it out of the pocket, and then +shoved it back disdainfully. "You couldn't stop that thing with anything +short of a sledgehammer; it's rattling away like a mowing-machine. You +know those Portland women--those ladies I spent the day with when you were +down there at the regatta--the day I came from Campobello--Mrs. Frobisher +and her sister?" He agglutinated one query to another till he saw a light +of intelligence dawn in Boardman's eye. "Well, they're at the bottom of +it, I suppose. I was introduced to them on Class Day, and I ought to have +shown them some attention there; but the moment I saw Alice--Miss Pasmer-- +I forgot all about 'em. But they didn't seem to have noticed it much, and +I made it all right with 'em that day at Portland; and they came up in the +fall, and I made an appointment with them to drive out to Cambridge and +show them the place. They were to take me up at the Art Museum; but that +was the day I met Miss Pasmer, and I--I forgot about those women again." + +Boardman was one of those who seldom laugh; but his grin expressed all +the malicious enjoyment he felt. He said nothing in the impressive +silence which Mavering let follow at this point. + +"Oh, you think it was funny?" cried Mavering. "I thought it was funny +too; but Alice herself opened my eyes to what I'd done, and I always +intended to make it all right with them when I got the chance. I supposed +she wished me too." + +Boardman grinned afresh. + +"She told me I must; though she seemed to dislike my having been with them +the day after she'd thrown me over. But if"--Mavering interrupted himself +to say, as the grin widened on Boardman's face--"if you think it was any +case of vulgar jealousy, you're very much mistaken, Boardman. She isn't +capable of it, and she was so magnanimous about it that I made up my mind +to do all I could to retrieve myself. I felt that it was my duty to her. +Well, last night at Mrs. Jim Bellingham's reception--" + +A look of professional interest replaced the derision in Boardman's eyes. +"Any particular occasion for the reception? Given in honour of anybody?" + +"I'll contribute to your society notes some other time, Boardman," said +Mavering haughtily. "I'm speaking to a friend, not an interviewer. Well, +whom should I see after the first waltz--I'd been dancing with Alice, and +we were taking a turn through the drawing-room, and she hanging on my arm, +and I knew everybody saw how it was, and I was feeling well--whom should I +see but these women. They were in a corner by themselves, looking at a +picture, and trying to look as if they were doing it voluntarily. But I +could see at a glance that they didn't know anybody; and I knew they had +better be in the heart of the Sahara without acquaintances than where they +were; and when they bowed forlornly across the room to me, my heart was in +my mouth, I felt so sorry for them; and I told Alice who they were; and I +supposed she'd want to rush right over to them with me--" + +"And did she rush?" asked Boardman, filling up a pause which Mavering made +in wiping his face. + +"How infernally hot you have it in here!" He went to the window and threw +it up; and then did not sit down again, but continued to walk back and +forth as he talked. "She didn't seem to know who they were at first, and +when I made her understand she hung back, and said, 'Those showy things?' +and I must say I think she was wrong; they were dressed as quietly as +nine-tenths of the people there; only they are rather large, handsome +women. I said I thought we ought to go and speak to them, they seemed +stranded there; but she didn't seem to see it; and, when I persisted, she +said, ' Well, you go if you think best; but take me to mamma.' And I +supposed it was all right; and I told Mrs. Pasmer I'd be back in a minute, +and then I went off to those women. And after I'd talked with them a +while I saw Mrs. Brinkley sitting with old Bromfield Corey in another +corner, and I got them across and introduced them; after I'd explained to +Mrs. Brinkley who they were; and they began to have a good time, and I-- +didn't." + +"Just so," said Boardman. + +"I thought I hadn't been gone any while at all from Alice; but the weather +had changed by the time I had got back. Alice was pretty serious, and she +was engaged two or three dances deep; and I could see her looking over the +fellows' shoulders, as she went round and round, pretty pale. I hung +about till she was free; but then she couldn't dance with me; she said her +head ached, and she made her mother take her home before supper; and I +mooned round like my own ghost a while, and then I went home. And as if +that wasn't enough, I could see by the looks of those other women--old +Corey forgot Miss Wrayne in the supper-room, and I had to take her back-- +that I hadn't made it right with them, even; they were as hard and smooth +as glass. I'd ruined myself, and ruined myself for nothing." + +Mavering flung Boardman's chair over, and seated himself on its rungs. + +"I went to bed, and waited for the next thing to happen. I found my +thunderbolt waiting for me when I woke up. I didn't know what it was +going to be, but when I felt a ring through the envelope of that note I +knew what it was. I mind-read that note before I opened it." + +"Give it to the Society for Psychical Research," suggested Boardman. +"Been to breakfast?" + +"Breakfast!" echoed Mavering. "Well, now, Boardman, what use do you +suppose I've got for breakfast under the circumstances?" + +"Well, not very much; but your story's made me pretty hungry. Would you +mind turning your back, or going out and sitting on the top step of the +stairs' landing, or something, while I get up and dress?" + +"Oh, I can go, if you want to get rid of me," said Mavering, with +unresentful sadness. "But I hoped you might have something to suggest, +Boardy.' + +"Well, I've suggested two things, and you don't like either. Why not go +round and ask to see the old lady?" + +"Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I thought of that. But I didn't like to mention it, for fear you'd +sit on it. When would you go?" + +"Well, about as quick as I could get there. It's early for a call, but +it's a peculiar occasion, and it'll show your interest in the thing. You +can't very well let it cool on your hands, unless you mean to accept the +situation." + +"What do you mean?" demanded Mavering, getting up and standing over +Boardman. "Do you think I could accept the situation, as you call it, and +live?" + +"You did once," said Boardman. "You couldn't, unless you could fix it up +with Mrs. Frobisher's sister." + +Mavering blushed. "It was a different thing altogether then. I could +have broken off then, but I tell you it would kill me now. I've got in +too deep. My whole life's set on that girl. You can't understand, +Boardman, because you've never been there; but I couldn't give her up." + +"All right. Better go and see the old lady without loss of time; or the +old man, if you prefer." + +Mavering sat down on the edge of the bed again. "Look here, Boardman, +what do you mean?" + +"By what?" + +"By being so confoundedly heartless. Did you suppose that I wanted to pay +those women any attention last night from an interested motive?" + +"Seems to have been Miss Pasmer's impression." + +"Well, you're mistaken. She had no such impression. She would have too +much self-respect, too much pride--magnanimity. She would know that after +such a girl as she is I couldn't think of any other woman; the thing is +simply impossible." + +"That's the theory." + +"Theory? It's the practice!" + +"Certain exceptions." + +"There's no exception in my case. No, sir! I tell you this thing is for +all time--for eternity. It makes me or it mars me, once for all. She may +listen to me or she may not listen, but as long as she lives there's no +other woman alive for me." + +"Better go and tell her so. You're wasting your arguments on me." + +"Why?" + +"Because I'm convinced already. Because people always marry their first +and only loves. Because people never marry twice for love. Because I've +never seen you hit before, and I know you never could be again. Now go +and convince Miss Pasmer. She'll believe you, because she'll know that +she can never care for any one but you, and you naturally can't care for +anybody but her. It's a perfectly clear case. All you've got to do is to +set it before her." + +"If I were you, I wouldn't try to work that cynical racket, Boardman," +said Mavering. He rose, but he sighed drearily, and regarded Boardman's +grin with lack-lustre absence. But he went away without saying anything +more; and walked mechanically toward the Cavendish. As he rang at the +door of Mrs. Pasmer's apartments he recalled another early visit he had +paid there; he thought how joyful and exuberant he was then, and how +crushed and desperate now. He was not without youthful satisfaction in +the disparity of his different moods; it seemed to stamp him as a man of +large and varied experience. + + + + +XXXVIII. + +Mrs. Pasmer was genuinely surprised to see Mavering, and he pursued his +advantage--if it was an advantage--by coming directly to the point. He +took it for granted that she knew all about the matter, and he threw +himself upon her mercy without delay. + +"Mrs. Pasmer, you must help me about this business with Alice," he broke +out at once. "I don't know what to make of it; but I know I can explain +it. Of course," he added, smiling ruefully, "the two statements don't +hang together; but what I mean is that if I can find out what the trouble +is, I can make it all right, because there's nothing wrong about it; don't +you see?" + +Mrs. Pasmer tried to keep the mystification out of her eye; but she could +not even succeed in seeming to do so, which she would have liked almost as +well. + +"Don't you know what I mean?" asked Dan. + +Mrs. Pasmer chanced it. "That Alice was a little out of sorts last +night?" she queried leadingly. + +"Yes," said Mavering fervently. "And about her--her writing to me." + +"Writing to you?" Mrs. Pasmer was going to ask, when Dan gave her the +letter. + +"I don't know whether I ought to show it, but I must. I must have your +help, and I can't, unless you understand the case." + +Mrs. Pasmer had begun to read the note. It explained what the girl +herself had refused to give any satisfactory reason for--her early +retirement from the reception, her mysterious disappearance into her own +room on reaching home, and her resolute silence on the way. Mrs. Pasmer +had known that there must be some trouble with Dan, and she had suspected +that Alice was vexed with him on account of those women; but it was beyond +her cheerful imagination that she should go to such lengths in her +resentment. She could conceive of her wishing to punish him, to retaliate +her suffering on him; but to renounce him for it was another thing; and +she did not attribute to her daughter any other motive than she would have +felt herself. It was always this way with Mrs. Pasmer: she followed her +daughter accurately up to a certain point; beyond that she did not believe +the girl knew herself what she meant; and perhaps she was not altogether +wrong. Girlhood is often a turmoil of wild impulses, ignorant +exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really represent no intelligent +purpose, and come from disordered nerves, ill-advised reading, and the +erroneous perspective of inexperience. Mrs. Pasmer felt this, and she was +tempted to break into a laugh over Alice's heroics; but she preferred to +keep a serious countenance, partly because she did not feel the least +seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish +anything more than Dan's temporary abasement, and she would have preferred +to shorten this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she +was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She +would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell +him that she had no idea of Alice's writing him that nonsensical letter, +and he was not to pay the least attention to it; for of course it meant +nothing; but another principle of her complex nature came into play, and +she silently folded the note and returned it to Dan, trembling before her. + +"Well?" he quavered. + +"Well," returned Mrs. Pasmer judicially, while she enjoyed his tremor, +whose needlessness inwardly amused her--"well, of course, Alice was--" + +"Annoyed, I know. And it was all my fault--or my misfortune. But I +assure you, Mrs. Pasmer, that I thought I was doing something that would +please her--in the highest and noblest way. Now don't you know I did?" + +Mrs. Pasmer again wished to laugh, but in the face of Dan's tragedy she +had to forbear. She contented herself with saying: "Of course. But +perhaps it wasn't the best time for pleasing her just in that way." + +"It was then or never. I can see now--why, I could see all the time--just +how it might look; but I supposed Alice wouldn't care for that, and if I +hadn't tried to make some reparation then to Mrs. Frobisher and her +sister, I never could. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, certainly. But--" + +"And Alice herself told me to go and look after them," interposed +Mavering. He suppressed, a little uncandidly, the fact of her first +reluctance. + +"But you know it was the first time you had been out together?" + +"Yes." + +"And naturally she would wish to have you a good deal to herself, or at +least not seeming to run after other people." + +"Yes, yes; I know that." + +"And no one ever likes to be taken at their word in a thing like that." + +"I ought to have thought of that, but I didn't. I wish I had gone to you +first, Mrs. Pasmer. Somehow it seems to me as if I were very young and +inexperienced; I didn't use to feel so. I wish you were always on hand to +advise me, Mrs. Pasmer." Dan hung his head, and his face, usually so gay, +was blotted with gloom. + +"Will you take my advice now?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Indeed I will!" cried the young fellow, lifting his head. "What is it?" + +"See Alice about this." + +Dan jumped to his feet, and the sunshine broke out over his face again. +"Mrs. Pasmer, I promised to take your advice, and I'll do it. I will see +her. But how? Where? Let me have your advice on that point too." + +They began to laugh together, and Dan was at once inexpressibly happy. +Those two light natures thoroughly comprehended each other. + +Mrs. Pasmer had proposed his seeing Alice with due seriousness, but now +she had a longing to let herself go; she felt all the pleasure that other +people felt in doing Dan Mavering a pleasure, and something more, because +he was so perfectly intelligible to her. She let herself go. + +"You might stay to breakfast." + +"Mrs. Pasmer, I will--I will do that too. I'm awfully hungry, and I put +myself in your hands." + +"Let me see," said Mrs. Pasmer thoughtfully, "how it can be contrived." + +"Yes;" said Mavering, ready for a panic. "How? She wouldn't stand a +surprise?" + +"No; I had thought of that." + +"No behind-a-screen or next-room business?" + +"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a light sigh. "Alice is peculiar. I'm +afraid she wouldn't like it." + +"Isn't there any little ruse she would like?" + +"I can't think of any. Perhaps I'd better go and tell her you're here and +wish to see her." + +"Do you think you'd better?" asked Dan doubtfully. "Perhaps she won't +come." + +"She will come," said Mrs. Pasmer confidently. + +She did not say that she thought Alice would be curious to know why he had +come, and that she was too just to condemn him unheard. + +But she was right about the main point. Alice came, and Dan could see +with his own weary eyes that she had not slept either. + +She stopped just inside the portiere, and waited for him to speak. But he +could not, though a smile from his sense of the absurdity of their +seriousness hovered about his lips. His first impulse was to rush upon +her and catch her in his arms, and perhaps this might have been well, but +the moment for it passed, and then it became impossible. + +"Well?" she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with +impassioned solemnity. "You wished to see me? I hoped you wouldn't. It +would have spared me something. But perhaps I had no right to your +forbearance." + +"Alice, how can you say such things to me?" asked the young fellow, deeply +hurt. + +She responded to his tone. "I'm sorry if it wounds you. But I only mean +what I say." + +"You've a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my--my life; +to everything that I am," cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at the +sight of her and the sound of her voice. "Alice, why did you write me +that letter?--why did you send me back my ring?" + +"Because," she said, looking him seriously in the face--"because I wished +you to be free, to be happy." + +"Well, you've gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you; +I never can be happy without you." + +"I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness. +Don't think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn't +sleep--" + +"Neither did I," interposed Dan. + +"And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly happy +with me--" + +"I'll take the chances," he interrupted. "Alice, you don't suppose I +cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you? I +don't suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you hadn't +seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought you'd be +pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could." + +"I know your motive was good--the noblest. Don't think that I did you +injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them." + +"You sent me." + +"Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a +crime, for me to think we could he anything to each other when our love +began with a wrong to some one else." + +"With a wrong to some one else?" + +"You neglected them on Class Day after you saw me." + +"Why, of course I did. How could I help it?" + +A flush of pleasure came into the girl's pale face; but she banished it, +and continued gravely, "Then at Portland you were with them all day." + +"You'd given me up--you'd thrown me over, Alice," he pleaded. + +"I know that; I don't blame you. But you made them believe that you were +very much interested in them." + +"I don't know what I did. I was perfectly desperate." + +"Yes; it was my fault. And then, when they came to meet you at the +Museum, I had made you forget them; I'd made you wound them and insult +them again. No. I've thought it all out, and we never could be happy. +Don't think that I do it from any resentful motive." + +"Alice? how could I think that?--Of you!" + +"I have tried--prayed--to be purified from that, and I believe that I have +been." + +"You never had a selfish thought." + +"And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did last +night. At first I was wounded." + +"Oh, did I wound you, Alice?" he grieved. + +"But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me, and--and +I give you up to them. Yes, freely, fully." + +Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in the +spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach +nearer. He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried out: +"But which, Alice? There are two of them." + +"Two?" she repeated vaguely. + +"Yes; Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne. You can't give me up to both of +them." + +"Both?" she repeated again. She could not condescend to specify; it would +be ridiculous, and as it was, she felt her dignity hopelessly shaken. The +tears came into her eyes. + +"Yes. And neither of them wants me--they haven't got any use for me. +Mrs. Frobisher is married already, and Miss Wrayne took the trouble last +night to let me feel that, so far as she was concerned, I hadn't made it +all right, and couldn't. I thought I had rather a cold parting with you, +Alice, but it was quite tropical to what you left me to." A faint smile, +mingled with a blush of relenting, stole into her face, and he hurried on. +"I don't suppose I tried very hard to thaw her out. I wasn't much +interested. If you must give me up, you must give me up to some one else, +for they don't want me, and I don't want them." Alice's head dropped +lover, and he could come nearer now without her seeming to know it. "But +why need you give me up? There's really no occasion for it, I assure +you." + +"I wished," she explained, "to show you that I loved you for something +above yourself and myself--far above either--" + +She stopped and dropped the hand which she had raised to fend him off; and +he profited by the little pause she made to take her in his arms without +seeming to do so. "Well," he said, " I don't believe I was formed to be +loved on a very high plane. But I'm not too proud to be loved for my own +sake; and I don't think there's anything above you, Alice." + +"Oh yes, there is! I don't deserve to be happy, and that's the reason why +I'm not allowed to be happy in any noble way. I can't bear to give you +up; you know I can't; but you ought to give me up--indeed you ought. I +have ideals, but 1 can't live up to them. You ought to go. You ought to +leave me." She accented each little sentence by vividly pressing herself +to his heart, and he had the wisdom or the instinct to treat their +reconciliation as nothing settled, but merely provisional in its nature. + +"Well, we'll see about that. I don't want to go till after breakfast, +anyway; your mother says I may stay, and I'm awfully hungry. If I see +anything particularly base in you, perhaps I sha'n't come back to lunch." + +Dan would have liked to turn it alt off into a joke, now that the worst +was apparently over; but Alice freed herself from him, and held him off +with her hand set against his breast. "Does mamma know about it?" she +demanded sternly. + +"Well, she knows there's been some misunderstanding," said Dan, with a +laugh that was anxious, in view of the clouds possibly gathering again. + +"How much?" + +"Well, I can't say exactly." He would not say that he did not know, but +he felt that he could truly say that he could not say. + +She dropped her hand, and consented to be deceived. Dan caught her again +to his breast; but he had an odd, vague sense of doing it carefully, of +using a little of the caution with which one seizes the stem of a rose +between the thorns. + +"I can bear to be ridiculous with you," she whispered, with an implication +which he understood. + +"You haven't been ridiculous, dearest," he said; and his tension gave way +in a convulsive laugh, which partially expressed his feeling of restored +security, and partly his amusement in realising how the situation would +have pleased Mrs. Pasmer if she could have known it. + +Mrs. Pasmer was seated behind her coffee biggin at the breakfast-table +when he came into the room with Alice, and she lifted an eye from its +glass bulb long enough to catch his flying glance of exultation and +admonition. Then, while she regarded the chemical struggle in the bulb, +with the rapt eye of a magician reading fate in his crystal ball, she +questioned herself how much she should know, and how much she should +ignore. It was a great moment for Mrs. Pasmer, full of delicious choice. +"Do you understand this process, Mr. Mavering?" she said, glancing up at +him warily for farther instruction. + +"I've seen it done," said Dan, "but I never knew how it was managed. I +always thought it was going to blow up; but it seemed to me that if you +were good and true and very meek, and had a conscience void of offence, it +wouldn't." + +"Yes, that's what it seems to depend upon," said Mrs. Pasmer, keeping her +eye on the bulb. She dodged suddenly forward, and put out the spirit- +lamp. "Now have your coffee!" she cried, with a great air of relief. "You +must need it by this time," she said with a low cynical laugh--" both of +you!" + +"Did you always make coffee with a biggin in France, Mrs. Pasmer?" asked +Dan; and he laughed out the last burden that lurked in his heart. + +Mrs. Pasmer joined him. "No, Mr. Mavering. In France you don't need a +biggin. I set mine up when we went to England." + +Alice looked darkly from one of these light spirits to the other, and then +they all shrieked together. + +They went on talking volubly from that, and they talked as far away from +what they were thinking about as possible. They talked of Europe, and +Mrs. Pasmer said where they would live and what they would do when they +all got back there together. Dan abetted her, and said that they must +cross in June. Mrs. Pasmer said that she thought June was a good month. +He asked if it were not the month of the marriages too, and she answered +that he must ask Alice about that. Alice blushed and laughed her sweet +reluctant laugh, and said she did not know; she had never been married. + +It was silly, but it was delicious; it made them really one family. Deep +in his consciousness a compunction pierced and teased Dan. But he said to +himself that it was all a joke about their European plans, or else his +people would consent to it if he really wished it. + + + + +XXXIX. + +A period of entire harmony and tenderness followed the episode which +seemed to threaten the lovers with the loss of each other. Mavering +forbore to make Alice feel that in attempting a sacrifice which consulted +only his good and ignored his happiness, and then failing in it so +promptly, she had played rather a silly part. After one or two tentative +jokes in that direction he found the ground unsafe, and with the instinct +which served him in place of more premeditated piety he withdrew, and was +able to treat the affair with something like religious awe. He was +obliged, in fact, to steady Alice's own faith in it, and to keep her from +falling under dangerous self-condemnation in that and other excesses of +uninstructed self-devotion. This brought no fatigue to his robust +affection, whatever it might have done to a heart more tried in such +exercises. Love acquaints youth with many things in character and +temperament which are none the less interesting because it never explains +them; and Dan was of such a make that its revelations of Alice were +charming to him because they were novel. He had thought her a person of +such serene and flawless wisdom that it was rather a relief to find her +subject to gusts of imprudence, to unexpected passions and resentments, to +foibles and errors, like other people. Her power of cold reticence; which +she could employ at will, was something that fascinated him almost as much +as that habit of impulsive concession which seemed to came neither from +her will nor her reason. He was a person himself who was so eager to give +other people pleasure that he quivered with impatience to see them happy +through his words or acts; he could not bear to think that any one to whom +he was speaking was not perfectly comfortable in regard to him; and it was +for this reason perhaps that he admired a girl who could prescribe herself +a line of social conduct, and follow it out regardless of individual +pangs--who could act from ideals and principles, and not from emotions and +sympathies. He knew that she had the emotions and sympathies, for there +were times when she lavished them on him; and that she could seem without +them was another proof of that depth of nature which he liked to imagine +had first attracted him to her. Dan Mavering had never been able to snub +any one in his life; it gave him a great respect for Alice that it seemed +not to cost her an effort or a regret, and it charmed him to think that +her severity was part of the unconscious sham which imposed her upon the +world for a person of inflexible design and invariable constancy to it. +He was not long in seeing that she shared this illusion, if it was an +illusion, and that perhaps the only person besides himself who was in the +joke was her mother. Mrs. Pasmer and he grew more and more into each +other's confidence in talking Alice over, and he admired the intrepidity +of this lady, who was not afraid of her daughter even in the girl's most +topping moments of self-abasement. For his own part, these moods of hers +never failed to cause him confusion and anxiety. They commonly intimated +themselves parenthetically in the midst of some blissful talk they were +having, and overcast his clear sky with retrospective ideals of conduct or +presentimental plans for contingencies that might never occur. He found +himself suddenly under condemnation for not having reproved her at a given +time when she forced him to admit she had seemed unkind or cold to others; +she made him promise that even at the risk of alienating her affections he +would make up for her deficiencies of behaviour in such matters whenever +he noticed them. She now praised him for what he had done for Mrs. +Frobisher and her sister at Mrs. Bellingham's reception; she said it was +generous, heroic. But Mavering rested satisfied with his achievement in +that instance, and did not attempt anything else of the kind. He did not +reason from cause to effect in regard to it: a man's love is such that +while it lasts he cannot project its object far enough from him to judge +it reasonable or unreasonable; but Dan's instincts had been disciplined +and his perceptions sharpened by that experience. Besides, in bidding him +take this impartial and even admonitory course toward her, she stipulated +that they should maintain to the world a perfect harmony of conduct which +should be an outward image of the union of their lives. She said that +anything less than a continued self-sacrifice of one to the other was not +worthy of the name of love, and that she should not be happy unless he +required this of her. She said that they ought each to find out what was +the most distasteful thing which they could mutually require, and then do +it; she asked him to try to think what she most hated, and let her do that +for him; as for her, she only asked to ask nothing of him. + +Mavering could not worship enough this nobility of soul in her, and he +celebrated it to Boardman with the passionate need of imparting his +rapture which a lover feel. Boardman acquiesced in silence, with a glance +of reserved sarcasm, or contented himself with laconic satire of his +friend's general condition, and avoided any comment that might +specifically apply to the points Dan made. Alice allowed him to have this +confidant, and did not demand of him a report of all he said to Boardman. +A main fact of their love, she said, must be their utter faith in each +other. She had her own confidante, and the disparity of years between her +and Miss Cotton counted for nothing in the friendship which their exchange +of trust and sympathy cemented. Miss Cotton, in the freshness of her +sympathy and the ideality of her inexperience, was in fact younger than +Alice, at whose feet, in the things of soul and character, she loved to +sit. She never said to her what she believed: that a girl of her +exemplary principles, a nature conscious of such noble ideals, so superior +to other girls, who in her place would be given up to the happiness of the +moment, and indifferent to the sense of duty to herself and to others, was +sacrificed to a person of Mavering's gay, bright nature and trivial +conception of life. She did not deny his sweetness; that was perhaps the +one saving thing about him; and she confessed that he simply adored Alice; +that counted for everything, and it was everything in his favour that he +could appreciate such a girl. She hoped, she prayed, that Alice might +never realise how little depth he had; that she might go through life and +never suspect it. If she did so, then they might be happy together to the +end, or at least Alice might never know she was unhappy. + +Miss Cotton never said these things in so many words; it is doubtful if +she ever said them in any form of words; with her sensitive anxiety not to +do injustice to any one, she took Dan's part against those who viewed the +engagement as she allowed it to appear only to her secret heart. She +defended him the more eagerly because she felt that it was for Alice's +sake, and that everything must be done to keep her from knowing how people +looked at the affair, even to changing people's minds. She said to all +who spoke to her of it that of course Alice was superior to him, but he +was devoted to her, and he would grow into an equality with her. He was +naturally very refined, she said, and, if he was not a very serious +person, he was amiable beyond anything. She alleged many little incidents +of their acquaintance at Campobello in proof of her theory that he had an +instinctive appreciation of Alice, and she was sure that no one could +value her nobleness of character more than he. She had seen them a good +deal together since their engagement, and it was beautiful to see his +manner with her. They were opposites, but she counted a good deal upon +that very difference in their temperaments to draw them to each other. + +It was an easy matter to see Dan and Alice together. Their engagement +came out in the usual way: it had been announced to a few of their nearest +friends, and intelligence of it soon spread from their own set through +society generally; it had been published in the Sunday papers while it was +still in the tender condition of a rumour, and had been denied by some of +their acquaintance and believed by all. + +The Pasmer cousinship had been just in the performance of the duties of +blood toward Alice since the return of her family from Europe, and now did +what was proper in the circumstances. All who were connected with her +called upon her and congratulated her; they knew Dan, the younger of them, +much better than they knew her; and though he had shrunk from the nebulous +bulk of social potentiality which every young man is to that much smaller +nucleus to which definite betrothal reduces him, they could be perfectly +sincere in calling him the sweetest fellow that ever was, and too lovely +to live. + +In such a matter Mr. Pasmer was naturally nothing; he could not be less +than he was at other times, but he was not more; and it was Mrs. Pasmer +who shared fully with her daughter the momentary interest which the +engagement gave Alice with all her kindred. They believed, of course, +that they recognised in it an effect of her skill in managing; they agreed +to suppose that she had got Mavering for Alice, and to ignore the beauty +and passion of youth as factors in the case. The closest of the kindred, +with the romantic delicacy of Americans in such things, approached the +question of Dan's position and prospects, and heard with satisfaction the +good accounts which Mrs. Pasmer was able to give of his father's +prosperity. There had always been more or less apprehension among them of +a time when a family subscription would be necessary for Bob Pasmer, and +in the relief which the new situation gave them some of them tried to +remember having known Dan's father in College, but it finally came to +their guessing that they must have heard John Munt speak of him. + +Mrs. Pasmer had a supreme control in the affair. She believed with the +rest--so deeply is this delusion seated--that she had made the match; but +knowing herself to have used no dishonest magic in the process, she was +able to enjoy it with a clean conscience. She grew fonder of Dan; they +understood each other; she was his refuge from Alice's ideals, and helped +him laugh off his perplexity with them. They were none the less sincere +because they were not in the least frank with each other. She let Dan +beat about the bush to his heart's content, and waited for him at the +point which she knew he was coming to, with an unconsciousness which he +knew was factitious; neither of them got tired of this, or failed freshly +to admire the other's strategy. + + + + +XL. + +It cannot be pretended that Alice was quite pleased with the way her +friends took her engagement, or rather the way in which they spoke of Dan. +It seemed to her that she alone, or she chiefly, ought to feel that +sweetness and loveliness of which every one told her, as if she could not +have known it. If he was sweet and lovely to every one, how was he +different to her except in degree? Ought he not to be different in kind? +She put the case to Miss Cotton, whom it puzzled, while she assured Alice +that he was different in kind to her, though he might not seem so; the +very fact that he was different in degree proved that he was different in +kind. This logic sufficed for the moment of its expression, but it did +not prevent Alice from putting the case to Dan himself. At one of those +little times when she sat beside him alone and rearranged his necktie, or +played with his watch chain, or passed a critical hand over his cowlick, +she asked him if he did not think they ought to have an ideal in their +engagement. "What ideal?" he asked. He thought it was all solid ideal +through and through. "Oh," she said, "be more and more to each other." +He said he did not see how that could be; if there was anything more of +him, she was welcome to it, but he rather thought she had it all. She +explained that she meant being less to others; and he asked her to explain +that. + +"Well, when we're anywhere together, don't you think we ought to show how +different we are to each other from what we are to any one else." + +Dan laughed. "I'm afraid we do, Alice; I always supposed one ought to +hide that little preference as much as possible. You don't want me to be +dangling after you every moment?" + +"No-o-o. But not--dangle after others." + +Dan sighed a little--a little impatiently. "Do I dangle after others?" + +"Of course not. But show that we're thoroughly united in all our tastes +and feelings, and--like and dislike the same persons." + +"I don't think that will be difficult," said Dan. + +She was silent a moment, and then she said; "You don't like to have me +bring up such things?" + +"Oh yes, I do. I wish to be and do just what you wish." + +"But I can see, I can understand, that you would sooner pass the time +without talking of them. You like to be perfectly happy, and not to have +any cares when--when you're with me this way?" + +"Well, yes, I suppose I do," said Dan, laughing again. "I suppose I +rather do like to keep pleasure and duty apart. But there's nothing you +can wish, Alice, that isn't a pleasure to me." + +"I'm very different," said the girl. "I can't be at peace unless I know +that I have a right to be so. But now, after this, I'm going to do your +way. If it's your way, it'll be the right way--for me." She looked +sublimely resolved, with a grand lift of the eyes, and Dan caught her to +him in a rapture, breaking into laughter. + +"Oh, don't! Mine's a bad way--the worst kind of a way," he cried. + +"It makes everybody like you, and mine makes nobody like me." + +"It makes me like you, and that's quite enough. I don't want other people +to like you!" + +"Yes, that's what I mean!" cried Alice; and now she flung herself on his +neck, and the tears came. "Do you suppose it can be very pleasant to have +everybody talking of you as if everybody loved you as much--as much as I +do?" She clutched him tighter and sobbed. + +"O Alice! Alice! Alice! Nobody could ever be what you are to me!" He +soothed and comforted her with endearing words and touches; but before he +could have believed her half consoled she pulled away from him, and asked, +with shining eyes, "Do you think Mr. Boardman is a good influence in your +life?" + +"Boardman!" cried Mavering, in astonishment. "Why, I thought you liked +Boardman?" + +"I do; and I respect him very much. But that isn't the question. Don't +you think we ought to ask ourselves how others influence us?" + +"Well, I don't see much of Boardy nowadays; but I like to drop down and +touch earth in Boardy once in a while--I'm in the air so much. Board has +more common-sense, more solid chunk-wisdom, than anybody I know. He's +kept me from making a fool of myself more times--" + +"Wasn't he with you that day with--with those women in Portland?" + +Dan winced a little, and then laughed. "No, he wasn't. That was the +trouble. Boardman was off on the press boat. I thought I told you. But +if you object to Boardman--" + +"I don't. You mustn't think I object to people when I ask you about them. +All that I wished was that you should think yourself what sort of +influence he was. I think he's a very good influence." + +"He's a splendid fellow, Boardman is, Alice!" cried Dan. "You ought to +have seen how he fought his way through college on such a little money, +and never skulked or felt mean. He wasn't appreciated for it; the men +don't notice these things much; but he didn't want to have it noticed; +always acted as if it was neither here nor there; and now I guess he sends +out home whatever he has left after keeping soul and body together every +week." + +He spoke, perhaps, with too great an effect of relief. Alice listened, as +it seemed, to his tone rather than his words, and said absently-- + +"Yes, that's grand. But I don't want you to act as if you were afraid of +me in such things." + +" Afraid?" Dan echoed. + +"I don't mean actually afraid, but as if you thought I couldn't be +reasonable; as if you supposed I didn't expect you to make mistakes or to +be imperfect." + +"Yes, I know you're very reasonable, and you're more patient with me than +I deserve; I know all that, and it's only my wish to come up to your +standard, I suppose, that gives me that apprehensive appearance." + +"That was what vexed me with you there at Campobello, when you--asked me " + +"Yes, I know." + +"You ought to have understood me better. You ought to know now that I +don't wish you to do anything on my account, but because it's something we +owe to others." + +"Oh, excuse me! I'd much rather do it for you," cried Dan; but Alice +looked so grave, so hurt, that he hastened on: "How in the world does it +concern others whether we are devoted or not, whether we're harmonious and +two-souls-with-but-a-single-thought, and all that?" He could not help +being light about it. + +"How?" Alice repeated. "Won't it give them an idea of what--what--of how +much--how truly--if we care for each other--how people ought to care? We +don't do it for ourselves. That would be selfish and disgusting. We do +it because it's something that we owe to the idea of being engaged--of +having devoted our lives to each other, and would show--would teach--" + +"Oh yes! I know what you mean," said Dan, and he gave way in a sputtering +laugh. "But they wouldn't understand. They'd only think we were spoons +on each other; and if they noticed that I cooled off toward people I'd +liked, and warmed up toward those you liked, they'd say you made me." + +"Should you care?" asked Alice sublimely, withdrawing a little from his +arm. + +"Oh no! only on your account," he answered, checking his laugh. + +"You needn't on my account," she returned. "If we sacrifice some little +preferences to each other, isn't that right? I shall be glad to sacrifice +all of mine to you. Isn't our--marriage to be full of such sacrifices? I +expect to give up everything to you." She looked at him with a sad +severity. + +He began to laugh again. "Oh no, Alice! Don't do that! I couldn't stand +it. I want some little chance at the renunciations myself." + +She withdrew still further from his side, and said, with a cold anger, +"It's that detestable Mrs. Brinkley." + +"Mrs. Brinkley!" shouted Dan. + +"Yes; with her pessimism. I have heard her talk. She influences you. +Nothing is sacred to her. It was she who took up with those army women +that night." + +"Well, Alice, I must say you can give things as ugly names as the next +one. I haven't seen Mrs. Brinkley the whole winter, except in your +company. But she has more sense than all the other women I know." + +"Oh, thank you!" + +"You know I don't mean you," he pushed on. "And she isn't a pessimist. +She's very kindhearted, and that night she was very polite and good to +those army women, as you call them, when you had refused to say a word or +do anything for them." + +"I knew it had been rankling in your mind all along," said the girl "I +expected it to coma out sooner or later. And you talk about renunciation! +You never forget nor forgive the slightest thing. But I don't ask your +forgiveness." + +"Alice!" + +"No. You are as hard as iron. You have that pleasant outside manner that +makes people think you're very gentle and yielding, but all the time +you're like adamant. I would rather die than ask your forgiveness for +anything, and you'd rather let me than give it." + +"Well, then, I ask your forgiveness, Alice, and I'm sure you won't let me +die without it." + +They regarded each other a moment. Then the tenderness gushed up in their +hearts, a passionate tide, and swept them into each other's arms. + +"O Dan," she cried, "how sweet you are! how good! how lovely! Oh, how +wonderful it is! I wanted to hate you, but I couldn't. I couldn't do +anything but love you. Yes, now I understand what love is, and how it can +do everything, and last for ever." + + + + +XLI. + +Mavering came to lunch the next day, and had a word with Mrs. Pasmer +before Alice came in. Mr. Pasmer usually lunched at the club. + +"We don't see much of Mrs. Saintsbury nowadays," he suggested. + +"No; it's a great way to Cambridge," said Mrs. Pasmer, stifling, in a +little sigh of apparent regret for the separation, the curiosity she felt +as to Dan's motive in mentioning Mrs. Saintsbury. She was very patient +with him when he went on. + +"Yes, it is a great way. And a strange thing about it is that when you're +living here it's a good deal further from Boston to Cambridge than it is +from Cambridge to Boston." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer; "every one notices that." + +Dan sat absently silent for a time before he said, "Yes, I guess I must go +out and see Mrs. Saintsbury." + +"Yes, you ought. She's very fond of you. You and Alice ought both to +go." + +"Does Mrs. Saintsbury like me?" asked Dan. "Well, she's awfully nice. +Don't you think she's awfully fond of formulating people?" + +"Oh, everybody in Cambridge does that. They don't gossip; they merely +accumulate materials for the formulation of character." + +"And they get there just the same!" cried Dan. "Mrs. Saintsbury used to +think she had got me down pretty fine," he suggested. + +"Yes!" said Mrs. Pasmer, with an indifference which they both knew she did +not feel. + +"Yes. She used to accuse me of preferring to tack, even in a fair wind." + +He looked inquiringly at Mrs. Pasmer; and she said, "How ridiculous!" + +"Yes, it was. Well, I suppose I am rather circuitous about some things." + +"Oh, not at all!" + +"And I suppose I'm rather a trial to Alice in that way." + +He looked at Mrs. Pasmer again, and she said: "I don't believe you are, +in the least. You can't tell what is trying to a girl." + +"No," said Dan pensively, "I can't." Mrs. Pasmer tried to render the +interest in her face less vivid. "I can't tell where she's going to bring +up. Talk about tacking!" + +"Do you mean the abstract girl; or Alice?" + +"Oh, the abstract girl," said Dan, and they laughed together. "You think +Alice is very straightforward, don't you?" + +"Very," said Mrs. Pasmer, looking down with a smile--"for a girl." + +"Yes, that's what I mean. And don't you think the most circuitous kind of +fellow would be pretty direct compared with the straight-forwardest kind +of girl?" + +There was a rueful defeat and bewilderment in Dan's face that made Mrs. +Pasmer laugh. "What has she been doing now?" she asked. + +"Mrs. Pasmer," said Dan, "you and I are the only frank and open people I +know. Well, she began to talk last night about influence--the influence +of other people on us; and she killed off nearly all the people I like +before I knew what she was up to, and she finished with Mrs. Brinkley. +I'm glad she didn't happen to think of you, Mrs. Pasmer, or I shouldn't be +associating with you at the present moment." This idea seemed to give +Mrs. Pasmer inexpressible pleasure. Dan went on: "Do you quite see the +connection between our being entirely devoted to each other and my +dropping Mrs. Brinkley?" + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Alice doesn't like satirical people." + +"Well, of course not. But Mrs. Brinkley is such an admirer of hers." + +"I dare say she tells you so." + +"Oh, but she is!" + +"I don't deny it," said Mrs. Pasmer. "But if Alice feels something +inimical--antipatico--in her atmosphere, it's no use talking." + +"Oh no, it's no use talking, and I don't know that I want to talk." After +a pause, Mavering asked, "Mrs. Pasmer, don't you think that where two +people are going to be entirely devoted to each other, and self- +sacrificing to each other, they ought to divide, and one do all the +devotion, and the other all the self-sacrifice?" + +Mrs. Pasmer was amused by the droll look in Dan's eyes. "I think they +ought to be willing to share evenly," she said. + +"Yes; that's what I say--share and share alike. I'm not selfish about +those little things." He blew off a long sighing breath. "Mrs. Pasmer, +don't you think we ought to have an ideal of conduct?" + +Mrs. Pasmer abandoned herself to laughter. "O Dan! Dan! You will be the +death of me." + +"We will die together, then, Mrs. Pasmer. Alice will kill me." He +regarded her with a sad sympathy in his eye as she laughed and laughed +with delicious intelligence of the case. The intelligence was perfect, +from their point of view; but whether it fathomed the girl's whole +intention or aspiration is another matter. Perhaps this was not very +clear to herself. At any rate, Mavering did not go any more to see Mrs. +Brinkley, whose house he had liked to drop into. Alice went several +times, to show, she said, that she had no feeling in the matter; and Mrs. +Brinkley, when she met Dan, forbore to embarrass him with questions or +reproaches; she only praised Alice to him. + +There were not many other influences that Alice cut him off from; she even +exposed him to some influences that might have been thought deleterious. +She made him go and call alone upon certain young ladies whom she +specified, and she praised several others to him, though she did not +praise them for the same things that he did. One of them was a girl to +whom Alice had taken a great fancy, such as often buds into a romantic +passion between women; she was very gentle and mild, and she had none of +that strength of will which she admired in Alice. One night there was a +sleighing party to a hotel in the suburbs, where they had dancing and then +supper. After the supper they danced "Little Sally Waters" for a finale, +instead of the Virginia Reel, and Alice would not go on the floor with +Dan; she said she disliked that dance; but she told him to dance with Miss +Langham. It became a gale of fun, and in the height of it Dan slipped and +fell with his partner. They laughed it off, with the rest, but after a +while the girl began to cry; she had received a painful bruise. All the +way home, while the others laughed and sang and chattered, Dan was +troubled about this poor girl; his anxiety became a joke with the whole +sleighful of people. + +When he parted with Alice at her door, he said, "I'm afraid I hurt Miss +Langham; I feel awfully about it." + +"Yes; there's no doubt of that. Good night!" + +She left him to go off to his lodging, hot and tingling with indignation +at her injustice. But kindlier thoughts came to him before he slept, and +he fell asleep with a smile of tenderness for her on his lips. He could +see how he was wrong to go out with any one else when Alice said she +disliked the dance; he ought not to have taken advantage of her generosity +in appointing him a partner; it was trying for her to see him make that +ludicrous tumble, of course; and perhaps he had overdone the attentive +sympathy on the way home. It flattered him that she could not help +showing her jealousy--that is flattering, at first; and Dan was able to go +and confess all but this to Alice. She received his submission +magnanimously, and said that she was glad it had happened, because his +saying this showed that now they understood each other perfectly. Then +she fixed her eyes on his, and said, "I've just been round to see Lilly, +and she's as well as ever; it was only a nervous shock." + +Whether Mavering was really indifferent to Miss Langham's condition, or +whether the education of his perceptions had gone so far that he +consciously ignored her, he answered, "That was splendid of you, Alice." + +"No," she said; "it's you that are splendid; and you always are. Oh, I +wonder if I can ever be worthy of you!" + +Their mutual forgiveness was very sweet to them, and they went on praising +each other. Alice suddenly broke away from this weakening exchange of +worship, and said, with that air of coming to business which he lad +learned to recognise and dread a little, "Dan, don't you think I ought to +write to your mother?" + +"Write to my mother?" Why, you have written to her. You wrote as soon as +you got back, and she answered you." + +"Yes; but write regularly?--Show that I think of her all the time?" When +I really think I'm going to take you from her, I seem so cruel and +heartless!" + +"Oh, I don't look at it in that light, Alice." + +"Don't joke! And when I think that we're going away to leave her, for +several years, perhaps, as soon as we're married, I can't make it seem +right. I know how she depends upon your being near her, and seeing her +every now and then; and to go off to Europe for years, perhaps--Of course +you can be of use to your father there; but do you think it's right toward +your mother? I want you to think." + +Dan thought, but his thinking was mainly to the effect that he did not +know what she was driving at. Had she got any inkling of that plan of his +mother's for them to come and stay a year or two at the Falls after their +marriage? He always expected to be able to reconcile that plan with the +Pasmer plan of going at once; to his optimism the two were not really +incompatible; but he did not wish them prematurely confronted in Alice's +mind. Was this her way of letting him know that she knew what his mother +wished, and that she was willing to make the sacrifice? Or was it just +some vague longing to please him by a show of affection toward his family, +an unmeditated impulse of reparation? He had an impulse himself to be +frank with Alice, to take her at her word, and to allow that he did not +like the notion of going abroad. This was Dan's notion of being frank; he +could still reserve the fact that he had given his mother a tacit promise +to bring Alice home to live, but he postponed even this. He said: "Oh, I +guess that'll be all right, Alice. At any rate, there's no need to think +about it yet awhile. That can be arranged." + +"Yes," said Alice; "but don't you think I'd better get into the habit of +writing regularly to your mother now, so that there needn't be any break +when we go abroad?" He could see now that she had no idea of giving that +plan up, and he was glad that he had not said anything. "I think," she +continued, "that I shall write to her once a week, and give her a full +account of our life from day to day; it'll be more like a diary; and then, +when we get over there, I can keep it up without any effort, and she won't +feel so much that you've gone." + +She seemed to refer the plan to him, and he said it was capital. In fact, +he did like the notion of a diary; that sort of historical view would +involve less danger of precipitating a discussion of the two schemes of +life for the future. "It's awfully kind of you, Alice, to propose such a +thing, and you mustn't make it a burden. Any sort of little sketchy +record will do; mother can read between the lines, you know." + +"It won't be a burden," said the girl tenderly. "I shall seem to be doing +it for your mother, but I know I shall be doing it for you. I do +everything for you. Do you think it's right?" + +"Oh; it must be," said Dan, laughing. "It's so pleasant." + +"Oh," said the girl gloomily; "that's what makes me doubt it." + + + + +XLII. + +Eunice Mavering acknowledged Alice's first letter. She said that her +mother read it aloud to them all, and had been delighted with the good +account she gave of Dan, and fascinated with all the story of their daily +doings and sayings. She wished Eunice to tell Alice how fully she +appreciated her thoughtfulness of a sick old woman, and that she was going +to write herself and thank her. But Eunice added that Alice must not be +surprised if her mother was not very prompt in this, and she sent messages +from all the family, affectionate for Alice, and polite for her father and +mother. + +Alice showed Dan the letter, and he seemed to find nothing noticeable in +it. "She says your mother will write later," Alice suggested. + +"Yes. You ought to feel very much complimented by that. Mother's +autographs are pretty uncommon," he said, smiling. + +"Why, doesn't she write? Can't she? Does it tire her?" asked Alice. + +"Oh yes, she can write, but she hates to. She gets Eunice or Minnie to +write usually." + +"Dan," cried Alice intensely, "why didn't you tell me?" + +"Why, I thought you knew it," he explained easily. "She likes to read, +and likes to talk, but it bores her to write. I don't suppose I get more +than two or three pencil scratches from her in the course of a year. She +makes the girls write. But you needn't mind her not writing. You may be +sure she's glad of your letters." + +"It makes me seem very presumptuous to be writing to her when there's no +chance of her answering," Alice grieved. "It's as if I had passed over +your sisters' heads. I ought to have written to them." + +"Oh, well, you can do that now," said Dan soothingly. + +"No. No, I can't do it now. It would be ridiculous." She was silent, +and presently she asked, "Is there anything else about your mother that I +ought to know?" She looked at him with a sort of impending discipline in +her eyes which he had learned to dread; it meant such a long course of +things, such a very great variety of atonement and expiation for him, that +he could not bring himself to confront it steadily. + +His heart gave a feeble leap; he would have gladly told her all that was +in it, and he meant to do so at the right time, but this did not seem the +moment. "I can't say that there is," he answered coldly. + +In that need of consecrating her happiness which Alice felt, she went a +great deal to church in those days. Sometimes she felt the need almost of +defence against her happiness, and a vague apprehension mixed with it. +Could it be right to let it claim her whole being, as it seemed to do? +Than was the question which she once asked Dan, and it made him laugh, and +catch her to him in a rapture that served for the time, and then left her +to more morbid doubts. Evidently he could not follow her in them; he +could not even imagine them; and while he was with her they seemed to have +no verity or value. But she talked them over very hypothetically and +impersonally with Miss Cotton, in whose sympathy they resumed all their +import, and gained something more. In the idealisation which the girl +underwent in this atmosphere all her thoughts and purposes had a +significance which she would not of herself, perhaps, have attached to +them. They discussed them and analysed them with a satisfaction in the +result which could not be represented without an effect of caricature. +They measured Alice's romance together, and evolved from it a sublimation +of responsibility, of duty, of devotion, which Alice found it impossible +to submit to Dan when he came with his simple-hearted, single-minded +purpose of getting Mrs. Pasmer out of the room, and sitting down with his +arm around Alice's waist. When he had accomplished this it seemed +sufficient in itself, and she had to think, to struggle to recall things +beyond it, above it. He could not be made to see at such times how their +lives could be more in unison than they were. When she proposed doing +something for him which he knew was disagreeable to her, he would not let +her; and when she hinted at anything she wished him to do for her because +she knew it was disagreeable to him, he consented so promptly, so +joyously, that she perceived he could not have given the least thought to +it. + +She felt every day that they were alien in their tastes and aims; their +pleasures were not the same, and though it was sweet, though it was +charming, to have him give up so willingly all his preferences, she felt, +without knowing that the time must come when this could not be so, that it +was all wrong. + +"But these very differences, these antagonisms, if you wish to call them +so," suggested Miss Cotton, in talking Alice's misgivings over with her, +"aren't they just what will draw you together more and more? Isn't it +what attracted you to each other? The very fact that you are such perfect +counterparts--" + +"Yes," the girl assented, "that's what we're taught to believe." She +meant by the novels, to which we all trust our instruction in such +matters, and her doubt doubly rankled after she had put it to silence. + +She kept on writing to Dan's mother, though more and more perfunctorily; +and now Eunice and now Minnie Mavering acknowledged her letters. She knew +that they must think she was silly, but having entered by Dan's connivance +upon her folly, she was too proud to abandon it. + +At last, after she had ceased to expect it, came a letter from his mother, +not a brief note, but a letter which the invalid had evidently tasked +herself to make long and full, in recognition of Alice's kindness in +writing to her so much. The girl opened it, and, after a verifying glance +at the signature, began to read it with a thrill of tender triumph, and +the fond prevision of the greater pleasure of reading it again with Dan. + +But after reading it once through, she did not wait for him before reading +it again and again. She did this with bewilderment, intershot with +flashes of conviction, and then doubts of this conviction. When she could +misunderstand no longer, she rose quietly and folded the letter, and put +it carefully back into its envelope and into her writing desk, where she +sat down and wrote, in her clearest and firmest hand, this note to +Mavering-- + +"I wish to see you immediately. + +"ALICE PASMER." + + + + +XLIII + +Dan had learned, with a lover's keenness, to read Alice's moods in the +most colourless wording of her notes. She was rather apt to write him +notes, taking back or reaffirming the effect of something that had just +passed between them. Her note were tempered to varying degrees of heat +and cold, so fine that no one else would have felt the difference, but +sensible to him in their subtlest intention. + +Perhaps a mere witness of the fact would have been alarmed by a note which +began without an address, except that on the envelope, and ended its +peremptory brevity with the writer's name signed in full. Dan read +calamity in it, and he had all the more trouble to pull himself together +to meet it because he had parted with unusual tenderness from Alice the +night before, after an evening in which it seemed to him that their ideals +had been completely reconciled. + +The note came, as her notes were apt to come, while Dan was at breakfast, +which he was rather luxurious about for so young a man, and he felt +formlessly glad afterward that he had drunk his first cup of coffee before +he opened it, for it chilled the second cup, and seemed to take all +character out of the omelet. + +He obeyed it, wondering what the doom menaced in it might be, but knowing +that it was doom, and leaving his breakfast half-finished, with a dull +sense of the tragedy of doing so. + +He would have liked to ask for Mrs. Pasmer first, and interpose a moment +of her cheerful unreality between himself and his interview with Alice, +but he decided that he had better not do this, and they met at once, with +the width of the room between them. Her look was one that made it +impassable to the simple impulse he usually had to take her in his arms +and kiss her. But as she stood holding out a letter to him, with the +apparent intention that he should come and take it, he traversed the +intervening space and took it. + +"Why, it's from mother!" he said joyously, with a glance at the +handwriting. + +"Will you please explain it?" said Alice, and Dan began to read it. + +It began with a good many excuses for not having written before, and went +on with a pretty expression of interest in Alice's letters and gratitude +for them; Mrs. Mavering assured the girl that she could not imagine what a +pleasure they had been to her. She promised herself that they should be +great friends, and she said that she looked forward eagerly to the time, +now drawing near, when Dan should bring her home to them. She said she +knew Alice would find it dull at the Falls except for him, but they would +all do their best, and she would find the place very different from what +she had seen it in the winter. Alice could make believe that she was +there just for the summer, and Mrs. Mavering hoped that before the summer +was gone she would be so sorry for a sick old woman that she would not +even wish to go with it. This part of the letter, which gave Dan away so +hopelessly, as he felt, was phrased so touchingly, that he looked up from +it with moist eyes to the hard cold judgment in the eyes of Alice. + +"Will you please explain it?" she repeated. + +He tried to temporise. "Explain what?" + +Alice was prompt to say, "Had you promised your mother to take me home to +live?" + +Dan did not answer. + +"You promised my mother to go abroad. What else have you promised?" He +continued silent, and she added, "You are a faithless man." They were the +words of Romola, in the romance, to Tito; she had often admired them; and +they seemed to her equally the measure of Dan's offence. + +"Alice--" + +"Here are your letters and remembrances, Mr. Mavering." Dan mechanically +received the packet she had been holding behind her; with a perverse freak +of intelligence he observed that, though much larger now, it was tied up +with the same ribbon which had fastened it when Alice returned his letters +and gifts before. "Good-bye. I wish you every happiness consistent with +your nature." + +She bowed coldly, and was about to leave him, as she had planned; but she +had not arranged that he should be standing in front of the door, and he +was there, with no apparent intention of moving. + +"Will you allow me to pass?" she was forced to ask, however, haughtily. + +"No!" he retorted, with a violence that surprised him. "I will not let +you pass till you have listened to me--till you tell me why you treat me +so. I won't stand it--I've had enough of this kind of thing." + +It surprised Alice too a little, and after a moment's hesitation she said, +"I will listen to you," so much more gently than she had spoken before +that Dan relaxed his imperative tone, and began to laugh. "But," she +added, and her face clouded again, "it will be of no use. My mind is made +up this time. Why should we talk?" + +Why, because mine isn't," said Dan. "What is the matter, Alice? Do you +think I would force you, or even ask you, to go home with me to live +unless you were entirely willing? It could only be a temporary +arrangement anyway." + +"That isn't the question," she retorted. "The question is whether you've +promised your mother one thing and me another." + +"Well, I don't know about promising," said Dan, laughing a little more +uneasily, but still laughing. "As nearly as I can remember, I wasn't +consulted about the matter. Your mother proposed one thing, and my mother +proposed another." + +"And you agreed to both. That is quite enough--quite characteristic!" + +Dan flushed, and stopped laughing. "I don't know what you mean by +characteristic. The thing didn't have to be decided at once, and I didn't +suppose it would be difficult for either side to give way, if it was +judged best. I was sure my mother wouldn't insist." + +"It seems very easy for your family to make sacrifices that are not likely +to be required of them." + +"You mustn't criticise my mother!" cried Dan. + +"I have not criticised her. You insinuate that we would be too selfish to +give up, if it were for the best." + +"I do nothing of the kind, and unless you are determined to quarrel with +me you wouldn't say so." + +"I don't wish a quarrel; none is necessary," said Alice coldly. + +"You accuse me of being treacherous--" + +"I didn't say treacherous!" + +"Faithless, then. It's a mere quibble about words. I want you to take +that back." + +"I can't take it back; it's the truth. Aren't you faithless, if you let +us go on thinking that you're going to Europe, and let your mother think +that we're coming home to live after we're married?" + +"No! I'm simply leaving the question open!" + +"Yes," said the girl--sadly, "you like to leave questions open. That's +your way." + +"Well, I suppose I do till it's necessary to decide them. It saves the +needless effusion of talk," said Dan, with a laugh; and then, as people do +in a quarrel, he went back to his angry mood, and said "Besides, I +supposed you would be glad of the chance to make some sacrifice for me. +You're always asking for it." + +"Thank you, Mr. Mavering," said Alice, "for reminding me of it; nothing is +sacred to you, it seems. I can't say that you have ever sought any +opportunities of self-sacrifice." + +"I wasn't allowed time to do so; they were always presented." + +"Thank you again, Mr. Mavering. All this is quite a revelation. I'm glad +to know how you really felt about things that you seemed so eager for." + +"Alice, you know that I would do anything for you!" cried Dan, rueing his +precipitate words. + +"Yes; that's what you've repeatedly told me. I used to believe it." + +"And I always believed what you said. You said at the picnic that day +that you thought I would like to live at Ponkwasset Falls if my business +was there--" + +"That is not the point!" + +"And now you quarrel with me because my mother wishes me to do so." + +Alice merely said: "I don't know why I stand here allowing you to +intimidate me in my father's house. I demand that you shall stand aside +and let me pass." + +"I'll not oblige you to leave the room," said Dan. "I will go. But if I +go, you will understand that I don't come back." + +"I hope that," said the girl. + +"Very well. Good morning, Miss Pasmer." + +She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment of his bow, and he +whirled out of the room and down the dim narrow passageway into the arms +of Mrs. Pasmer, who had resisted as long as she could her curiosity to +know what the angry voices of himself and Alice meant. + +"0 Mr. Mavering, is it you?" she buzzed; and she flung aside one pretence +for another in adding, "Couldn't Alice make you stay to breakfast?" + +Dan felt a rush of tenderness in his heart at the sound of the kind, +humbugging little voice. "No, thank you, Mrs. Pasmer, I couldn't stay, +thank you. I--I thank you very much. I--good-bye, Mrs. Pasmer." He +wrung her hand, and found his way out of the apartment door, leaving her +to clear up the mystery of his flight and his broken words as she could. + +"Alice," she said, as she entered the room, where the girl had remained, +"what have you been doing now?" + +"Oh, nothing," she said, with a remnant of her scorn for Dan qualifying +her tone and manner to her mother. "I've dismissed Mr. Mavering." + +"Then you want him to come to lunch?" asked her mother. "I should advise +him to refuse." + +"I don't think he'd accept," said Alice. Then, as Mrs. Pasmer stood in +the door, preventing her egress, as Dan had done before, she asked meekly +"Will you let me pass, mamma? My head aches." + +Mrs. Pasmer, whose easy triumphs in so many difficult circumstances kept +her nearly always in good temper, let herself go, at these words, in +vexation very uncommon with her. "Indeed I shall not!" she retorted. +"And you will please sit down here and tell me what you mean by dismissing +Mr. Mavering. I'm tired of your whims and caprices." + +"I can't talk," began the girl stubbornly. + +"Yes, I think you can," said her mother. "At any rate, I can. Now what +is it all?" + +"Perhaps this letter, will explain," said Alice, continuing to dignify her +enforced submission with a tone of unabated hauteur; and she gave her +mother Mrs. Mavering's letter, which Dan had mechanically restored to her. + +Mrs. Pasmer read it, not only without indignation, but apparently without +displeasure. But, she understood perfectly what the trouble was, when she +looked up and asked, cheerfully, "Well?" + +"Well!" repeated Alice, with a frown of astonishment. "Don't you see that +he's promised us one thing and her another, and that he's false to both?" + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, recovering her good-humour in view of a +situation that she felt herself able to cope with. "Of course he has to +temporise, to manage a little. She's an invalid, and of course she's very +exacting. He has to humour her. How do you know he has promised her? He +hasn't promised us." + +"Hasn't promised us?" Alice gasped. + +"No. He's simply fallen in with what we've said. It's because he's so +sweet and yielding, and can't bear to refuse. I can understand it +perfectly." + +"Then if he hasn't promised us, he's deceived us all the more shamefully, +for he's made us think he had." + +"He hasn't me," said Mrs. Pasmer, smiling at the stormy virtue in her +daughter's face. "And what if you should go home awhile with him--for the +summer, say? It couldn't last longer, much; and it wouldn't hurt us to +wait. I suppose he hoped for something of that kind." + +"Oh, it isn't that," groaned the girl, in a kind of bewilderment. "I +could have gone there with him joyfully, and lived all my days, if he'd +only been frank with me." + +"Oh no, you couldn't," said her mother, with cosy security. "When it comes +to it, you don't like giving up any more than other people. It's very +hard for you to give up; he sees that--he knows it, and he doesn't really +like to ask any sort of sacrifice from you. He's afraid of you." + +"Don't I know that?" demanded Alice desolately: "I've known it from the +first, and I've felt it all the time. It's all a mistake, and has been. +We never could understand each other. We're too different." + +"That needn't prevent you understanding him. It needn't prevent you from +seeing how really kind and good he is--how faithful and constant he is." + +"Oh, you say that--you praise him--because you like him." + +"Of course I do. And can't you?" + +"No. The least grain of deceit--of temporising, you call it--spoils +everything. It's over," said the girl, rising, with a sigh, from the +chair she had dropped into. "We're best apart; we could only have been +wretched and wicked together." + +"What did you say to him, Alice?" asked her mother, unshaken by her +rhetoric. + +"I told him he was a faithless person." + +"Then you were a cruel girl," cried Mrs. Pasmer, with sudden indignation; +"and if you were not my daughter I could be glad he had escaped you. I +don't know where you got all those silly, romantic notions of yours about +these things. You certainly didn't get them from me," she continued, with +undeniable truth, "and I don't believe you get them from your Church, +It's just as Miss Anderson said: your Church makes allowance for human +nature, but you make none." + +"I shouldn't go to Julia Anderson for instruction in such matters," said +the girl, with cold resentment. + +"I wish you would go to her for a little commonsense--or somebody," said +Mrs. Pasmer. "Do you know what talk this will make?" + +"I don't care for the talk. It would be worse than talk to marry a man +whom I couldn't trust--who wanted to please me so much that he had to +deceive me, and was too much afraid of me to tell me the truth." + +"You headstrong girl!" said her mother impartially, admiring at the same +time the girl's haughty beauty. + +There was an argument in reserve in Mrs. Pasmer's mind which perhaps none +but an American mother would have hesitated to urge; but it is so wholly +our tradition to treat the important business of marriage as a romantic +episode that even she could not bring herself to insist that her daughter +should not throw away a chance so advantageous from every worldly point of +view. She could only ask, "If you break this engagement, what do you +expect to do?" + +"The engagement is broken. I shall go into a sisterhood." + +"You will do nothing of the kind, with my consent," said Mrs. Pasmer. +"I will have no such nonsense. Don't flatter yourself that I will. Even +if I approved of such a thing, I should think it wicked to let you do it. +You're always fancying yourself doing something very devoted, but I've +never seen you ready to give up your own will, or your own comfort even, +in the slightest degree. And Dan Mavering, if he were twice as +temporising and circuitous"--the word came to her from her talk with him-- +"would be twice too good for you. I'm going to breakfast." + + + + +XLIV. + +The difficulty in life is to bring experience to the level of expectation, +to match our real emotions in view of any great occasion with the ideal +emotions which we have taught ourselves that we ought to feel. This is +all the truer when the occasion is tragical: we surprise ourselves in a +helplessness to which the great event, death, ruin, lost love, reveals +itself slowly, and at first wears the aspect of an unbroken continuance of +what has been, or at most of another incident in the habitual sequence. + +Dan Mavering came out into the bright winter morning knowing that his +engagement was broken, but feeling it so little that he could not believe +it. He failed to realise it, to seize it for a fact, and he could not let +it remain that dumb and formless wretchedness, without proportion or +dimensions, which it now seemed to be, weighing his life down. To verify +it, to begin to outlive it, he must instantly impart it, he must tell it, +he must see it with others' eyes. This was the necessity of his youth and +of his sympathy, which included himself as well as the rest of the race in +its activity. He had the usual environment of a young man who has money. +He belonged to clubs, and he had a large acquaintance among men of his own +age, who lived a life of greater leisure; or were more absorbed in +business, but whom he met constantly in society. For one reason or +another, or for no other reason than that he was Dan Mavering and liked +every one, he liked them all. He thought himself great friends with them; +he dined and lunched with them; and they knew the Pasmers, and all about +his engagement. But he did not go to any of them now, with the need he +felt to impart his calamity, to get the support of come other's credence +and opinion of it. He went to a friend whom, in the way of his world, he +met very seldom, but whom he always found, as he said, just where he had +left him. + +Boardman never made any sign of suspecting that he was put on and off, +according to Dan's necessity or desire for comfort or congratulation; but +it was part of their joke that Dan's coming to him always meant something +decisive in his experiences. The reporter was at his late breakfast, +which his landlady furnished him in his room, though, as Mrs. Mash said, +she never gave meals, but a cup of coffee and an egg or two, yes. + +"Well?" he said, without looking up. + +"Well, I'm done for!" cried Dan. + +"Again?" asked Boardman. + +"Again! The other time was nothing, Boardman--I knew it wasn't anything; +but this--this is final." + +"Go on," said Boardman, looking about for his individual salt-cellar, +which he found under the edge of his plate; and Mavering laid the whole +case before him. As he made no comment on it for a while, Dan was obliged +to ask him what he thought of it. "Well," he said, with the smile that +showed the evenness of his pretty teeth, "there's a kind of wild justice +in it." He admitted this, with the object of meeting Dan's views in an +opinion. + +"So you think I'm a faithless man too, do you?" demanded Mavering +stormily. + +"Not from your point of view," said Boardman, who kept on quietly eating +and drinking. + +Mavering was too amiable not to feel Boardman's innocence of offence in +his unperturbed behaviour. "There was no faithlessness about it, and you +know it," he went on, half laughing, half crying, in his excitement, and +making Boardman the avenue of an appeal really addressed to Alice. "I was +ready to do what either side decided." + +"Or both," suggested Boardman. + +"Yes, or both," said Dan, boldly accepting the suggestion. "It wouldn't +have cost me a pang to give up if I'd been in the place of either." + +"I guess that's what she could never understand," Boardman mused aloud. + +"And I could never understand how any one could fail to see that that was +what I intended--expected: that it would all come out right of itself-- +naturally." Dan was still addressing Alice in this belated reasoning. +"But to be accused of bad faith--of trying to deceive any one--" + +"Pretty rough," said Boardman. + +"Rough? It's more than I can stand!" + +"Well, you don't seem to be asked to stand it," said Boardman, and +Mavering laughed forlornly with him at his joke, and then walked away and +looked out of Boardman's dormer-window on the roofs below, with their +dirty, smoke-stained February snow. He pulled out his handkerchief, and +wiped his face with it. When he turned round, Boardman looked keenly at +him, and asked, with an air of caution, "And so it's all up?" + +"Yes, it's all up," said Dan hoarsely. + +"No danger of a relapse?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"No danger of having my sympathy handed over later to Miss Pasmer for +examination?" + +"I guess you can speak up freely, Boardman," said Dan, "if that's what you +mean. Miss Pasmer and I are quits." + +"Well, then, I'm glad of it. She wasn't the one for you. She isn't fit +for you." + + What's the reason she isn't?" cried Dan. "She's the most beautiful and +noble girl in the world, and the most conscientious, and the best--if she +is unjust to me." + +"No doubt of that. I'm not attacking her, and I'm not defending you." + +"What are you doing then?"" + +"Simply saying that I don't believe you two would ever understand each +other. You haven't got the same point of view, and you couldn't make it +go. Both out of a scrape." + +"I don't know what you mean by a scrape," said Dan, resenting the word +more than the idea. Boardman tacitly refused to modify or withdraw it, +and Dan said, after a sulky silence, in which he began to dramatise a +meeting with his family: "I'm going home; I can't stand it here. What's +the reason you can't come with me, Boardman?" + +"Do you mean to your rooms?" + +"No; to the Falls." + +"Thanks. Guess not." + +"Why not?" + +"Don't care about being a fifth wheel." + +"Oh, pshaw, now, Boardman! Look here, you must go. I want you to go. +I--I want your support. That's it. I'm all broken up, and I couldn't +stand that three hours' pull alone. They'll be glad to see you--all of +them. Don't you suppose they'll be glad to see you? They're always glad; +and they'll understand." + +"I don't believe you want me to go yourself. You just think you do." + +"No. I really do want you, Boardman. I want to talk it over with you. I +do want you. I'm not fooling." + +"Don't think I could get away." Yet he seemed to be pleased with the +notion of the Falls; it made him smile. + +"Well, see," said Mavering disconsolately. "I'm going round to my rooms +now, and I'll be there till two o'clock; train's at 2.30." He went +towards the door, where he faced about. "And you don't think it would be +of any use?" + +"Any use--what?" + +"Trying to--to--to make it up." + +"How should I know?" + +"No, no; of course you couldn't," said Dan, miserably downcast. All the +resentment which Alice's injustice had roused in him had died out; he was +suffering as helplessly and hopelessly as a child. "Well," he sighed, as +he swung out of the door. + +Boardman found him seated at his writing-desk in his smoking-jacket when +he came to him, rather early, and on the desk were laid out the properties +of the little play which had come to a tragic close. There were some +small bits of jewellery, among the rest a ring of hers which Alice had +been letting him wear; a lock of her hair which he had kept, for the +greater convenience of kissing, in the original parcel, tied with crimson +ribbon; a succession of flowers which she had worn, more and more dry and +brown with age; one of her gloves, which he had found and kept from the +day they first met in Cambridge; a bunch of withered bluebells tied with +sweet-grass, whose odour filled the room, from the picnic at Campobello; +scraps of paper with her writing on them, and cards; several photographs +of her, and piles of notes and letters. + +"Look here," said Dan, knowing it was Boardman without turning round, +"what am I to do about these things?" + +Boardman respectfully examined them over his shoulder. "Don't know what +the usual ceremony is," he said, he ventured to add, referring to the +heaps of letters, "Seems to have been rather epistolary, doesn't she?" + +"Oh, don't talk of her as if she were dead!" cried Dan. "I've been +feeling as if she were." All at once he dropped his head among these +witnesses of his loss, and sobbed. + +Boardman appeared shocked, and yet somewhat amused; he made a soft low +sibilation between his teeth. + +Dan lifted his head. "Boardman, if you ever give me away!" + +"Oh, I don't suppose it's very hilarious," said Boardman, with vague +kindness. "Packed yet?" he asked, getting away from the subject as +something he did not feel himself fitted to deal with consecutively. + +"I'm only going to take a bag," said Mavering, going to get some clothes +down from a closet where his words had a sepulchral reverberation. + +"Can't I help?" asked Boardman, keeping away from the sad memorials of +Dan's love strewn about on the desk, and yet not able to keep his eyes off +them across the room. + +"Well, I don't know," said Dan. He came out with his armful of coats and +trousers, and threw them on the bed. "Are you going?" + +"If I could believe you wanted me to." + +"Good!" cried Mavering, and the fact seemed to brighten him immediately. +"If you want to, stuff these things in, while I'm doing up these other +things." He nodded his head side-wise toward the desk. + +"All right," said Boardman. + +His burst of grief must have relieved Dan greatly. He set about gathering +up the relics on the desk, and getting a suitable piece of paper to wrap +them in. He rejected several pieces as inappropriate. + +"I don't know what kind of paper to do these things up in," he said at +last. + +"Any special kind of paper required?" Boardman asked, pausing in the act +of folding a pair of pantaloons so as not to break the fall over the boot. + +"I didn't know there was, but there seems to be," said Dan. + +"Silver paper seems to be rather more for cake and that sort of thing," +suggested Boardman. "Kind of mourning too, isn't it--silver?" + +"I don't know," said Dan. "But I haven't got any silver paper." + +"Newspaper wouldn't do?" + +"Well, hardly, Boardman," said Dan, with sarcasm. + +"Well," said Boardman, "I should have supposed that nothing could be +simpler than to send back a lot of love-letters; but the question of paper +seems insuperable. Manila paper wouldn't do either. And then comes +string. What kind of string are you going to tie it up with?" + +"Well, we won't start that question till we get to it," answered Dan, +looking about. "If I could find some kind of a box--" + +"Haven't you got a collar box? Be the very thing!" Boardman had gone +back to the coats and trousers, abandoning Dan to the subtler difficulties +in which he was involved. + +"They've all got labels," said Mavering, getting down one marked "The +Tennyson" and another lettered "The Clarion," and looking at them with +cold rejection. + +"Don't see how you're going to send these things back at all, then. Have +to keep them, I guess." Boardman finished his task, and came back to Dan. + +"I guess I've got it now," said Mavering, lifting the lid of his desk, and +taking out a large stiff envelope, in which a set of photographic views +had come. + +"Seems to have been made for it," Boardman exulted, watching the envelope, +as it filled up, expand into a kind of shapely packet. Dan put the things +silently in, and sealed the parcel with his ring. Then he turned it over +to address it, but the writing of Alice's name for this purpose seemed too +much for him, in spite of Boardman's humorous support throughout. + +"Oh, I can't do it," he said, falling back in his chair. + +"Let me," said his friend, cheerfully ignoring his despair. He +philosophised the whole transaction, as he addressed the package, rang for +a messenger, and sent it away, telling him to call a cab for ten minutes +past two. + +"Mighty good thing in life that we move by steps. Now on the stage, or in +a novel, you'd have got those things together and addressed 'em, and +despatched 'em, in just the right kind of paper, with just the right kind +of string round it, at a dash; and then you'd have had time to go up and +lean your head against something and soliloquise, or else think +unutterable things. But here you see how a merciful Providence blocks +your way all along. You've had to fight through all sort of sordid little +details to the grand tragic result of getting off Miss Pasmer's letters, +and when you reach it you don't mind it a bit." + +"Don't I?" demanded Dan, in as hollow a voice as he could. "You'd joke at +a funeral, Boardman." + +"I've seen some pretty cheerful funerals," said Boardman. "And it's this +principle of steps, of degrees, of having to do this little thing, and +that little thing, that keeps funerals from killing the survivors. I +suppose this is worse than a funeral--look at it in the right light. You +mourn as one without hope, don't you? Live through it too, I suppose." + +He made Dan help get the rest of his things into his bag, and with one +little artifice and another prevented him from stagnating in despair. He +dissented from the idea of waiting over another day to see if Alice would +not relent when she got her letters back, and send for Dan to come and see +her. + +"Relent a good deal more when she finds you've gone out of town, if she +sends for you," he argued; and he got Dan into the cab and off to the +station, carefully making him an active partner in the whole undertaking, +even to checking his own bag. + +Before he bought his own ticket he appealed once more to Dan. + +"Look here! I feel like a fool going off with you on this expedition. Be +honest for once, now, Mavering, and tell me you've thought better of it, +and don't want me to go!" + +"Yes--yes, I do. Oh yes, you've got to go. I I do want you. I--you make +me see things in just the right light, don't you know. That idea of yours +about little steps--it's braced me all up. Yes--" + +"You're such an infernal humbug," said Boardman, "I can't tell whether you +want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go." Then he bought his +ticket. + + + + +XLV. + +Boardman put himself in charge of Mavering, and took him into the smoking +car. It was impossible to indulge a poetic gloom there without becoming +unpleasantly conspicuous in the smoking and euchre and profanity. Some of +the men were silent and dull, but no one was apparently very unhappy, and +perhaps if Dan had dealt in absolute sincerity with himself, even he would +not have found himself wholly so. He did not feel as he had felt when +Alice rejected him. Then he was wounded to the quick through his vanity, +and now; in spite of all, in spite of the involuntary tender swaying of +his heart toward her through the mere force of habit, in spite of some +remote compunctions for his want of candour with her, he was supported by +a sense of her injustice, her hardness. Related with this was an obscure +sense of escape, of liberation, which, however he might silence and disown +it, was still there. He could not help being aware that he had long +relinquished tastes customs, purposes, ideals, to gain a peace that seemed +more and more fleeting and uncertain, and that he had submitted to others +which, now that the moment of giving pleasure by his submission was past, +he recognised as disagreeable. He felt a sort of guilt in his +enlargement; he knew, by all that he had, ever heard or read of people in +his position, that he ought to be altogether miserable; and yet this +consciousness of relief persisted. He told himself that a very tragical +thing had befallen him; that this broken engagement was the ruin of his +life and the end of his youth, and that he must live on an old and joyless +man, wise with the knowledge that comes to decrepitude and despair; he +imagined a certain look for himself, a gait, a name, that would express +this; but all the same he was aware of having got out of something. Was +it a bondage, a scrape, as Boardman called it? He thought he must be a +very light, shallow, and frivolous nature not to be utterly broken up by +his disaster. + +"I don't know what I'm going home for," he said hoarsely to Boardman. + +"Kind of a rest, I suppose," suggested his friend. + +"Yes, I guess that's it," said Dan. "I'm tired." + +It seemed to him that this was rather fine; it was a fatigue of the soul +that he was to rest from. He remembered the apostrophic close of a novel +in which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering. "Quiet, quiet +heart!" he repeated to himself. Yes, he too had died to hope, to love, to +happiness. + +As they drew near their journey's end he said, "I don't know how I'm going +to break it to them." + +"Oh, probably break itself," said Boardman. "These things usually do." + +"Yes, of course," Dan assented. + +"Know from your looks that something's up. Or you might let me go ahead a +little and prepare them." + +Dan laughed. "It was awfully good of you to come, Boardman. I don't know +what I should have done without you." + +"Nothing I like more than these little trips. Brightens you up to sere +the misery of others; makes you feel that you're on peculiarly good terms +with Providence. Haven't enjoyed myself so much since that day in +Portland." Boardman's eyes twinkled. + +"Yes," said Dan, with a deep sigh, "it's a pity it hadn't ended there." + +"Oh, I don't know. You won't have to go through with it again. Something +that had to come, wasn't it? Never been satisfied if you hadn't tried it. +Kind of aching void before, and now you've got enough." + +"Yes, I've got enough," said Dan, "if that's all." + +When they got out of the train at Ponkwasset Falls, and the conductor and +the brakeman, who knew Dan as his father's son, and treated him with the +distinction due a representative of an interest valued by the road, had +bidden him a respectfully intimate good-night, and he began to climb the +hill to his father's house, he recurred to the difficulty before him in +breaking the news to his family. "I wish I could have it over in a flash. +I wish I'd thought to telegraph it to them." + +"Wouldn't have done," said Boardman. "It would have given 'em time to +formulate questions and conjectures, and now the astonishment will take +their breath away till you can get your second wind, and then--you'll be +all right." + +"You think so?" asked Dan submissively. + +"Know so. You see, if you could have had it over in a flash, it would +have knocked you flat. But now you've taken all the little steps, and +you've got a lot more to take, and you're all braced up. See? You're +like rock, now--adamant." Dan laughed in forlorn perception of Boardman's +affectionate irony. "Little steps are the thing. You'll have to go in +now and meet your family, and pass the time of day with each one, and talk +about the weather, and account for my being along, and ask how they all +are; and by the time you've had dinner, and got settled with your legs out +in front of the fire, you'll be just in the mood for it. Enjoy telling +them all about it." + +"Don't, Boardman," pleaded Dan. "Boardy, I believe if I could get in and +up to my room without anybody's seeing me, I'd let you tell them. There +don't seem to be anybody about, and I think we could manage it." + +"It wouldn't work," said Boardman. "Got to do it yourself." + +"Well, then, wait a minute," said Dan desperately; and Boardman knew that +he was to stay outside while Dan reconnoitred the interior. Dan opened +one door after another till he stood within the hot brilliantly lighted +hall. Eunice Mavering was coming down the stairs, hooded and wrapped for +a walk on the long verandahs before supper. + +"Dan!" she cried. + +"It's all up, Eunice," he said at once, as if she had asked him about it. +"My engagement's off." + +"Oh, I'm so glad!" She descended upon him with outstretched arms, but +stopped herself before she reached him. "It's a hoax. What do you mean? +Do you really mean it, Dan?" + +"I guess I mean it. But don't--Hold on! Where's Minnie?" + +Eunice turned, and ran back upstairs. "Minnie! Min!" she called on her +way. "Dan's engagement's off." + +"I don't believe it!" answered Minnie's voice joyously, from within some +room. It was followed by her presence, with successive inquiries. "How +do you know?" Did you get a letter? When did it happen? Oh, isn't it too +good?" + +Minnie was also dressed for the verandah promenade, which they always took +when the snow was too deep. She caught sight of her brother as she came +down. "Why, Dan's here! Dan, I've been thinking about you all day." She +kissed him, which Eunice was now reminded to do too. + +"Yes, it's true, Minnie," said Dan gravely. "I came up to tell you. It +don't seem to distress you much." + +"Dan!" said his sister reproachfully. "You know I didn't mean to say +anything I only felt so glad to have you back again." + +"I understand, Minnie--I don't dame you. It's all right. How's mother?" +Father up from the works yet? I'm going to my room." + +"Indeed you're not!" cried Eunice, with elder sisterly authority. "You +shall tell us about it first." + +"Oh no! Let him go, Eunice!" pleaded Minnie, "Poor Dan! And I don't +think we ought to go to walk when--" + +Dan's eyes dimmed, and his voice weakened a little at her sympathy. "Yes, +go. I'm tired--that's all. There isn't anything to tell you, hardly. +Miss Pasmer--" + +"Why, he's pale!" cried Minnie. "Eunice!" + +"Oh, it's just the heat in here." Dan really felt a little sick and faint +with it, but he was not sorry to seem affected by the day's strain upon +his nerves. + +The girls began to take off their wraps. "Don't. I'll go with you. +Boardman's out there." + +"Boardman! What nonsense!" exclaimed Eunice. + +"He'll like to hear your opinion of it," Dan began; but his sister pulled +the doors open, and ran out to see if he really meant that too. + +Whether Boardman had heard her, or had discreetly withdrawn out of earshot +at the first sound of voices, she could not tell, but she found him some +distance away from the snow-box on the piazza. "Dan's just managed to +tell us you were here," she said, giving him her hand. "I'm glad to see +you. Do come in." + +"Come along as a sort of Job's comforter," Boardman explained, as he +followed her in; and he had the silly look that the man who feels himself +superfluous must wear. + +"Then you know about it?" said Eunice, while Minnie Mavering and he were +shaking hands. + +"Yes, Boardman knows; he can tell you about it," said Dan, from the hall +chair he had dropped into. He rose and made his way to the stairs, with +the effect of leaving the whole thing to them. + +His sisters ran after him, and got him upstairs and into his room, with +Boardman's semi-satirical connivance, and Eunice put up the window, while +Minnie went to get some cologne to wet his forehead. Their efforts were +so successful that he revived sufficiently to drive them out of his room, +and make them go and show Boardman to his. + +"You know the way, Mr. Boardman," said Eunice, going before him, while +Minnie followed timorously, but curious for what he should say. She +lingered on the threshold, while her sister went in and pulled the +electric apparatus which lighted the gas-burners. "I suppose Dan didn't +break it?" she said, turning sharply upon him. + +"No; and I don't think he was to blame," said Boardman, inferring her +reserved anxiety. + +"Oh, I'm quite sure of that," said Eunice, rejecting what she had asked +for. "You'll find everything, Mr. Boardman. It was kind of you to come +with Dan. Supper's at seven." + +"How severe you were with him!" murmured Minnie, following her away. + +"Severe with Dan?" + +"No--with Mr. Boardman." + +"What nonsense! I had to be. I couldn't let him defend Dan to me. +Couple of silly boys!" + +After a moment Minnie said, "I don't think he's silly." + +"Who?" + +"Mr. Boardman." + +"Well, Dan is, then, to bring him at such a time. But I suppose he felt +that he couldn't get here without him. What a boy! Think of such a child +being engaged! I hope we shan't hear any more of such nonsense for one +while again--at least till Dan's got his growth." + +They went down into the library, where, in their excitement, they sat down +with most of their outdoor things on. + +Minnie had the soft contrary-mindedness of gentle natures. "I should like +to know how you would have had Dan bear it," she said rebelliously. + +"How? Like a man. Or like a woman. How do you suppose Miss Pasmer's +bearing it? Do you suppose she's got some friend to help her?" + +"If she's broken it, she doesn't need any one," urged Minnie. + +"Well," said Eunice, with her high scorn of Dan unabated, "I never could +have liked that girl, but I certainly begin to respect her. I think I +could have got on with her--now that it's no use. I declare," she broke +off, "we're sitting here sweltering to death! What are we keeping our +things on for?" She began to tear hers violently off and to fling them on +chairs, scolding, and laughing at the same time with Minnie, at their +absent-mindedness. + +A heavy step sounded on the verandah without. + +"There's father!" she cried vividly, jumping to her feet and running to +the door, while Minnie, in a nervous bewilderment, ran off upstairs to her +room. Eunice flung the door open. "Well, father, we've got Dan back +again." And at a look of quiet question in his eye she hurried on: "His +engagement's broken, and he's come up here to tell us, and brought Mr. +Boardman along to help." + +"Where is he?" asked the father, with his ruminant quiet, pulling off +first one sleeve of his overcoat, and pausing for Eunice's answer before +he pulled off the other. + + + + +XLVI. + +"He's up in his room, resting from the effort." She laughed nervously, +and her father made no comment. He took off his articles, and then went +creaking upstairs to Dan's room. But at the door he paused, with his hand +on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering. + +Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him. + +"Well, Dan," said his father, shaking hands. + +"I suppose Eunice has told you?" Well, I want to tell you why it +happened." + +There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him to +the point. He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his candour +and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct +throughout. He did not realise that this was not so till his father said +at the close, with mild justice, "You were to blame for letting the thing +run on so at loose ends." + +"Yes, of course," said Dan, seeing that he was. "But there was no +intention of deceiving any one of bad faith--" + +"Of course not." + +"I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point." + +"If you'd been older, you wouldn't have thought that. You had women to +deal with on both sides. But if it's all over, I'm not sorry. I always +admired Miss Pasmer, but I've been more and more afraid you were not +suited to each other. Your mother doesn't know you're here?" + +"No, sir, I suppose not. Do you think it will distress her?" + +"How did your sisters take it?" + +Dan gave a rueful laugh. "It seemed to be rather a popular move with +them." + +"I will see your mother first," said the father. + +He left them when they went into the library after supper, and a little +later Dan and Eunice left Boardman in charge of Minnie there. + +He looked after their unannounced withdrawal in comic consciousness. +"It's no use pretending that I'm not a pretty large plurality here," he +said to Minnie. + +"Oh, I'm so glad you came!" she cried, with a kindness which was as real +as if it had been more sincere. + +"Do you think mother will feel it much?" asked Dan anxiously, as he went +upstairs with Eunice. + +"Well, she'll hate to lose a correspondent--such a regular one," said +Eunice, and the affair being so far beyond any other comment, she laughed +the rest of the way to their mother's room. + +The whole family had in some degree that foible which affects people who +lead isolated lives; they come to think that they are the only people who +have their virtues; they exaggerate these, and they conceive a kindness +even for the qualities which are not their virtues. Mrs. Mavering's life +was secluded again from the family seclusion, and their peculiarities were +intensified in her. Besides, she had some very marked peculiarities of +her own, and these were also intensified by the solitude to which she was +necessarily left so much. She meditated a great deal upon the character +of her children, and she liked to analyse and censure it both in her own +mind and openly in their presence. She was very trenchant and definite in +these estimates of them; she liked to ticket them, and then ticket them +anew. She explored their ancestral history on both sides for the origin +of their traits, and there were times when she reduced them in formula to +mere congeries of inherited characteristics. If Eunice was self-willed +and despotic, she was just like her grandmother Mavering; if Minnie was +all sentiment and gentle stubbornness, it was because two aunts of hers, +one on either side, were exactly so; if Dan loved pleasure and beauty, and +was sinuous and uncertain in so many ways, and yet was so kind and +faithful and good, as well as shilly-shallying and undecided, it was +because her mother, and her mother's father, had these qualities in the +same combination. + +When she took her children to pieces before their faces, she was sharp and +admonitory enough with them. She warned them to what their characters +would bring them to if they did not look out; but perhaps because she +beheld them so hopelessly the present effect of the accumulated tendencies +of the family past, she was tender and forgiving to their actions. The +mother came in there, and superseded the student of heredity: she found +excuse for them in the perversity of circumstance, in the peculiar +hardship of the case, in the malignant misbehaviour of others. + +As Dan entered, with the precedence his father and sister yielded him as +the principal actor in the scene which must follow, she lifted herself +vigorously in bed, and propped herself on the elbow of one arm while she +stretched the other towards him. + +"I'm glad of it, Dan!" she called, at the moment he opened the door, and +as he came toward her she continued, with the amazing velocity of +utterance peculiar to nervous sufferers of her sex: "I know all about it, +and I don't blame you a bit! And I don't blame her! Poor helpless young +things! But it's a perfect mercy it's all over; it's the greatest +deliverance I ever heard of! You'd have been eaten up alive. I saw it, +and I knew it from the very first moment, and I've lived in fear and +trembling for you. You could have got on well enough if you'd been left +to yourselves, but that you couldn't have been nor hope to be as long as +you breathed, from the meddling and the machinations and the malice of +that unscrupulous and unconscionable old Cat!" + +By the time Mrs. Mavering had hissed out the last word she had her arm +round her boy's neck and was clutching him, safe and sound after his +peril, to her breast; and between her kissing and crying she repeated her +accusals and denunciations with violent volubility. + +Dan could not have replied to them in that effusion of gratitude and +tenderness he felt for his mother's partisanship; and when she went on in +almost the very terms of his self-defence, and told him that he had done +as he had because it was easy for him to yield, and he could not imagine a +Cat who would put her daughter up to entrapping him into a promise that +she knew must break his mother's heart, he found her so right on the main +point that he could not help some question of Mrs. Pasmer in his soul. +Could she really have been at the bottom of it all? She was very sly, and +she might be very false, and it was certainly she who had first proposed +their going abroad together. It looked as if it might be as his mother +said, and at any rate it was no time to dispute her, and he did not say a +word in behalf of Mrs. Pasmer, whom she continued to rend in a thousand +pieces and scatter to the winds till she had to stop breathless. + +"Yes! it's quite as I expected! She did everything she could to trap you +into it. She fairly flung that poor girl at you. She laid her plans so +that you couldn't say no--she understood your character from the start!-- +and then, when it came out by accident, and she saw that she had older +heads to deal with, and you were not going to be quite at her mercy, she +dropped the mask in an instant, and made Alice break with you. Oh, I +could see through her from the beginning! And the next time, Dan, I +advise you, as you never suspect anybody yourself, to consult with +somebody who doesn't take people for what they seem, and not to let +yourself be flattered out of your sensor, even if you see your father is." + +Mrs. Mavering dropped back on her pillow, and her husband smiled patiently +at their daughter. + +Dan saw his patient smile and understood it; and the injustice which his +father bore made him finally unwilling to let another remain under it. +Hard as it was to oppose his mother in anything when she was praising him +so sweetly and comforting him in the moment of his need, he pulled himself +together to protest: "No, no, mother! I don't think Mrs. Pasmer was to +blame; I don't believe she had anything to do with it. She's always stood +my friend--" + +"Oh, I've no doubt she's made you think so, Dan," said his mother, with +unabated fondness for him; "and you think so because you're so simple and +good, and never suspect evil of any one. It's this hideous optimism +that's killing everything--' + +A certain note in the invalid's falling voice seemed to warn her hearers +of an impending change that could do no one good. Eunice rose hastily and +interrupted: "Mother, Mr. Boardman's here. He came up with Dan. May +Minnie come in with him?" + +Mrs. Mavering shot a glance of inquiry at Dan, and then let a swift +inspection range over all the details of the room, and finally concentrate +itself on the silk and lace of her bed, over which she passed a smoothing +hand. "Mr. Boardman?" she cried, with instantly recovered amiability. "Of +course she may!" + + + + +XLVII. + +In Boston the rumour of Dan's broken engagement was followed promptly by a +denial of it; both the rumour and the denial were apparently +authoritative; but it gives the effect of a little greater sagacity to +distrust rumours of all kinds, and most people went to bed, after the teas +and dinners and receptions and clubs at which the fact was first debated, +in the self-persuasion that it was not so. The next day they found the +rumour still persistent; the denial was still in the air too, but it +seemed weaker; at the end of the third day it had become a question as to +which broke the engagement, and why; by the end of a week it was known +that Alice had broken the engagement, but the reason could not be +ascertained. + +This was not for want of asking, more or less direct. Pasmer, of course, +went and came at his club with perfect immunity. Men are quite as curious +as women, but they set business bounds to their curiosity, and do not +dream of passing these. With women who have no business of their own, and +can not quell themselves with the reflection that this thing or that is +not their affair, there is no question so intimate that they will not put +it to some other woman; perhaps it is not so intimate, or perhaps it will +not seem so; at any rate, they chance it. Mrs. Pasmer was given every +opportunity to explain the facts to the ladies whom she met, and if she +was much afflicted by Alice's behaviour, she had a measure of consolation +in using her skill to baffle the research of her acquaintance. After each +encounter of the kind she had the pleasure of reflecting that absolutely +nothing more than she meant had become known. The case never became fully +known through her; it was the girl herself who told it to Miss Cotton in +one of those moments of confidence which are necessary to burdened minds; +and it is doubtful if more than two or three people ever clearly +understood it; most preferred one or other of several mistaken versions +which society finally settled down to. + +The paroxysm of self-doubt, almost self-accusal, in which Alice came to +Miss Cotton, moved the latter to the deepest sympathy, and left her with +misgivings which became an intolerable anguish to her conscience. The +child was so afflicted at what she had done, not because she wished to be +reconciled with her lover, but because she was afraid she had been unjust, +been cruelly impatient and peremptory with him; she seemed to Miss Cotton +so absolutely alone and friendless with her great trouble, she was so +helpless, so hopeless, she was so anxious to do right, and so fearful she +had done wrong, that Miss Cotton would not have been Miss Cotton if she +had not taken her in her arms and assured her that in everything she had +done she had been sublimely and nobly right, a lesson to all her sex in +such matters for ever. She told her that she had always admired her, but +that now she idolised her; that she felt like going down on her knees and +simply worshipping her. + +"Oh, don't say that, Miss Cotton!" pleaded Alice, pulling away from her +embrace, but still clinging to her with her tremulous, cold little hands. +"I can't bear it! I'm wicked and hard you don't know how bad I am; and +I'm afraid of being weak, of doing more harm yet. Oh, I wronged him +cruelly in ever letting him get engaged to me! But now what you've said +will support me. If you think I've done right--It must seem strange to +you that I should come to you with my trouble instead of my mother; but +I've been to her, and--and we think alike on so few subjects, don't you +know--" + +"Yes, yes; I know, dear!" said Miss Cotton, in the tender folly of her +heart, with the satisfaction which every woman feels in being more +sufficient to another in trouble than her natural comforters. + +"And I wanted to know how you saw it; and now, if you feel as you say, I +can never doubt myself again." + +She tempested out of Miss Cotton's house, all tearful under the veil she +had pulled down, and as she shut the door of her coupe, Miss Cotton's +heart jumped into her throat with an impulse to run after her, to recall +her, to recant, to modify everything. + +From that moment Miss Cotton's trouble began, and it became a torment that +mounted and gave her no peace till she imparted it. She said to herself +that she should suffer to the utmost in this matter, and if she spoke to +any one, it must not be to same one who had agreed with her about Alice, +but to some hard, skeptical nature, some one who would look at it from a +totally different point of view, and would punish her for her error, if +she had committed an error, in supporting and consoling Alice. All the +time she was thinking of Mrs. Brinkley; Mrs. Brinkley had come into her +mind at once; but it was only after repeated struggles that she could get +the strength to go to her. + +Mrs. Brinkley, sacredly pledged to secrecy, listened with a sufficiently +dismaying air to the story which Miss Cotton told her in the extremity of +her fear and doubt. + +"Well," she said at the end, "have you written to Mr. Mavering?" + +"Written to Mr. Mavering?" gasped Miss Cotton. + +"Yes--to tell him she wants him back." + +"Wants him back?" Miss Cotton echoed again. + +"That's what she came to you for." + +"Oh, Mrs. Brinkley!" moaned Miss Cotton, and she stared at her in mute +reproach. + +Mrs. Brinkley laughed. "I don't say she knew that she came for that; but +there's no doubt that she did; and she went away bitterly disappointed +with your consolation and support. She didn't want anything of the kind-- +you may comfort yourself with that reflection, Miss Cotton." + +"Mrs. Brinkley," said Miss Cotton, with a severity which ought to have +been extremely effective from so mild a person, "do you mean to accuse +that poor child of dissimulation--of deceit--in such--a--a--" + +"No!" shouted Mrs. Brinkley; "she didn't know what she was doing any more +than you did; and she went home perfectly heart-broken; and I hope she'll +stay so, for the good of all parties concerned." + +Miss Cotton was so bewildered by Mrs. Brinkley's interpretation of Alice's +latent motives that she let the truculent hostility of her aspiration pass +unheeded. She looked helplessly about, and seemed faint, so that Mrs. +Brinkley, without appearing to notice her state, interposed the question +of a little sherry. When it had been brought, and Miss Cotton had sipped +the glass that trembled in one hand while her emotion shattered a biscuit +with the other, Mrs. Brinkley went on: "I'm glad the engagement is broken, +and I hope it will never be mended. If what you tell me of her reason for +breaking it is true--" + +"Oh, I feel so guilty for telling you! I'd no right to! Please never +speak of it!" pleaded Miss Cotton. + +"Then I feel more than ever that it was all a mistake, and that to help it +on again would be a--crime." + +Miss Cotton gave a small jump at the word, as if she had already committed +the crime: she had longed to do it. + +"Yes; I mean to say that they are better parted than plighted. If matches +are made in heaven, I believe some of them are unmade there too. They're +not adapted to each other; there's too great a disparity." + +"You mean," began Miss Cotton, from her prepossession of Alice's +superiority, "that she's altogether his inferior, intellectually and +morally." + +"Oh, I can't admit that!" cried Miss Cotton, glad to have Mrs. Brinkley go +too far, and plucking up courage from her excess. + +"Intellectually and morally," repeated Mrs. Brinkley, with the mounting +conviction which ladies seem to get from mere persistence. "I saw that +girl at Campobello; I watched her." + +"I never felt that you did her justice!" cried Miss Cotton, with the +valour of a hen-sparrow. "There was an antipathy." + +"There certainly wasn't a sympathy, I'm happy to say," retorted Mrs. +Brinkley. "I know her, and I know her family, root and branch. The +Pasmers are the dullest and most selfish people in the world." + +"Oh, I don't think that's her character," said Miss Cotton, ruffling her +feathers defensively. + +"Neither do I. She has no fixed character. No girl has. Nobody has. We +all have twenty different characters--more characters than gowns--and we +put them on and take them off just as often for different occasions. I +know you think each person is permanently this or that; but my experience +is that half the time they're the other thing." + +"Then why," said Miss Cotton, winking hard, as some weak people do when +they thick they are making a point, "do you say that Alice is dull and +selfish?" + +"I don't--not always, or not simply so. That's the character of the +Pasmer blood, but it's crossed with twenty different currents in her; and +from some body that the Pasmer dulness and selfishness must have driven +mad she got a crazy streak of piety; and that's got mixed up in her again +with a nonsensical ideal of duty; and everything she does she not only +thinks is right, but she thinks it's religious, and she thinks it's +unselfish." + +"If you'd seen her, if you'd heard her, this morning," said Miss Cotton, +"you wouldn't say that, Mrs. Brinkley." + +Mrs. Brinkley refused this with an impatient gesture. "It isn't what she +is now, or seems to be, or thinks she is. It's what she's going to +finally harden into--what's going to be her prevailing character. Now Dan +Mavering has just the faults that will make such a girl think her own +defects are virtues, because they're so different. I tell you Alice +Pasmer has neither the head nor the heart to appreciate the goodness, the +loveliness, of a fellow like Dan Mavering." + +"I think she feels his sweetness fully," urged Miss Cotton. "But she +couldn't endure his uncertainty. With her the truth is first of all +things." + +"Then she's a little goose. If she had the sense to know it, she would +know that he might delay and temporise and beat about the bush, but he +would be true when it was necessary. I haven't the least doubt in the +world but that poor fellow was going on in perfect security, because he +felt that it would be so easy for him to give up, and supposed it would be +just as easy for her. I don't suppose he had a misgiving, and it must +have come upon him like a thunder-clap." + +"Don't you think," timidly suggested Miss Cotton, "that truth is the first +essential in marriage?" + +"Of course it is. And if this girl was worthy of Dan Mavering, if she +were capable of loving him or anybody else unselfishly, she would have +felt his truth even if she couldn't have seen it. I believe this minute +that that manoeuvring, humbugging mother of hers is a better woman, a +kinder woman, than she is." + +"Alice says her mother took his part," said Miss Cotton, with a sigh. +"She took your view of it." + +"She's a sensible woman. But I hope she won't be able to get him into her +toils again," continued Mrs. Brinkley, recurring to the conventional +estimate of Mrs. Pasmer. + +"I can't help feeling--believing--that they'll come together somehow +still," murmured Miss Cotton. It seemed to her that she had all along +wished this; and she tried to remember if what she had said to comfort +Alice might be construed as adverse to a reconciliation. + +"I hope they won't, then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "for they couldn't help +being unhappy together, with their temperaments. There's one thing, Miss +Cotton, that's more essential in marriage than Miss Pasmer's instantaneous +honesty, and that's patience." + +"Patience with wrong?" demanded Miss Cotton. + +"Yes, even with wrong; but I meant patience with each other. Marriage is +a perpetual pardon, concession, surrender; it's an everlasting giving up; +that's the divine thing about it; and that's just what Miss Passer could +never conceive of, because she is self-righteous and conceited and +unyielding. She would make him miserable." + +Miss Cotton rose in a bewilderment which did not permit her to go at once. +There was something in her mind which she wished to urge, but she could +not make it out, though she fingered in vague generalities. When she got +a block away from the house it suddenly came to her. Love! If they loved +each other, would not all be well with them? She would have liked to run +back and put that question to Mrs. Brinkley; but just then she met +Brinkley lumbering heavily homeward; she heard his hard breathing from the +exertion of bowing to her as he passed. + +His wife met him in the hall, and went up to kiss him. He smelt +abominably of tobacco smoke. + +"Hullo!" said her husband. "What are you after?" + +"Nothing," said his wife, enjoying his joke. "Come in here; I want to +tell you how I have just sat upon Miss Cotton." + + + + +XLVIII. + +The relations between Dan and his father had always been kindly and +trustful; they now became, in a degree that touched and flattered the +young fellow, confidential. With the rest of the family there soon ceased +to be any reference to his engagement; his sisters were glad, each in her +way, to have him back again; and, whatever they may have said between +themselves, they said nothing to him about Alice. His mother appeared to +have finished with the matter the first night; she had her theory, and she +did it justice; and when Mrs. Mavering had once done a thing justice, she +did not bring it up again unless somebody disputed it. But nobody had +defended Mrs. Pasmer after Dan's feeble protest in her behalf; Mrs. +Mavering's theory was accepted with obedience if not conviction; the whole +affair dropped, except between Dan and his father. + +Dan was certainly not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find that he +was not so gay. There had been a sort of mercy in the suddenness of the +shock; it benumbed him, and the real stress and pain came during the long +weeks that followed, when nothing occurred to vary the situation in any +manner; he did not hear a word about Alice from Boston, nor any rumour of +her people. + +At first he had intended to go back with Boardman and face it out; but +there seemed no use in this, and when it came to the point he found it +impossible. Boardman went back alone, and he put Dan's things together in +his rooms at Boston and sent them to him, so that Dan remained at home. + +He set about helping his father at the business with unaffected docility. +He tried not to pose, and he did his best to bear his loss and humiliation +with manly fortitude. But his whole life had not set so strongly in one +direction that it could be sharply turned aside now, and not in moments of +forgetfulness press against the barriers almost to bursting. Now and +then, when he came to himself from the wonted tendency, and remembered +that Alice and he, who had been all in all to each other, were now +nothing, the pain was so sharp, so astonishing, that he could not keep +down a groan, which he then tried to turn off with a cough, or a snatch of +song, or a whistle, looking wildly round to see if any one had noticed. + +Once this happened when his father and he were walking silently home from +the works, and his father said, without touching him or showing his +sympathy except in his tone of humorously frank recognition, "Does it +still hurt a little occasionally, Dan?" + +"Yes, sir, it hurts," said the son; and he turned his face aside, and +whistled through his teeth. + +"Well, it's a trial, I suppose," said his father, with his gentle, soft +half-lisp. "But there are greater trials." + +"How, greater?" asked Dan, with sad incredulity. "I've lost all that made +life worth living; and it's all my own fault, too." + +"Yes," said his father; "I think she was a good girl." + +"Good!" cried Dan; the word seemed to choke him. + +"Still, I doubt if it's all your fault." Dan looked round at him. He +added, "And I think it's perhaps for the best as it is." + +Dan halted, and then said, "Oh, I suppose so," with dreary resignation, as +they walked on. + +"Let us go round by the paddock," said his father, "and see if Pat's put +the horses up yet. You can hardly remember your mother, before she became +an invalid, I suppose," he added, as Dan mechanically turned aside with +him from the path that led to the house into that leading to the barn. + +"No; I was such a little fellow," said Dan. + +"Women give up a great deal when they marry," said the elder. "It's not +strange that they exaggerate the sacrifice, and expect more in return than +it's in the nature of men to give them. I should have been sorry to have +you marry a woman of an exacting disposition." + +"I'm afraid she was exacting," said Dan. "But she never asked more than +was right." + +"And it's difficult to do all that's right," suggested the elder. + +"I'm sure you always have, father," said the son. + +The father did not respond. "I wish you could remember your mother when +she was well," he said. Presently he added, "I think it isn't best for a +woman to be too much in love with her husband." + +Dan took this to himself, and he laughed harshly. "She's been able to +dissemble her love at last." + +His father went on, "Women keep the romantic feeling longer than men; it +dies out of us very soon--perhaps too soon." + + +"You think I couldn't have come to time?" asked Dan. "Well, as it's +turned out, I won't have to." + +"No man can be all a woman wishes him to be," said his father. "It's +better for the disappointment to come before it's too late." + +"I was to blame," said Dan stoutly. "She was all right." + +"You were to blame in the particular instance," his father answered. "But +in general the fault was in her--or her temperament. As long as the +romance lasted she might have deluded herself, and believed you were all +she imagined you; but romance can't last, even with women. I don like +your faults, and I don't want you to excuse them to yourself. I don't +like your chancing things, and leaving them to come out all right of +themselves; but I've always tried to make you children see all your +qualities in their true proportion and relation." + +"Yes; I know that, sir," said Dan. + +"Perhaps," continued his father, as they swung easily along, shoulder to +shoulder, "I may have gone too far in that direction because I was afraid +that you might take your mother too seriously in the other--that you might +not understand that she judged you from her nerves and not her +convictions. It's part of her malady, of her suffering, that her +inherited Puritanism clouds her judgment, and makes her see all faults as +of one size and equally damning. I wish you to know that she was not +always so, but was once able to distinguish differences in error, and to +realise that evil is of ill-will." + +"Yes; I know that," said Dan. "She is now--when she feels well." + +"Harm comes from many things, but evil is of the heart. I wouldn't have +you condemn yourself too severely for harm that you didn't intend--that's +remorse--that's insanity; and I wouldn't have you fall under the +condemnation of another's invalid judgment." + +"Thank you, father," said Dan. + +They had come up to the paddock behind the barn, and they laid their arms +on the fence while they looked over at the horses, which were still there. +The beasts, in their rough winter coats, some bedaubed with frozen clots +of the mud in which they had been rolling earlier in the afternoon, stood +motionless in the thin, keen breeze that crept over the hillside from the +March sunset, and blew their manes and tails out toward Dan and his +father. Dan's pony sent him a gleam of recognition from under his frowsy +bangs, but did not stir. + +"Bunch looks like a caterpillar," he said, recalling the time when his +father had given him the pony; he was a boy then, and the pony was as much +to him, it went through his mind, as Alice had ever been. Was it all a +jest, an irony? he asked himself. + +"He's getting pretty old," said his father. "Let's see: you were only +twelve." + +"Ten," said Dan. "We've had him thirteen years." + +Some of the horses pricked up their ears at the sound of their voices. +One of them bit another's neck; the victim threw up his heels and +squealed. + +Pat called from the stable, "Heigh, you divils!" + +"I think he'd better take them in," said Dan's father; and he continued, +as if it were all the same subject, "I hope you'll have seen something +more of the world before you fall in love the next time." + +"Thank you; there won't be any next time. But do you consider the world +such a school of morals; then? I supposed it was a very bad place." + +"We seem to have been all born into it," said the father. He lifted his +arms from the fence, and Dan mechanically followed him into the stable. +A warm, homely smell of hay and of horses filled the place; a lantern +glimmered, a faint blot, in the loft where Pat was pitching some hay +forward to the edge of the boards; the naphtha gas weakly flared from the +jets beside the harness-room, whence a smell of leather issued and mingled +with the other smell. The simple, earthy wholesomeness of the place +appealed to Dan and comforted him. The hay began to tumble from the loft +with a pleasant rustling sound. + +His father called up to Pat, "I think you'd better take the horses in +now." + +"Yes, sir: I've got the box-stalls ready for 'em." + +Dan remembered how he and Eunice used to get into the box-stall with his +pony, and play at circus with it; he stood up on the pony, and his sister +was the ring-master. The picture of his careless childhood reflected a +deeper pathos upon his troubled present, and he sighed again. + +His father said, as they moved on through the barn: "Some of the best +people I've ever known were what were called worldly people. They are apt +to be sincere, and they have none of the spiritual pride, the conceit of +self-righteousness, which often comes to people who are shut up by +conscience or circumstance to the study of their own motives and actions." + +"I don't think she was one of that kind," said Dan. + +"Oh, I don't know that she was. But the chances of happiness, of +goodness, would be greater with a less self-centred person--for you." + +"Ah, Yes! For me!" said Dan bitterly. "Because I hadn't it in me to be +frank with her. With a man like me, a woman had better be a little +scampish, too! Father, I could get over the loss; she might have died, +and I could have got over that; but I can't get over being to blame." + +"I don't think I'd indulge in any remorse," said his father. "There's +nothing so useless, so depraving, as that. If you see you're wrong, it's +for your warning, not for your destruction." + +Dan was not really feeling very remorseful; he had never felt that he was +much to blame; but he had an intellectual perception of the case, and he +thought that he ought to feel remorseful; it was this persuasion that he +took for an emotion. He continued to look very disconsolate. + +"Come," said his father, touching his arm, "I don't want you to brood upon +these things. It can do no manner of good. I want you to go to New York +next week and look after that Lafflin process. If it's what he thinks--if +he can really cast his brass patterns without air-holes--it will +revolutionise our business. I want to get hold of him." + +The Portuguese cook was standing in the basement door which they passed at +the back of the house. He saluted father and son with a glittering smile. + +"Hello, Joe!" said Dan. + +"Ah, Joe!" said his father; he touched his hat to the cook, who snatched +his cap off. + +"What a brick you are, father!" thought Dan. His heart leaped at the +notion of getting away from Ponkwasset; he perceived how it had been +irking him to stay. "If you think I could manage it with Lafflin " + +"Oh, I think you could. He's another slippery chap." + +Dan laughed for pleasure and pain at his father's joke. + + + + +XLIX. + +In New York Dan found that Lafflin had gone to Washington to look up +something in connection with his patent. In his eagerness to get away +from home, Dan had supposed that his father meant to make a holiday for +him, and he learned with a little surprise that he was quite in earnest +about getting hold of the invention. he wrote home of Lafflin's absence; +and he got a telegram in reply ordering him to follow on to Washington. + +The sun was shining warm on the asphalt when he stepped out of the +Pennsylvania Depot with his bag in his hand, and put it into the hansom +that drove up for him. The sky overhead was of an intense blue that made +him remember the Boston sky as pale and grey; when the hansom tilted out +into the Avenue he had a joyous glimpse of the White House; of the Capitol +swimming like a balloon in the cloudless air. A keen March breeze swept +the dust before him, and through its veil the classic Treasury Building +showed like one edifice standing perfect amid ruin represented by the jag- +tooth irregularities of the business architecture along the wide street. + +He had never been in Washington before, and he had a confused sense of +having got back to Rome, which he remembered from his boyish visit. +Throughout his stay he seemed to be coming up against the facade of the +Temple of Neptune; but it was the Patent Office, or the Treasury Building, +or the White House, and under the gay Southern sky this reversion to the +sensations of a happier time began at once, and made itself a lasting +relief. He felt a lift in his spirits from the first. They gave him a +room at Wormley's, where the chairs comported themselves as self- +respectfully upon two or three legs as they would have done at Boston upon +four; the cooking was excellent, and a mercenary welcome glittered from +all the kind black faces around him. After the quiet of Ponkwasset and +the rush of New York, the lazy ease of the hotel pleased him; the clack of +boots over its pavements, the clouds of tobacco smoke, the Southern and +Western accents, the spectacle of people unexpectedly encountering and +recognising each other in the office and the dining-room, all helped to +restore him to a hopefuller mood. Without asking his heart too curiously +why, he found it lighter; he felt that he was still young. + +In the weather he had struck a cold wave, and the wind was bitter in the +streets, but they were full of sun; he found the grass green in sheltered +places, and in one of the Circles he plucked a blossomed spray from an +adventurous forceythia. This happened when he was walking from Wormley's +to the Arlington by a roundabout way of his own involuntary invention, and +he had the flowers in his button-hole when Lafflin was pointed out to him +in the reading room there, and he introduced himself. Lafflin had put his +hat far back on his head, and was intensely chewing a toothpick, with an +air of rapture from everything about him. He seemed a very simple soul to +Dan's inexperience of men, and the young fellow had no difficulty in +committing him to a fair conditional arrangement. He was going to stay +some days in Washington, and he promised other interviews, so that Dan +thought it best to stay too. He used a sheet of the Arlington letter- +paper in writing his father of what he had done; and then, as Lafflin had +left him, he posted his letter at the clerk's desk, and wandered out +through a corridor different from that which he had come in by. It led by +the door of the ladies parlour, and at the sound of women's voices Dan +halted. For no other reason than that such voices always irresistibly +allured him, he went in, putting on an air of having come to look for some +one. There were two or three groups of ladies receiving friends in +different parts of the room. At the window a girl's figure silhouetted +itself against the keen light, and as he advanced into the room, peering +about, it turned with a certain vividness that seemed familiar. This +young lady, whoever she was, had the advantage of Dan in seeing him with +the light on his face, and he was still in the dark about her, when she +advanced swiftly upon him, holding out her hand. + +"You don't seem to know your old friends, Mr. Mavering," and the manly +tones left him no doubt. + +He felt a rush of gladness, and he clasped her hand and clung to it as if +he were not going to let it go again, bubbling out incoherencies of +pleasure at meeting her. " Why, Miss Anderson! You here?" What a piece +of luck! Of course I couldn't see you against the window--make you out! +But something looked familiar--and the way you turned! And when you +started toward me! I'm awfully glad! When--where are you--that is--" + +Miss Anderson kept laughing with him, and bubbled back that she was very +glad too, and she was staying with her aunt in that hotel, and they had +been there a month, and didn't he think Washington was charming? But it +was too bad he had just got there with that blizzard. The weather had +been perfectly divine till the day before yesterday. + +He took the spray of forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believe it. +I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs to you." He. +offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took it in the same humour. + +"What is the language of forceythia?" she asked. + +"It has none--only expressive silence, you know." + +A middle-aged lady came in, and Miss Anderson said, "My aunt, Mr. +Mavering." + +"Mr. Mavering will hardly remember me," said the lady, giving him her +hand. He protested that he should indeed, but she had really made but a +vague impression upon him at Campobello. He knew that she was there with +Miss Anderson; he had been polite to her as he was to all women; but he +had not noticed her much, and in his heart he had a slight for her, as +compared with the Boston people he was more naturally thrown with; he +certainly had not remembered that she was a little hard of hearing. + +Miss Van Hook was in a steel-grey effect of dress, and, she had carried +this up into her hair, of which she worn two short vertical curls on each +temple. + +She did not sit down, and Dan perceived that the ladies were going out. +In her tailor-made suit of close-fitting serge and her Paris bonnet, +carried like a crest on her pretty little head, Miss Anderson was +charming. She had a short veil that came across the base of her lively +nose, and left her mouth and chin to make the most of themselves, +unprejudiced by its irregularity. + +Dan felt it a hardship to part with them, but he prepared to take himself +off. Miss Anderson asked him how long he was to be in Washington, and +said he must come to see them; they meant to stay two weeks yet, and then +they were going to Old Point Comfort; they had their rooms engaged. + +He walked down to their carriage with the ladies and put them into it, and +Miss Anderson still kept him talking there. + +Her aunt said: "Why shouldn't you come with us, Mr. Mavering? We're going +to Mrs. Secretary Miller's reception." + +Dan gave himself a glance. "I don't know--if you want me?" + +"We want you," said Miss Anderson. "Very well, then, I'll go." + +He got in, and they began rolling over that smooth Washington asphalt +which makes talk in a carriage as easy as in a drawing-room. Dan kept +saying to himself, "Now she's going to bring up Campobello;" but Miss +Anderson never recurred to their former meeting, and except for the sense +of old acquaintance which was manifest in her treatment of him he might +have thought that they had never met before. She talked of Washington and +its informal delights; and of those plans which her aunt had made, like +every one who spends a month in Washington, to spend all the remaining +winters of her life there. + +It seemed to Dan that Miss Anderson was avoiding Campobello on his +account; he knew from what Alice had told him that there had been much +surmise about their affair after he had left the island, and he suspected +that Miss Anderson thought the subject was painful to him. He wished to +reassure her. He asked at the first break in the talk about Washington, +"How are the Trevors?" + +"Oh, quite well," she said, promptly availing herself of the opening. +"Have you seen any of our Campobello friends lately in Boston?" + +"No; I've been at home for the last month--in the country." He scanned +her face to see if she knew anything of his engagement. But she seemed +honestly ignorant of everything since Campobello; she was not just the +kind of New York girl who would visit in Boston, or have friends living +there; probably she had never heard of his engagement. Somehow this +seemed to simplify matters for Dan. She did not ask specifically after +the Pasmers; but that might have been because of the sort of break in her +friendship with Alice after that night at the Trevors'; she did not ask +specifically after Mrs. Brinkley or any of the others. + +At Mrs. Secretary Miller's door there was a rapid arrival and departure of +carriages, of coupes, of hansoms, and of herdics, all managed by a man in +plain livery, who opened and shut the doors, and sent the drivers off +without the intervention of a policeman; it is the genius of Washington, +which distinguishes it from every other capital, from every other city, to +make no show of formality, of any manner of constraint anywhere. People +were swarming in and out; coming and going on foot as well as by carriage. +The blandest of coloured uncles received their cards in the hall and put +them into a vast tray heaped up with pasteboard, smiling affectionately +upon them as if they had done him a favour. + +"Don't you like them?" asked Dan of Miss Anderson; he meant the Southern +negroes. + +"I adoye them," she responded, with equal fervour. "You must study some +new types here for next summer," she added. + +Dan laughed and winced too. "Yes!" Then be said solemnly, "I am not +going to Campobello next summer." + +They felt into a stream of people tending toward an archway between the +drawing-rooms, where Mrs. Secretary Miller stood with two lady friends who +were helping her receive. They smiled wearily but kindly upon the crowd, +for whom the Secretary's wife had a look of impartial hospitality. She +could not have known more than one in fifty; and she met them all with +this look at first, breaking into incredulous recognition when she found a +friend. "Don't go away yet," she said cordially, to Miss Van Hook and her +niece, and she held their hands for a moment with a gentle look of relief +and appeal which included Dan. "Let me introduce you to Mrs. Tolliver and +to Miss Dixon." + +These ladies said that it was not necessary in regard to Miss Anderson and +Miss Van Hook; and as the crowd pushed them on, Dan felt that they had +been received with distinction. + +The crowd expressed the national variety of rich and poor, plain and +fashionable, urbane and rustic; they elbowed and shouldered each other +upon a perfect equality in a place where all were as free to come as to +the White House, and they jostled quaint groups of almond-eyed legations +in the yellows and purples of the East, who looked dreamily on as if +puzzled past all surmise by the scene. Certain young gentlemen with the +unmistakable air of being European or South American attaches found their +way about on their little feet, which the stalwart boots of the republican +masses must have imperilled; and smiled with a faint diplomatic +superiority, not visibly admitted, but all the same indisputable. Several +of these seemed to know Miss Anderson, and took her presentation of +Mavering with exaggerated effusion. + +"I want to introduce you to my cousin over yonder," she said, getting rid +of a minute Brazilian under-secretary, and putting her hand on Dan's arm +to direct him: "Mrs. Justice Averill." + +Miss Van Hook, keeping her look of severe vigilance, really followed her +energetic niece, who took the lead, as a young lady must whenever she and +her chaperon meet on equal terms. + +Mrs. Justice Averill, who was from the far West somewhere, received Dan +with the ease of the far East, and was talking London and Paris to him +before the end of the third minute. It gave Dan a sense of liberation, of +expansion; he filled his lungs with the cosmopolitan air in a sort of +intoxication; without formulating it, he felt, with the astonishment which +must always attend the Bostonian's perception of the fact, that there is a +great social life in America outside of Boston. At Campobello he had +thought Miss Anderson a very jolly girl, bright, and up to all sorts of +things; but in the presence of the portable Boston there he could not help +regarding her with a sort of tolerance which he now blushed for; he +thought he had been a great ass. She seemed to know all sorts of nice +people, and she strove with generous hospitality to make him have a good +time. She said it was Cabinet Day, and that all the secretaries' wives +were receiving, and she told him he had better make the rounds with them. +He assented very willingly, and at six o'clock he was already so much in +the spirit of this free and simple society, so much opener and therefore +so much wiser than any other, that he professed a profound disappointment +with the two or three Cabinet ladies whose failure to receive brought his +pleasure to a premature close. + +"But I suppose you're going to Mrs. Whittington's to-night!" Miss +Anderson said to him, as they drove up to Wormley's, where she set him +down. Miss Van Hook had long ceased to say anything; Dan thought her a +perfect duenna. "You know you can go late there," she added. + +"No, I can't go at all," said Dan. "I don't know them." + +"They're New England people," urged Miss Anderson; as if to make him try +to think that he was asked to Mrs. Whittington's. + +"I don't know more than half the population of New England," said Dan, +with apparent levity, but real forlornness. + +"If you'd like to go--if you're sure you've no other engagement--" + +"Oh, I'm certain of that?" + +"--we would come for you." + +"Do!" + +"At half-past ten, then." + +Miss Anderson explained to her aunt, who cordially confirmed her +invitation, and they both shook hands with him upon it, and he backed out +of the carriage with a grin of happiness on his face; it remained there +while he wrote out the order for his dinner, which they require at +Wormley's in holograph. The waiter reflected his smile with ethnical +warm-heartedness. For a moment Dan tried to think what it was he had +forgotten; he thought it was some other dish; then he remembered that it +was his broken heart. He tried to subdue himself; but there was something +in the air of the place, the climate, perhaps, or a pleasant sense of its +facile social life, that kept him buoyant in spite of himself. He went +out after dinner, and saw part of a poor play, and returned in time to +dress for his appointment with Miss Anderson. Her aunt was with her, of +course; she seemed to Dan more indefatigable than she was by day. He +could not think her superfluous; and she was very good-natured. She made +little remarks full of conventional wisdom, and appealed to his judgment +on several points as they drove along. When they came to a street lamp +where she could see him, he nodded and said yes, or no, respectfully. +Between times he talked with Miss Anderson, who lectured him upon +Washington society, and prepared him for the difference he was to find +between Mrs. Whittington's evening of invited guests and the Cabinet +ladies' afternoon of volunteer guests. + +"Volunteer guests is good," he laughed. "Do you mean that anybody can +go?" + +"Anybody that is able to be about. This is Cabinet Day. There's a +Supreme Court Day and a Senators' Day, and a Representatives' Day. Do you +mean to say you weren't going to call upon your Senator?" + +"I didn't know I had any." + +"Neither did I till I came here. But you've got two; everybody's got two. +And the President's wife receives three times a week, and the President +has two or three days. They say the public days at the White House are +great fun. I've been to some of the invited, or semi-invited or official +evenings." + +He could not see that difference from the great public receptions which +Miss Anderson had promised him at Mrs. Whittington's, though he pretended +afterward that he had done so. The people were more uniformly well +dressed, there were not so many of them, and the hostess was sure of +knowing her acquaintances at first glance; but there was the same ease, +the same unconstraint, the same absence of provincial anxiety which makes +a Washington a lighter and friendlier London. There were rather more +sallow attaches; in their low-cut white waistcoats, with small brass +buttons, they moved more consciously about, and looked weightier +personages than several foreign ministers who were present. + +Dan was soon lost from the side of Miss Anderson, who more and more seemed +to him important socially. She seemed, in her present leadership; to know +more of life, than he; to be maturer. But she did not abuse her +superiority; she kept an effect of her last summer's friendliness for him +throughout. Several times, finding herself near him; she introduced him +to people. + +Guests kept arriving till midnight. Among the latest, when Dan had lost +himself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, who spoke +with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley. +He felt himself grow pale and inattentive to his pretty Virginian. That +accent of Mrs. Brinkley's recalled him to his history. He hoped that she +would not see him; but in another moment he was greeting her with a warmth +which Bostonians seldom show in meeting at Boston. + +"When did you come to Washington?" she asked, trying to keep her +consciousness out of her eyes, which she let dwell kindly upon him. + +"Day before yesterday--no, yesterday. It seems a month, I've seen and +done so much," he said, with his laugh. "Miss Anderson's been showing me +the whole of Washington society. Have you been here long?" + +"Since morning," said Mrs. Brinkley. And she added, "Miss Anderson?" + +"Yes--Campobello, don't you know?" + +"Oh yes. Is she here to-night?" + +"I came with her and her aunt." + +"Oh yes." + +"How is all Boston?" asked Dan boldly. + +"I don't know; I'm just going down to Old Point Comfort to ask. Every +other house on the Back Bay has been abandoned for the Hygeia." Mrs. +Brinkley stopped, and then she asked. "Are you just up from there?" + +"No; but I don't know but I shall go." + +"Hello, Mavering!" said Mr. Brinkley, coming up and taking his hand into +his fat grasp. "On your way to Fortress Monroe? Better come with us. +Why; Munt!" + +He turned to greet this other Bostonian, who had hardly expressed his joy +at meeting with his fellow-townsmen when the hostess rustled softly up, +and said, with the irony more or less friendly, which everybody uses in +speaking of Boston, or recognising the intellectual pre-eminence of its +people, "I'm not going to let you keep this feast of reason all to your +selves. I want you to leaven the whole lump," and she began to disperse +them, and to introduce them about right and left. + +Dan tried to find his Virginian again, but she was gone. He found Miss +Anderson; she was with her aunt. "Shall we be tearing you away?" she +asked. + +"Oh no. I'm quite ready to go." + +His nerves were in a tremble. Those Boston faces and voices had brought +it all back again; it seemed as if he had met Alice. He was silent and +incoherent as they drove home, but Miss Anderson apparently did not want +to talk much, and apparently did not notice his reticence. + +He fell asleep with the pang in his heart which had been there so often. + +When Dan came down to breakfast he found the Brinkleys at a pleasant place +by one of the windows, and after they had exchanged a pleased surprise +with him that they should all happen to be in the same hotel, they asked +him to sit at their table. + +There was a bright sun shining, and the ache was gone out of Dan's heart. +He began to chatter gaily with Mrs. Brinkley about Washington. + +"Oh, better come on to Fortress Monroe," said her husband. "Better come +on with us." + +"No, I can't just yet," said Dan. "I've got some business here that will +keep me for awhile. Perhaps I may run down there a little later." + +"Miss Anderson seems to have a good deal of business in Washington too," +observed Brinkley, with some hazy notion of saying a pleasant rallying +thing to the young man. He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. With +those panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan's love +affair with Miss Pasmer. + +Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson as impersonal +as possible. + +"It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesome +creature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think of +the broad daylight. I always liked that girl." + +"Yes; isn't she jolly?" said Dan joyously. "She seems to know everybody +here. It's a great piece of luck for me. They're going to take a house +in Washington next winter." + +"Yes; I know that stage," said Mrs. Brinkley. "Her aunt's an amusingly +New-York respectability. I don't think you'd find just such Miss Mitford +curls as hers in all Boston." + +"Yes, they are like the portraits, aren't they?" said Dan; delighted. +"She's very nice, don't you think?" + +"Very. But Miss Anderson is more than that. I was disposed to be +critical of her at Campobello for a while, but she wore extremely well. +All at once you found yourself admiring her uncommon common-sense. + +"Yes. That's just it," cried Dan. "She is so sensible!" + +"I think she's very pretty," said Mrs. Brinkley." + +"Well, her nose," suggested Dan. "It seems a little capricious." + +"It's a trifle bizarre, I suppose. But what beautiful eyes! And her +figure! I declare that girl's carriage is something superb." + +"Yes, she has a magnificent walk." + +"Walks with her carriage," mused Brinkley aloud. + +His wife did not regard him. "I don't know what Miss Anderson's +principles are, but her practices are perfect. I never knew her do an +unkind or shabby thing. She seems very good and very wise. And that deep +voice of hers has such a charm. It's so restful. You feel as if you +could repose upon it for a thousand years. Well! You will get down +before we leave?" + +"Yes, I will," said Dan. "I'm here after a man who's after a patent, and +as soon as I can finish up my business with him I believe I will run down +to Fortress Monroe." + +"This eleven-o'clock train will get you there at six," said Brinkley. +"Better telegraph for your rooms." + + +"Or, let us know," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and we'll secure them for you." + +"Oh, thank you," said Dan. + +He went away, feeling that Mrs. Brinkley was the pleasantest woman he ever +met. He knew that she had talked Miss Anderson so fully in order to take +away the implication of her husband's joke, and he admired her tact. He +thought of this as he loitered along the street from Wormley's to the +Arlington, where he was going to find Miss Anderson, by an appointment of +the night before, and take a walk with her; and thinking of tact made him +think of Mrs. Pasmer. Mrs. Pasmer was full of tact; and how kind she had +always been to him! She had really been like a mother to him; he was sure +she had understood him; he believed she had defended him; with a futility +of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend him now to Alice. Alice +was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; her mother's words fell +upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer's tears, which Dan made her +shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl. Not that he cared now. + +The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine lay +still, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed to +bask in it, and which it softened to the foot. He loitered by the gate of +the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jackson is +riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at the French- +Italian classicism of the White House architecture with a pensive joy at +finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington. + +Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a long +walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and +through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes +beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping +in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three they sat down +on the iron benches and rested. + +They talked and talked--about the people they knew, and of whom they found +that they thought surprisingly alike, and about themselves, whom they +found surprisingly alike in a great many things, and then surprisingly +unlike. Dan brought forward some points of identity which he, and Alice +had found in themselves; it was just the same with Miss Anderson. She +found herself rather warm with the seal-skin sacque she had put on; she +let him carry it on his arm while they walked, and then lay it over her +shoulders when they sat down. He felt a pang of self-reproach, as if he +had been inconstant to Alice. This was an old habit of feeling, formed +during the months of their engagement, when, at her inspiration, he was +always bringing himself to book about something. He replied to her +bitterly, in the colloquy which began to hold itself in his mind, and told +her that she had no claim upon him now; that if his thoughts wandered from +her it was her fault, not his; that she herself had set them free. But in +fact he was like all young men, with a thousand, potentialities of loving. +There was no aspect of beauty that did not tenderly move him; he could not +help a soft thrill at the sight of any pretty shape, the sound of any +piquant voice; and Alice had merely been the synthesis of all that was +most charming to this fancy. This is a truth which it is the convention +of the poets and the novelists to deny; but it is also true that she might +have remained the sum of all that was loveliest if she would; or if she +could. + +It was chiefly because she would not or could not that his glance +recognised the charm of Miss Anderson's back hair, both in its straying +gossamer and in the loose mass in which it was caught up under her hat, +when he laid her sacque on her shoulders. They met that afternoon at a +Senator's, and in the house of a distinguished citizen, to whose wife Dan +had been presented at Mrs. Whittington's, and who had somehow got his +address, and sent him a card for her evening. They encountered here with +a jocose old friendliness, and a profession of being tired of always +meeting Miss Anderson and Mr. Mavering. He brought her salad and ice, and +they made an appointment for another walk in the morning, if it was fine. + +He carried her some flowers. A succession of fine days followed, and they +walked every morning. Sometimes Dan was late, and explained that it was +his patent-right man had kept him. She was interested in the patent-right +man, whom Dan began to find not quite so simple as at first, but she was +not exacting with him about his want of punctuality; she was very easy- +going; she was not always ready herself. When he began to beat about the +bush, to talk insincerities, and to lose himself in intentionless +plausibilities, she waited with serene patience for him to have done, and +met him on their habitual ground of frankness and reality as if he had +not left it. He got to telling her all his steps with his patent-right +man, who seemed to be growing mote and more slippery, and who presently +developed a demand for funds. Then she gave him some very shrewd, +practical advice, and told him to go right into the hotel office and +telegraph to his father while she was putting on her bonnet. + +"Yes," he said, "that's what I thought of doing." But he admired her for +advising him; he said to himself that Miss Anderson was the kind of girl +his father would admire. She was good, and she was of the world too; +that was what his father meant. He imagined himself arriving home and +saying, "Well father, you know that despatch I sent you, about Lafflin's +wanting money?" and telling him about Miss Anderson. Then he fancied her +acquainted with his sisters and visiting them, and his father more and +more fond of her, and perhaps in declining health, and eager to see his +son settled in life; and he pictured himself telling her that he had done +with love for ever, but if she could accept respect, fidelity, gratitude, +he was ready to devote his life to her. She refused him, but they always +remained good friends and comrades; she married another, perhaps Boardman, +while Dan was writing out his telegram, and he broke into whispered +maledictions on his folly, which attracted the notice of the operator. + +One morning when he sent up his name to Miss Anderson, whom he did not +find in the hotel parlour, the servant came back with word that Miss Van +Hook would like to have him come up to their rooms. But it was Miss +Anderson who met him at the door. + +"It seemed rather formal to send you word that Miss Van Hook was +indisposed, and Miss Anderson would be unable to walk this morning, +and I thought perhaps you'd rather come up and get my regrets in person. +And I wanted you to see our view." + +She led the way to the window for it, but they did not look at it, though +they sat down there apparently for the purpose. Dan put his hat beside +his chair, and observed some inattentive civilities in inquiring after +Miss Van Hook's health, and in hearing that it was merely a bad headache, +one of a sort in which her niece hated to leave her to serve herself with +the wet compresses which Miss Van Hook always bore on her forehead for it. + +"One thing: it's decided us to be off for Fortress Monroe at last. We +shall go by the boat to-morrow, if my aunt's better." + +"To-morrow?" said Dan. "What's to become of me when you're gone?" + +"Oh, we shall not take the whole population with us," suggested Miss +Anderson. + +"I wish you would take me. I told Mrs. Brinkley I would come while she +was there, but I'm afraid I can't get off. Lafflin is developing into all +sorts of strange propositions." + +"I think you'd better look out for that man," said Miss Anderson. + +"Oh, I do nothing without consulting my father. But I shall miss you." + +"Thank you," said the girl gravely. + +"I don't mean in a business capacity only." + +They both laughed, and Dan looked about the room, which he found was a +private hotel parlour, softened to a more domestic effect by the signs of +its prolonged occupation by two refined women. On a table stood a leather +photograph envelope with three cabinet pictures in it. Along the top lay +a spray of withered forceythia. Dan's wandering eyes rested on it. Miss +Anderson went and softly closed the door opening into the next room. + +"I was afraid our talking might disturb my aunt," she said, and on her way +back to him she picked up the photograph case and brought it to the light. +"These are my father and mother. We live at Yonkers; but I'm with my aunt +a good deal of the time in town--even when I'm at home." She laughed at +her own contradictory statement, and put the case back without explaining +the third figure--a figure in uniform. Dan conjectured a military +brother, or from her indifference perhaps a militia brother, and +then forgot about him. But the partial Yonkers residence accounted for +traits of unconventionality in Miss Anderson which he had not been able to +reconcile with the notion of an exclusively New York breeding. He felt +the relief, the sympathy, the certainty of intelligence which every person +whose life has been partly spent in the country feels at finding that a +suspected cockney has also had the outlook into nature and simplicity. + +On the Yonkers basis they became more intimate, more personal, and Dan +told her about Ponkwasset Falls and his mother and sisters; he told her +about his father, and she said she should like to see his father; she +thought he must be like her father. + +"All at once, and for no reason that he could think of afterward, except, +perhaps, the desire to see the case with her eyes, he began to tell her of +his affair with Alice, and how and why it was broken off; he told the +whole truth in regard to that, and did not spare himself. + +She listened without once speaking, but without apparent surprise at the +confidence, though she may have felt surprised. At times she looked as if +her thoughts were away from what he was saying. + +He ended with, "I'm sure I don't know why I've told you all this. But I +wanted you to know about me. The worst." + +Miss Anderson said, looking down, "I always thought she was a very +conscientious giyl." Then after a pause, in which she seemed to be +overcoming an embarrassment in being obliged to speak of another in such a +conviction, "I think she was very moybid. She was like ever so many New +England giyls that I've met. They seem to want some excuse for suffering; +and they must suffer even if it's through somebody else. I don't know; +they're romantic, New England giyls are; they have too many ideals." + +Dan felt a balm in this; he too had noticed a superfluity of ideals in +Alice, he had borne the burden of realising some of them; they all seemed +to relate in objectionable degree to his perfectionation. So he said +gloomily, "She was very good. And I was to blame." + +"Oh yes!" said Miss Anderson, catching her breath in a queer way; "she +seyved you right." + +She rose abruptly, as if she heard her aunt speak, and Dan perceived that +he had been making a long call. + +He went away dazed and dissatisfied; he knew now that he ought not to have +told Miss Anderson about his affair, unless he meant more by his +confidence than he really did--unless he meant to follow it up. + +He took leave of her, and asked her to make his adieux to her aunt; but +the next day he came down to the boat to see them off. It seemed to him +that their interview had ended too hastily; he felt sore and restless over +it; he hoped that something more conclusive might happen. But at the boat +Miss Anderson and her aunt were inseparable. Miss Van Hook said she hoped +they should soon see him at the Hygeia, and he replied that he was not +sure that he should be able to come after all. + +Miss Anderson called something after him as he turned from them to go +ashore. He ran back eagerly to know what it was. " Better lookout for +that Mr. Lafflin of yours," she repeated. + +"Oh! oh yes," he said, indefinitely disappointed. "I shall keep a sharp +eye on him." He was disappointed, but he could not have said what he had +hoped or expected her to say. He was humbled before himself for having +told Miss Anderson about his affair with Alice, and had wished she would +say something that he might scramble back to his self-esteem upon. He had +told her all that partly from mere weakness, from his longing for the +sympathy which he was always so ready to give, and partly from the +willingness to pose before her as a broken heart, to dazzle her by the +irony and persiflage with which he could treat such a tragical matter; but +he could not feel that he had succeeded. The sum of her comment had been +that Alice had served him right. He did not know whether she really +believed that or merely said it to punish him for some reason; but he +could never let it be the last word. He tingled as he turned to wave his +handkerchief to her on the boat, with the suspicion that she was laughing +at him; and he could not console himself with any hero of a novel who had +got himself into just such a box. There were always circumstances, +incidents, mitigations, that kept the hero still a hero, and ennobled the +box into an unjust prison cell. + + + + +L. + +On the long sunny piazza of the Hygeia Mrs. Brinkley and Miss Van Hook sat +and talked in a community of interest which they had not discovered during +the summer before at Campobello, and with an equality of hearing which the +sound of the waves washing almost at their feet established between them. +In this pleasant noise Miss Van Hook heard as well as any one, and Mrs. +Brinkley gradually realised that it was the trouble of having to lift her +voice that had kept her from cultivating a very agreeable acquaintance +before. The ladies sat in a secluded corner, wearing light wraps that +they had often found comfortable at Campobello in August, and from time to +time attested to each other their astonishment that they needed no more at +Old Point in early April. + +They did this not only as a just tribute to the amiable climate, but as a +relief from the topic which had been absorbing them, and to which they +constantly returned. + +"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a sort of finality, "I think it is the best +thing that could possibly have happened to him. He is bearing it in a +very manly way, but I fancy he has felt it deeply, poor fellow. He's +never been in Boston since, and I don't believe he'd come here if he'd any +idea how many Boston people there were in the hotel--we swarm! It would +be very painful to him." + +"Yes," said Miss Van Hook, "young people seem to feel those things." + +"Of course he's going to get over it. That's what young people do too. +At his age he can't help being caught with every pretty face and every +pretty figure, even in the midst of his woe, and it's only a question of +time till he seizes some pretty hand and gets drawn out of it altogether." + +"I think that would be the case with my niece, too," said Miss Van Hook, +"if she wasn't kept in it by a sense of loyalty. I don't believe she +really dares much for Lieutenant Willing any more; but he sees no society +where he's stationed, of course, and his constancy is a--a rebuke and a-- +a--an incentive to her. They were engaged a long time ago just after he +left West Point--and we've always been in hopes that he would be removed +to some post where he could meet other ladies and become interested in +some one else. But he never has, and so the affair remains. It's most +undesirable they should marry, and in the meantime she won't break it off, +and it's spoiling her chances in life." + +"It is too bad," sighed Mrs. Brinkley, "but of course you can do nothing. +I see that." + +"No, we can do nothing. We have tried everything. I used to think it was +because she was so dull there at Yonkers with her family, and brooded upon +the one idea all the time, that she could not get over it; and at first it +did seem when she came to me that she would get over it. She is very fond +of gaiety--of young men's society, and she's had plenty of little +flirtations that didn't mean anything, and never amounted to anything. +Every now and then a letter would come from the wilds where he was +stationed, and spoil it all. She seemed to feel a sort of chivalrous +obligation because he was so far off and helpless and lonely." + +"Yes, I understand," said Mrs. Brinkley. "What a pity she couldn't be +made to feel that that didn't deepen the obligation at all." + +"I've tried to make her," said Miss Van Hook, "and I've been everywhere +with her. One winter we were up the Nile, and another in Nice, and last +winter we were in Rome. She met young men everywhere, and had offers upon +offers; but it was of no use. She remained just the same, and till she +met Mr. Mavering in Washington I don't believe--" + +Miss Van Hook stopped, and Mrs. Brinkley said, "And yet she always seemed +to me particularly practical and level-headed--as the men say." + +"So she is. But she is really very romantic about some things; and when +it comes to a matter of that kind, girls are about all alike, don't you +think?" + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley hopelessly, and both ladies looked out over +the water, where the waves came rolling in one after another to waste +themselves on the shore as futilely as if they had been lives. + +In the evening Miss Anderson got two letters from the clerk, at the hour +when the ladies all flocked to his desk with the eagerness for letters +which is so engaging in them. One she pulled open and glanced at with a +sort of impassioned indifference; the other she read in one intense +moment, and then ran it into her pocket, and with her hand still on it +hurried vividly flushing to her room, and read and read it again with +constantly mounting emotion. + +"WORMLEY's HOTEL, Washington, April 7, 188-. + +"DEAR MISS ANDERSON,--I have been acting on your parting advice to look +out for that Mr. Lafflin of mine, and I have discovered that he is an +unmitigated scamp. Consequently there is nothing more to keep me in +Washington, and I should now like your advice about coming to Fortress +Monroe. Do you find it malarial? On the boat your aunt asked me to come, +but you said nothing about it, and I was left to suppose that you did not +think it would agree with me. Do you still think so? or what do you +think? I know you think it was uncalled for and in extremely bad taste +for me to tell you what I did the other day; and I have thought so too. +There is only one thing that could justify it--that is, I think it might +justify it--if you thought so. But I do not feel sure that you would like +to know it, or, if you knew it, would like it. I've been rather slow +coming to the conclusion myself, and perhaps it's only the beginning of +the end; and not the conclusion--if there is such a difference. But the +question now is whether I may come and tell you what I think it is-- +justify myself, or make things worse than they are now. I don't know that +they can be worse, but I think I should like to try. I think your +presence would inspire me. + +"Washington is a wilderness since Miss--Van Hook left. It is not a +howling wilderness simply because it has not enough left in it to howl; +but it has all the other merits of a wilderness. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"D. F. MAVERING." + + +After a second perusal of this note, Miss Anderson recurred to the other +letter which she had neglected for it, and read it with eyes from which +the tears slowly fell upon it. Then she sat a long time at her table with +both letters before her, and did not move, except to take her handkerchief +out of her pocket and dry her eyes, from which the tears began at once to +drip again. At last she started forward, and caught pen and paper toward +her, biting her lip and frowning as if to keep herself firm, and she said +to the central figure in the photograph case which stood at the back of +the table, "I will, I will! You are a man, anyway." + +She sat down, and by a series of impulses she wrote a letter, with which +she gave herself no pause till she put it in the clerk's hands, to whom +she ran downstairs with it, kicking her skirt into wild whirls as she ran, +and catching her foot in it and stumbling. + +"Will it go--go to-night?" she demanded tragically. + +"Just in time," said the clerk, without looking up, and apparently not +thinking that her tone betrayed any unusual amount of emotion in a lady +posting a letter; he was used to intensity on such occasions. + +The letter ran-- + +"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--We shall now be here so short a time that I do not +think it advisable for you to come. + +"Your letter was rather enigmatical, and I do not know whether I +understood it exactly. I suppose you told me what you did for good +reasons of your own, and I did not think much about it. I believe the +question of taste did not come up in my mind. + +"My aunt joins me in kindest regards. + +"Yours very sincerely, + +"JULIA V. H. ANDERSON." + +"P.S.--I think that I ought to return your letter. I know that you would +not object to my keeping it, but it does not seem right. I wish to ask +your congratulations. I have been engaged for several years to Lieutenant +Willing, of the Army. He has been transferred from his post in Montana to +Fort Hamilton at New York, and we are to be married in June. + + +The next morning Mrs. Brinkley came up from breakfast in a sort of duplex +excitement, which she tried to impart to her husband; he stood with his +back toward the door, bending forward to the glass for a more accurate +view of his face, from which he had scraped half the lather in shaving. + +She had two cards in her hand: "Miss Van Hook and Miss Anderson have gone. +They went this morning. I found their P. P. C.'s by my plate." + +Mr. Brinkley made an inarticulate noise for comment, and assumed the +contemptuous sneer which some men find convenient for shaving the lower +lip. + +"And guess who's come, of all people in the world?" + +"I don't know," said Brinkley, seizing his chance to speak. + +"The Pasmers!--Alice and her mother! Isn't it awful?" + +Mr. Brinkley had entered upon a very difficult spot at the corner of his +left jaw. He finished it before he said, "I don't see anything awful +about it, so long as Pasmer hasn't come too." + +"But Dan Mavering! He's in Washington, and he may come down here any day. +Just think how shocking that would be!" + +"Isn't that rather a theory?" asked Mr. Brinkley, finding such +opportunities for conversation as he could. "I dare say Mrs. Pasmer would +be very glad to see him." + +"I've no doubt she would," said Mrs. Brinkley. But it's the worst thing +that could happen--for him. And I feel like writing him not to come-- +telegraphing him." + +"You know how the man made a fortune in Chicago," said her husband, drying +his razor tenderly on a towel before beginning to strop it. "I advise you +to let the whole thing alone. It doesn't concern us in any way whatever." + +"Then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "there ought to be a committee to take it in +hand and warn him." + +"I dare say you could make one up among the ladies. But don't be the +first to move in the matter." + +"I really believe," said his wife, with her mind taken off the point by +the attractiveness of a surmise which had just occurred to her, "that Mrs. +Pasmer would be capable of following him down if she knew he was in +Washington." + +"Yes, if she know. But she probably doesn't." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley disappointedly. "I think the sudden departure +of the Van Hooks must have had something to do with Dan Mavering." + +"Seems a very influential young man," said her husband. "He attracts and +repels people right and left. Did you speak to the Pasmers?" + +"No; you'd better, when you go down. They've just come into the dining- +room. The girl looks like death." + +"Well, I'll talk to her about Mavering. That'll cheer her up." + +Mrs. Brinkley looked at him for an instant as if she really thought him +capable of it. Then she joined him in his laugh. + +Mrs. Brinkley had theorised Alice Pasmer as simply and primitively +selfish, like the rest of the Pasmers in whom the family traits prevailed. + +When Mavering stopped coming to her house after his engagement she justly +suspected that it was because Alice had forbidden him, and she had +rejoiced at the broken engagement as an escape for Dan; she had frankly +said so, and she had received him back into full favour at the first +moment in Washington. She liked Miss Anderson, and she had hoped, with +the interest which women feel in every such affair, that her flirtation +with him might become serious. But now this had apparently not happened. +Julia Anderson was gone with mystifying precipitation, and Alice Pasmer +had come with an unexpectedness which had the aspect of fatality. + +Mrs. Brinkley felt bound, of course, since there was no open enmity +between them, to meet the Pasmers on the neutral ground of the Hygeia with +conventional amiability. She was really touched by the absent wanness of +the girls look, and by the later-coming recognition which shaped her mouth +into a pathetic snide. Alice did not look like death quite, as Mrs. +Brinkley had told her husband, with the necessity her sex has for putting +its superlatives before its positives; but she was pale and thin, and she +moved with a languid step when they all met at night after Mrs. Brinkley +had kept out of the Pasmers' way during the day. + +"She has been ill all the latter part of the winter," said Mrs. Pasmer to +Mrs. Brinkley that night in the corner of the spreading hotel parlours, +where they found themselves. Mrs. Pasmer did not look well herself; she +spoke with her eyes fixed anxiously on the door Alice had just passed out +of. "She is going to bed, but I know I shall find her awake whenever I +go." + +"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Brinkley, "this soft, heavy sea air will put her +to sleep." She tried to speak drily and indifferently, but she could not; +she was, in fact, very much interested by the situation, and she was +touched, in spite of her distaste for them both, by the evident +unhappiness of mother and daughter. She knew what it came from, and she +said to herself that they deserved it; but this did not altogether fortify +her against their pathos. "I can hardly keep awake myself," she added +gruffly. + +"I hope it may help her," said Mrs. Pasmer; "the doctor strongly urged our +coming." + +Mr. Pasmer isn't with you," said Mrs. Brinkley, feeling that it was decent +to say something about him. + +"No; he was detained." Mrs. Pasmer did not explain the cause of his +detention, and the two ladies slowly waved their fans a moment in silence. +"Are there many Boston People in the house?" Mrs. Pasmer asked. + +"It's full of them," cried Mrs. Brinkley. + +"I had scarcely noticed," sighed Mrs. Pasmer; and Mrs. Brinkley knew that +this was not true. " Alice takes up all my thoughts," she added; and this +might be true enough. She leaned a little forward and asked, in a low, +entreating voice over her fan, "Mrs. Brinkley, have you seen Mr. Mavering +lately?" + +Mrs. Brinkley considered this a little too bold, a little too brazen. Had +they actually come South in pursuit of him? It was shameless, and she let +Mrs: Pasmer know something of her feeling in the shortness with which she +answered, "I saw him in Washington the other day--for a moment." She +shortened the time she had spent in Dan's company so as to cut Mrs. Pasmer +off from as much comfort as possible, and she stared at her in open +astonishment. + +Mrs. Pasmer dropped her eyes and fingered the edge of her fan with a +submissiveness that seemed to Mrs. Brinkley the perfection of duplicity; +she wanted to shake her. "I knew," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, "that you had +always been such a friend of his." + +It is the last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her +moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was +really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he +had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss +Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory of her single +instant with Dan, but she felt that in such a cause, in the cause of +giving pain to a woman like Mrs. Pasmer, the deflection from exact truth +was justifiable. She hurried on: "I rather expected he might run down +here, but now that they're gone, I don't suppose he'll come. You remember +Miss Anderson's aunt, Miss Van Hook?" + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"She was here with her." + +"Miss Van Hook was such a New York type--of a certain kind," said Mrs. +Pasmer. She rose, with a smile at once so conventional, so heroic, and so +pitiful that Mrs. Brinkley felt the remorse of a generous victor. + +She went to her room, hardening her heart, and she burst in with a flood +of voluble exasperation that threatened all the neighbouring rooms with +overflow. + +"Well, she cried, "they have shown their hands completely. They have come +here to hound Dan Mavering down, and get him into their toils again. Why, +the woman actually said as much! But I fancy I have given her a fit of +insomnia that will enable her to share her daughter's vigils. Really such +impudence I never heard of!" + +"Do you want everybody in the corridor to hear of it?" asked Brinkley, +from behind a newspaper. + +"I know one thing," continued Mrs. Brinkley, dropping her voice a couple +of octaves. They will never get him here if I can help it. He won't +come, anyway, now Miss Anderson is gone; but I'll make assurance doubly +sure by writing him not to come; I'll tell him they've gone; and than we +are going too." + +"You had better remember the man in Chicago," said her husband. + +"Well, this is my business--or I'll make it my business!" cried Mrs. +Brinkley. She went on talking rapidly, rising with great excitement in +her voice at times, and then remembering to speak lower; and her husband +apparently read on through most of her talk, though now and then he made +some comment that seemed of almost inspired aptness. + +"The way they both made up to me was disgusting. But I know the girl is +just a tool in her mother's hands. Her mother seemed actually passive in +comparison. For skilful wheedling I could fall down and worship that +woman; I really admire her. As long as the girl was with us she kept +herself in the background and put the girl at me. It was simply a +masterpiece." + +"How do you know she put her at you?" asked Brinkley. + +"How? By the way she seemed not to do it! And because from what I know +of that stupid Pasmer pride it would be perfectly impossible for any one +who was a Pasmer to take her deprecatory manner toward me of herself. You +ought to have seen it! It was simply perfect." + +"Perhaps," said Brinkley, with a remote dreaminess, "she was truly sorry." + +"Truly stuff! No, indeed; she hates me as much as ever--more!" + +"Well, then, may be she's doing it because she hates you--doing it for her +soul's good--sort of penance, sort of atonement to Mavering." + +Mrs. Brinkley turned round from her dressing-table to see what her husband +meant, but the newspaper hid him. We all know that our own natures are +mixed and contradictory, but we each attribute to others a logical +consistency which we never find in any one out of the novels. Alice +Pasmer was cold and reticent, and Mrs. Brinkley, who had lived half a +century in a world full of paradoxes, could not imagine her subject to +gusts of passionate frankness; she knew the girl to be proud and distant, +and she could not conceive of an abject humility and longing for sympathy +in her heart. If Alice felt, when she saw Mrs. Brinkley, that she had a +providential opportunity to punish herself for her injustice to Dan, the +fact could not be established upon Mrs. Brinkley's theory of her. If the +ascetic impulse is the most purely selfish impulse in human nature, Mrs. +Brinkley might not have been mistaken in suspecting her of an ignoble +motive, though it might have had for the girl the last sublimity of self- +sacrifice. The woman who disliked her and pitied her knew that she had +no arts, and rather than adopt so simple a theory of her behaviour as her +husband had advanced she held all the more strenuously to her own theory +that Alice was practising her mother's arts. This was inevitable, partly +from the sense of Mrs. Pasmer's artfulness which everybody had, and partly +from the allegiance which we pay--and women especially like to pay--to the +tradition of the playwrights and the novelists, that social results of all +kinds are the work of deep, and more or less darkling, design on the part +of other women--such other women as Mrs. Pasmer. + +Mrs. Brinkley continued to talk, but the god spoke no more from behind the +newspaper; and afterward Mrs. Brinkley lay a long time awake; hardening +her heart. But she was haunted to the verge of her dreams by that girl's +sick look, by her languid walk, and by the effect which she had seen her +own words take upon Mrs. Pasmer--an effect so admirably disowned, so +perfectly obvious. Before she could get to sleep she was obliged to make +a compromise with her heart, in pursuance of which, when she found Mrs. +Pasmer at breakfast alone in the morning, she went up to her, and said, +holding her hand a moment, "I hope your daughter slept well last night." + +"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, slipping her hand away, "I can't say that she +did." There was probably no resentment expressed in the way she withdrew +her hand, but the other thought there was. + +"I wish I could do something for her," she cried. + +"Oh, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "It's very good of you." And Mrs. +Brinkley fancied she smiled rather bitterly. + +Mrs. Brinkley went out upon the seaward verandah of the hotel with this +bitterness of Mrs. Pasmer's smile in her thoughts; and it disposed her to +feel more keenly the quality of Miss Pasmer's smile. She found the girl +standing there at a remote point of that long stretch of planking, and +looking out over the water; she held with both hands across her breast the +soft chuddah shawl which the wind caught and fluttered away from her +waist. She was alone, said as Mrs. Brinkley's compunctions goaded her +nearer, she fancied that the saw Alice master a primary dislike in her +face, and put on a look of pathetic propitiation. She did not come +forward to meet Mrs. Brinkley, who liked better her waiting to be +approached; but she smiled gratefully when Mrs. Brinkley put out her hand, +and she took it with a very cold one. + +"You must find it chilly here," said the elder woman. + +"I had better be out in the air all I could, the doctor said," answered +Alice. + +"Well, then, come with me round the corner; there's a sort of recess +there, and you won't be blown to pierces," said Mrs. Brinkley, with +authority. They sat down together in the recess, and she added: "I used +to sit here with Miss Van Hook; she could hear better in the noise the +waves made. I hope it isn't too much for you." + +"Oh no," said Alice. "Mamma said you told her they were here." Mrs. +Brinkley reassured herself from this; Miss Van Hook's name had rather +slipped out; but of course Mrs. Pasmer had not repeated what she had said +about Dan in this connection. "I wish I could have seen Julia," Alice +went on. "It would have been quite like Campobello again." + +"Oh, quite," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a short breath, and not knowing +whither this tended. Alice did not leave her in doubt. + +"I should like to have seen her, and begged her for the way I treated her +the last part of the time there. I feel as if I could make my whole life +a reparation," she added passionately. + +Mrs. Brinkley believed that this was the mere frenzy of sentimentality, +the exaltation of a selfish asceticism; but at the break in the girl's +voice and the aversion of her face she could not help a thrill of motherly +tenderness for her. She wanted to tell her she was an unconscious humbug, +bent now as always on her own advantage, and really indifferent to others +she also wanted to comfort her, and tell her that she exaggerated, and was +not to blame. She did neither, but when Alice turned her face back she +seemed encouraged by Mrs. Brinkley's look to go on: "I didn't appreciate +her then; she was very generous and high-minded--too high-minded for me to +understand, even. But we don't seem to know how good others are till we +wrong them." + +"Yes, that is very true," said Mrs. Brinkley. She knew that Alice was +obviously referring to the breach between herself and Miss Anderson +following the night of the Trevor theatricals, and the dislike for her +that she had shown with a frankness some of the ladies had thought brutal. +Mrs. Brinkley also believed that her words had a tacit meaning, and she +would have liked to have the hardness to say she had seen an unnamed +victim of Alice doing his best to console the other she had specified. +But she merely said drily, "Yes, perhaps that's the reason why we're +allowed to injure people." + +"It must be," said Alice simply. "Did Miss Anderson ever speak of me?" + +"No; I can't remember that she ever did." Mrs. Brinkley did not feel +bound to say that she and Miss Van Hook had discussed her at large, and +agreed perfectly about her. + +"I should like to see her; I should like to write to her." + +Mrs. Brinkley felt that she ought not to suffer this intimate tendency in +the talk: + +"You must find a great many other acquaintances in the hotel, Miss +Pasmer." + +"Some of the Frankland girds are here, and the two Bellinghams. I have +hardly spoken to them yet. Do you think that where you have even been in +the right, if you have been harsh, if you have been hasty, if you haven't +made allowances, you ought to offer some atonement?" + +"Really, I can't say," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a smile of distaste. "I'm +afraid your question isn't quite in my line of thinking; it's more in Miss +Cotton's way. You'd better ask her some time." + +"No," said Alice sadly; "she would flatter me." + +"Ah! I always supposed she was very conscientious." + +"She's conscientious, but she likes me too well." + +"Oh!" commented Mrs. Brinkley to herself, "then you know I don't like you, +and you'll use me in one way, if you can't in another. Very well!" But +she found the girl's trust touching somehow, though the sentimentality of +her appeal seemed as tawdry as ever. + +"I knew you would be just," added Alice wistfully. + +"Oh, I don't know about atonements!" said Mrs. Brinkley, with an effect of +carelessness. "It seems to me that we usually make them for our own +sake." + +"I have thought of that," said Alice, with a look of expectation. + +"And we usually astonish other people when we offer them." + +"Either they don't like it, or else they don't feel so much injured as we +had supposed." + +"0h, but there's no question--" + +"If Miss Anderson--" + +"Miss Anderson? Oh--oh yes!" + +"If Miss Anderson for example," pursued Mrs. Brinkley, "felt aggrieved +with you. But really I've no right to enter into your affairs, Miss +Pasmer." + +"Oh Yes, yes!--do! I asked you to," the girl implored. + +"I doubt if it will help matters for her to know that you regret anything; +and if she shouldn't happen to have thought that you were unjust to her, +it would make her uncomfortable for nothing." + +"Do you think so?" asked the girl, with a disappointment that betrayed +itself in her voice and eyes. + +"I never feel I myself competent to advise," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I can +criticise--anybody can--and I do, pretty freely; but advice is a more +serious matter. Each of us must act from herself--from what she thinks is +right." + +"Yes, I see. Thank you so much, Mrs. Brinkley." + +"After all, we have a right to do ourselves good, even when we pretend +that it's good to others, if we don't do them any harm." + +"Yes, I see." Alice looked away, and then seemed about to speak again; +but one of Mrs. Brinkley's acquaintance came up, and the girl rose with a +frightened air and went away. + +"Alice's talk with you this morning did her so much good!" said Mrs. +Pasmer, later. "She has always felt so badly about Miss Anderson!" + +Mrs. Brinkley saw that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning of their +talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration of which she +saw that Mrs. Pasmer was gratefully aware. + +She grew more tolerant of both the Pasmers as the danger of greater +intimacy from them, which seemed to threaten at first seemed to pass away. +She had not responded to their advances, but there was no reason why she +should not be civil to them; there had never been any open quarrel with +them. She often found herself in talk with them, and was amused to note +that she was the only Bostonian whom they did not keep aloof from. + +It could not be said that she came to like either of them better. She +still suspected Mrs. Pasmer of design, though she developed none beyond +manoeuvring Alice out of the way of people whom she wished to avoid; and +she still found the girl, as she always thought her, as egotist, whose +best impulses toward others had a final aim in herself. She thought her +very crude in her ideas--cruder than she had seemed at Campobello, where +she had perhaps been softened by her affinition with the gentler and +kindlier nature of Dan Mavering. Mrs. Brinkley was never tired of saying +that he had made the most fortunate escape in the world, and though +Brinkley owned he was tired of hearing it, she continued to say it with a +great variety of speculation. She recognised that in most girls of +Alice's age many traits are in solution, waiting their precipitation into +character by the chemical contact which time and chances must bring, and +that it was not fair to judge her by the present ferment of hereditary +tendencies; but she rejoiced all the same that it was not Dan Mavering's +character which was to give fixity to hers. The more she saw of the girl +the more she was convinced that two such people could only make each other +unhappy; from day to day, almost from hour to hour, she resolved to write +to Mavering and tell him not to come. + +She was sure that the Pasmers wished to have the affair on again, and part +of her fascination with a girl whom she neither liked nor approved was her +belief that Alice's health had broken under the strain of her regrets and +her despair. She did not get better from the change of air; she grew more +listless and languid, and more dependent upon Mrs. Brinkley's chary +sympathy. The older woman asked herself again and again what made the +girl cling to her? Was she going to ask her finally to intercede with +Dan? or was it really a despairing atonement to him, the most disagreeable +sacrifice she could offer, as Mr. Brinkley had stupidly suggested? She +believed that Alice's selfishness and morbid sentiment were equal to +either. + +Brinkley generally took the girl's part against his wife, and in a heavy +jocose way tried to cheer her up. He did little things for her; fetched +and carried chairs and cushions and rugs, and gave his attentions the air +of pleasantries. One of his offices was to get the ladies' letters for +them in the evening, and one night he came in beaming with a letter for +each of them where they sat together in the parlour. He distributed them +into their laps. + +"Hello! I've made a mistake," he said, putting down his head to take back +the letter he had dropped in Miss Pasmer's lap. "I've given you my wife's +letter." + +The girl glanced at it, gave a moaning kind of cry, and fell beak in her +chair, hiding her face in her hands. + +Mrs. Brinkley, possessed herself of the other letter, and, though past the +age when ladies wish to kill their husbands for their stupidity, she gave +Brinkley a look of massacre which mystified even more than it murdered his +innocence. He had to learn later from his wife's more elicit fury what +the women had all known instantly. + +He showed his usefulness in gathering Alice up and getting her to her +mother's room." + +"Oh, Mrs. Brinkley," implored Mrs. Pasmer, following her to the door, "is +Mr. Mavering coming here?" + +"I don't know--I can't say--I haven't read the letter yet." + +"Oh, do let me know when you've read it, won't you? I don't know what we +shall do." + +Mrs. Brinkley read the letter in her own room. "You go down," she said to +her husband, with unabated ferocity; "and telegraph Dan Mavering at +Wormley's not to came. Say we're going away at once." + +Then she sent Mrs. Pasmer a slip of paper on which she had written, "Not +coming." + +It has been the experience of every one to have some alien concern come +into his life and torment him with more anxiety than any affair of his +ovn. This is, perhaps, a hint from the infinite sympathy which feels for +us all that none of us can hope to free himself from the troubles of +others, that we are each bound to each by ties which, for the most part, +we cannot perceive, but which, at the moment their stress comes, we cannot +break. + +Mrs. Brinkley lay awake and raged impotently against her complicity with +the unhappiness of that distasteful girl and her more than distasteful +mother. In her revolt against it she renounced the interest she had felt +in that silly boy, and his ridiculous love business, so really unimportant +to her whatever turn it took. She asked herself what it mattered to her +whether those children marred their lives one way or another way. There +was a lurid moment before she slept when she wished Brinkley to go down +and recall her telegram; but he refused to be a fool at so much +inconvenience to himself. + +Mrs. Brinkley came to breakfast feeling so much more haggard than she +found either of the Pasmers looking, that she was able to throw off her +lingering remorse for having told Mavering not to come. She had the +advantage also of doubt as to her precise motive in having done so; she +had either done so because she had judged it best for him not to see Miss +Pasmer again, or else she had done so to relieve the girl from the pain of +an encounter which her mother evidently dreaded for her. If one motive +seemed at moments outrageously meddling and presumptuous, the other was so +nobly good and kind that it more than counterbalanced it in Mrs. +Brinkley's mind, who knew very well in spite of her doubt that she had, +acted from a mixture of both. With this conviction, it was both a comfort +and a pang to find by the register of the hotel, which she furtively +consulted, that Dan had not arrived by the morning boat, as she +groundlessly feared and hoped he might have done. + +In any case, however, and at the end of all the ends, she had that girl on +her hands more than ever; and believing as she did that Dan and Alice had +only to meet in order to be reconciled, she felt that the girl whom she +had balked of her prey was her innocent victim. What right had she to +interfere? Was he not her natural prey? If he liked being a prey, who +was lawfully to forbid him? He was not perfect; he would know how to take +care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves. She +looked at the girl's thin cheeks and lack-lustre eyes, and pitied and +hated her with that strange mixture of feeling which our victims aspire in +us. + +She walked out on the verandah with the Pasmers after breakfast, and +chatted a while about indifferent things; and Alice made an effort to +ignore the event of the night before with a pathos which wrung Mrs. +Brinkley's heart, and with a gay resolution which ought to have been a +great pleasure to such a veteran dissembler as her mother. She said she +had never found the air so delicious; she really believed it would begin +to do her good now; but it was a little fresh just there, and with her +eyes she invited her mother to come with her round the corner into that +sheltered recess, and invited Mrs. Brinkley not to come. + +It was that effect of resentment which is lighter even than a touch, the +waft of the arrow's feather; but it could wound a guilty heart, and Mrs. +Brinkley sat down where she was, realising with a pang that the time when +she might have been everything to this unhappy girl had just passed for +ever, and henceforth she could be nothing. She remained musing sadly upon +the contradictions she had felt in the girl's character, the confusion of +good and evil, the potentialities of misery and harm, the potentialities +of bliss and good; and she felt less and less satisfied with herself. She +had really presumed to interfere with Fate; perhaps she had interfered +with Providence. She would have given anything to recall her act; and +then with a flash she realised that it was quite possible to recall it. +She could telegraph Mavering to come; and she rose, humbly and gratefully, +as if from an answered prayer, to go and do so. + +She was not at all a young woman, and many things had come and gone in her +life that ought to have fortified her against surprise; but she wanted to +scream like a little frightened girl as Dan Mavering stepped out of the +parlour door toward her. The habit of not screaming, however, prevailed, +and she made a tolerably successful effort to treat him with decent +composure. She gave him a rigid hand. "Where in the world did you come +from? Did you get my telegram?" + +"No. Did you get my letter?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I took a notion to come right on after I wrote, and I started on +the same train with it. But they said it was no use trying to get into +the Hygeia, and I stopped last night at the little hotel in Hampton. I've +just walked over, and Mr. Brinkley told me you were out here somewhere. +That's the whole story, I believe." He gave his nervous laugh, but it +seemed to Mrs. Brinkley that it had not much joy in it. + +"Hush!" she said involuntarily, receding to her chair and sinking back +into it again. He looked surprised. "You know the Van Hooks are gone?" + +He laughed harshly. "I should think they were dead from your manner, Mrs. +Brinkley. But I didn't come to see the Van Hooks. What made you think I +did?" + +He gave her a look which she found so dishonest, so really insincere, that +she resolved to abandon him to Providence as soon as she could. "Oh, I +didn't know but there had been some little understanding at Washington." + +"Perhaps on their part. They were people who seemed to take a good many +things for granted, but they could hardly expect to control other people's +movements." + +He looked sharply at Mrs. Brinkley, as if to question how much she knew; +but she had now measured him, and she said, "Oh! then the visit's to me?" + +"Entirely," cried Dan. The old sweetness came into his laughing eyes +again, and went to Mrs. Brinkley's heart. She wished him to be happy, +somehow; she would have done anything for him; she wished she knew what to +do. Ought she to tell him the Pasmers were there? Ought she to make up +some excuse and get him away before he met them? She felt herself getting +more and more bewildered and helpless. Those women might come round that +corner any moment and then she know the first sight of Alice's face would +do or undo everything with Dan. Did she wish them reconciled? Did she +wish them for ever parted? She no longer knew what she wished; she only +knew that she had no right to wish anything. She continued to talk on +with Dan, who grew more and more at ease, and did most of the talking, +while Mrs. Brinkley's whole being narrowed itself to the question. Would +the Pasmers come back that way, or would they go round the further corner, +and get into the hotel by another door? + +The suspense seemed interminable; they must have already gone that other +way. Suddenly she heard the pushing back of chairs in that recess. She +could not bear it. She jumped to her feet. + +"Just wait a moment, Mr. Mavering! I'll join you again. Mr. Brinkley is +expecting--I must--" + + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + +One morning of the following June Mrs. Brinkley sat well forward in the +beautiful church where Dan and Alice were to be married. The lovely day +became a still lovelier day within, enriched by the dyes of the stained +windows through which it streamed; the still place was dim yet bright with +it; the figures painted on the walls had a soft distinctness; a body of +light seemed to irradiate from the depths of the dome like lamp-light. + +There was a subdued murmur of voices among the people in the pews: they +were in a sacred edifice without being exactly at church, and they might +talk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of +flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and the +prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the +ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young +ushers and compressed themselves into place in the pews. + +Two or three people whom she did not know were put into the pew with Mrs. +Brinkley, but she kept her seat next the aisle; presently an usher brought +up a lady who sat down beside her, and then for a moment or two seemed to +sink and rise, as if on the springs of an intense excitement. + +It was Miss Cotton, who, while this process of quiescing lasted, appeared +not to know Mrs. Brinkley. When she became aware of her, all was lost +again. "Mrs. Brinkley!" she cried, as well as one can cry in whisper. +"Is it possible?" + +"I have my doubts," Mrs. Brinkley whispered back. "But we'll suppose the +case." + +"Oh, it's all too good to he true! How I envy you being the means of +bringing them together, Mrs. Brinkley!" + +"Means?" + +"Yes--they owe it all to you; you needn't try to deny it; he's told every +one!" + +"I was sure she hadn't," said Mrs. Brinkley, remembering how Alice had +marked an increasing ignorance of any part she might have had in the +affair from the first moment of her reconciliation with Dan; she had the +effect of feeling that she had sacrificed enough to Mrs. Brinkley; and +Mrs. Brinkley had been restored to all the original strength of her +conviction that she was a solemn little unconscious egotist, and Dan was +as unselfish and good as he was unequal to her exactions. + +"Oh no?" said Miss Cotton. "She couldn't!" implying that Alice would be +too delicate to speak of it. + +"Do you see any of his family here?" asked Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Yes; over there--up front." Miss Cotton motioned, with her eyes toward a +pew in which Mrs. Brinkley distinguished an elderly gentleman's down- +misted bald head and the back of a young lady's bonnet. "His father and +sister; the other's a bridemaid; mother bed-ridden and couldn't come." + +"They might have brought her in an-arm-chair," suggested Mrs. Brinkley +ironically, "on such an occasion. But perhaps they don't take much +interest in such a patched-up affair." + +"Oh yes, they do!" exclaimed Miss Cotton. "They idolise Alice." + +"And Mrs. Pasmer and Mister, too?" + +"I don't suppose that so much matters." + +"They know how to acquiesce, I've no doubt." + +"Oh yes! You've heard? The young people are going abroad first with her +family for a year, and then they come back to live with his--where the +Works are." + +"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Why, Mrs. Brinkley, do you still feel that way?" asked Miss Cotton, with +a certain distress. It seems to me that if ever two young people had the +promise of happiness, they have. Just see what their love has done for +them already!" + +"And you still think that in these cases love can do everything?" + +Miss Cotton was about to reply, when she observed that the people about +her had stopped talking. The bridegroom, with his best man, in whom his +few acquaintances there recognised Boardman with some surprise, came over +the chancel from one side. + +Miss Cotton bent close to Mrs. Brinkley and whispered rapidly: "Alice +found out Mr. Mavering wished it, and insisted on his having him. It was +a great concession, but she's perfectly magnanimous. Poor fellow! how he +does look!" + +Alice, on her father's arm, with her bridemaids, of whom the first was +Minnie Mavering, mounted the chancel steps, where Mr. Pasmer remained +standing till he advanced to give away the bride. He behaved with great +dignity, but seemed deeply affected; the ladies in the front pews said +they could see his face twitch; but he never looked handsomer. + +The five clergymen carne from the back of the chancel in their white +surplices. The ceremony proceeded to the end. + +The young couple drove at once to the station, where they were to take the +train for New York, and wait there a day or two for Mrs. and Mr. Pasmer +before they all sailed. + +As they drove along, Alice held Dan's wrist in the cold clutch of her +trembling little ungloved hand, on which her wedding ring shone. "O +dearest! let us be good!" she said. "I will try my best. I will try not +to be exacting and unreasonable, and I know I can. I won't even make any +conditions, if you will always be frank and open with me, and tell me +everything." + +He leaned over and kissed her behind the drawn curtains. "I will, Alice! +I will indeed! I won't keep anything from you after this." + +He resolved to tell her all about Julia Anderson at the right moment, when +Alice was in the mood, and as soon as he thoroughly understood what he had +really meant himself. + +If he had been different she would not have asked him to be frank and +open; if she had been different, he might have been frank and open. This +was the beginning of their married life. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of April Hopes, by W. D. Howells + diff --git a/old/whahp10.zip b/old/whahp10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9400517 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whahp10.zip diff --git a/old/whahp11.txt b/old/whahp11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fdc687 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whahp11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,13709 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of April Hopes, by W. D. 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It struck him that the young men on whose +arms they hung, in promenading around the long oval within the crowd of +stationary spectators, were very much younger than students used to be, +whether they wore the dress-coats of the Seniors or the cut-away of the +Juniors and Sophomores; and the young girls themselves did not look so +old as he remembered them in his day. There vas a band playing +somewhere, and the galleries were well filled with spectators seated at +their ease, and intent on the party-coloured turmoil of the floor, where +from time to time the younger promenaders broke away from the ranks into +a waltz, and after some turns drifted back, smiling and controlling their +quick breath, and resumed their promenade. The place was intensely +light, in the candour of a summer day which had no reserves; and the +brilliancy was not broken by the simple decorations. Ropes of wild +laurel twisted up the pine posts of the aisles, and swung in festoons +overhead; masses of tropical plants in pots were set along between the +posts on one side of the room; and on the other were the lunch tables, +where a great many people were standing about, eating chicken and salmon +salads, or strawberries and ice-cream, and drinking claret-cup. From the +whole rose that blended odour of viands, of flowers, of stuff's, of +toilet perfumes, which is the characteristic expression of, all social +festivities, and which exhilarates or depresses--according as one is new +or old to it. + +Elbridge Mavering kept looking at the faces of the young men as if he +expected to see a certain one; then he turned his eyes patiently upon. +the faces around him. He had been introduced to a good many persons, but +he had come to that time of life when an introduction; unless charged +with some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisome +encounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on the +severity of a man who finds himself without acquaintance where others are +meeting friends, when a small man, with a neatly trimmed reddish-grey +beard and prominent eyes, stepped in front of him, and saluted him with +the "Hello, Mavering!" of a contemporary. + +His face, after a moment of question, relaxed into joyful recognition. +"Why, John Munt! is that you?" he said, and he took into his large moist +palm the dry little hand of his friend, while they both broke out into +the incoherencies of people meeting after a long time. Mr. Mavering +spoke in it voice soft yet firm, and with a certain thickness of tongue; +which gave a boyish charm to his slow, utterance, and Mr. Munt used the +sort of bronchial snuffle sometimes cultivated among us as a chest tone. +But they were cut short in their intersecting questions and exclamations +by the presence of the lady who detached herself from Mr. Munt's arm as +if to leave him the freer for his hand-shaking. + +"Oh!" he said, suddenly recurring to her; "let me introduce you to Mrs. +Pasmer, Mr. Mavering," and the latter made a bow that creased his +waistcoat at about the height of Mrs. Pasmer's pretty little nose. + +His waistcoat had the curve which waistcoats often describe at his age; +and his heavy shoulders were thrown well back to balance this curve. His +coat hung carelessly open; the Panama hat in his hand suggested a certain +habitual informality of dress, but his smoothly shaven large handsome +face, with its jaws slowly ruminant upon nothing, intimated the +consequence of a man accustomed to supremacy in a subordinate place. + +Mrs. Pasmer looked up to acknowledge the introduction with a sort of +pseudo-respectfulness which it would be hard otherwise to describe. +Whether she divined or not that she was in the presence of a magnate of +some sort, she was rather superfluously demure in the first two or three +things she said, and was all sympathy and interest in the meeting of +these old friends. They declared that they had not seen each other for +twenty years, or, at any rate, not since '59. She listened while they +disputed about the exact date, and looked from time to time at Mr. Munt, +as if for some explanation of Mr. Mavering; but Munt himself, when she +saw him last, had only just begun to commend himself to society, which +had since so fully accepted him, and she had so suddenly, the moment +before, found her self hand in glove with him that she might well have +appealed to a third person for some explanation of Munt. But she was not +a woman to be troubled much by this momentary mystification, and she was +not embarrassed at all when Munt said, as if it had all been pre- +arranged, "Well, now, Mrs. Pasmer, if you'll let me leave you with Mr. +Mavering a moment, I'll go off and bring that unnatural child to you; no +use dragging you round through this crowd longer." + +He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once polite +and jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised, and Mr. +Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to overcome pressing his jaws +together two or three times without speaking. She had no trouble in +getting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?" +She spoke in a deep low voice, with a caressing manner, and stood looking +up, at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and the other drooped, and +a tasteful composition of her fan and hands and handkerchief at her +waist. + +"Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her +with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind +fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman +from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president? +railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?-- +no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes, +and to centre there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch of +her neat brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and her +very appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half the +battle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer; +but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say, +with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity, +whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give a +much finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, than +we used to do in our rooms." + +"Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, with +surprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes, +indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" she +said, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders. + +"Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of the +consciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a son +somewhere here?" + +"Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, but for +her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, Mr. +Mavering." + +At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with question +as to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only a +daughter?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor, +despised young girl, Mr. Mavering." + +"You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as if it +were a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that had its +queer fascination. + +"Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Well, I shouldn't have thought so." + +"Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry and devotion +have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoiled nowadays, +and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?" + +"No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of the +novel ideas. "Do you?" + +"Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that I +don't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're not +one of those--pessimists!" + +"Well," said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, "I don't know that I can +speak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't been at +a Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even been at +Commencement more than once or twice. But in my time here we didn't +expect the young ladies to show us attentions; at any rate, we didn't +wait for them to do it. We were very glad, to be asked to meet them, +and we thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk or +dance with them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of them +could complain of want of attention." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, "that's what I preached, that's what I +prophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her that +a girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now that +girls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hears +such dreadful things!" + +"Like what?" asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which Mrs. +Primer made most people feel in her talk. + +"Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girls +moping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young men to +talk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an assembly and +not going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl fairly throws +herself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this terrible +disproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; it +reverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round, and +they know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the war." + +He laughed, and, "I should think," he said, laying hold of a single idea +out of several which she had presented, "that there would always be +enough young men in Cambridge to go round." + +Mrs. Pasmer gave a little cry. "In Cambridge!" + +"Yes; when I was in college our superiority was entirely numerical." + +"But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear," retorted Mrs. Pasmer. +"I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantage for a girl +to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave her independence and ease +of manner to have so many young men attentive to her. But they say the +students all go into Boston now, and if the Cambridge girls want to meet +them, they have to go there too. Oh, I assure you that, from what I +hear, they've changed all that since our time, Mr. Mavering." + +Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than she would +have approved of in another. The result was apparent in the jocosity of +this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply. + +"Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wicked +generation. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men is +brought low, so to speak, after marriage?" + +Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. "Oh, give us an equal +chance," she laughed, "and we can always take care of ourselves, and +something more. They say," she added, "that the young married women now +have all the attention that girls could wish." + +"H'm!" said Mr. Mavering, frowning. "I think I should be tempted to box +my boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention." + +"What a Roman father!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and letting +herself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she really +must find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eye +over the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meant to +take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did not +see him, and something else suggested itself. "He probably wouldn't let +you see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it." + +"How not know it?" + +Mrs. Primer did not answer. "One hears such dreadful things. What do +you say--or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip--" + +"Oh no;" said Mr: Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whatever it +was. + +Mrs. Primer resumed: "--to the young married women meeting last winter +just after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimously +resolving to give the Buds a chance in society?" + +"The Buds?" + +"Yes, the Rose-buds--the debutantes; it's an odious little word, but +everybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of things for +America? But I can't believe all those things," said Mrs. Pasmer, +flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. "Isn't this a +pretty scene?" + +"Yes, it is," Mr. Mavering admitted, withdrawing his mind gradually from +a consideration of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. "Yes!" he added, in +final self-possession. "The young fellows certainly do things in a great +deal better style nowadays than we used to." + +"Oh yes, indeed! And all those pretty girls do seem to be having such a +good time!" + +"Yes; they don't have the despised and rejected appearance that you'd +like to have one believe." + +"Not in the least!" Mrs. Pasmer readily consented. "They look radiantly +happy. It shows that you can't trust anything that people say to you." +She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent shame +for her inconsistency. "I fancy it's pretty much as it's always been: if +a girl is attractive, the young men find it out." + +"Perhaps," said Mr: Mavering, unbending with dignity, "the young married +women have held another meeting, and resolved to give the Buds one more +chance." + +"Oh, there are some pretty mature Roses here," said Mrs. Pasmer, laughing +evasively. "But I suppose Class Day can never be taken from the young +girls." + +"I hope not," said Mr. Mavering. His wandering eye fell upon some young +men bringing refreshments across the nave toward them, and he was +reminded to ask Mrs. Pasmer, "Will you have something to eat?" He had +himself had a good deal to eat, before he took up his position at the +advantageous point where John Munt had found him. + +"Why, yes, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "I ought to say, 'An ice, +please,' but I'm really hungry, and--" + +"I'll get you some of the salad," said Mr. Mavering, with the increased +liking a man feels for a woman when she owns to an appetite. "Sit down +here," he added, and he caught a vacant chair toward her. When he turned +about from doing so, he confronted a young gentleman coming up to Mrs. +Pasmer with a young lady on his arm, and making a very low bow of +relinquishment. + + + + +II. + +The men looked smilingly at each other without saying anything; and the +younger took in due form the introduction which the young lady gave him. + +"My mother, Mr. Mavering." + +"Mr. Mavering!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, in a pure astonishment, before she had +time to colour it with a polite variety of more conventional emotions. +She glanced at the two men, and gave a little "Oh?" of inquiry and +resignation, and then said, demurely, "Let me introduce you to Mr. +Mavering, Alice," while the young fellow laughed nervously, and pulled +out his handkerchief, partly to hide the play of his laughter, and partly +to wipe away the perspiration which a great deal more laughing had +already gathered on his forehead. He had a vein that showed prominently +down its centre, and large, mobile, girlish blue eyes under good brows, +an arched nose, and rather a long face and narrow chin. He had beautiful +white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw that contracted +very much toward the front. He was tall and slim, and he wore with +elegance the evening dress which Class Day custom prescribes for the +Seniors; in his button-hole he had a club button. + +"I shall not have to ask an introduction to Mr. Mavering; and you've +robbed me of the pleasure of giving him one to you, Mrs. Pasmer," he +said. + +She heard the young man in the course of a swift review of what she had +said to his father, and with a formless resentment of the father's not +having told her he had a son there; but she answered with the flattering +sympathy she had the use of, "Oh, but you won't miss one pleasure out of +so many to-day, Mr. Mavering; and think of the little dramatic surprise!" + +"Oh, perfect," he said, with another laugh. "I told Miss Pasmer as we +came up." + +"Oh, then you were in the surprise, Alice!" said Mrs. Pasmer, searching +her daughter's eyes for confession or denial of this little community of +interest. The girl smiled slightly upon the young man, but not +disapprovingly, and made no other answer to her mother, who went on: +"Where in the world have you been? Did Mr. Munt find you? Who told you +where I was? Did you see me? How did you know I was here? Was there +ever anything so droll?" She did not mean her questions to be answered, +or at least not then; for, while her daughter continued to smile rather +more absently, and young Mavering broke out continuously in his nervous +laugh, and his father stood regarding him with visible satisfaction, she +hummed on, turning to the young man: "But I'm quite appalled at Alice's +having monopolised even for a few minutes a whole Senior--and probably an +official Senior at that," she said, with a glance at the pink and white +club button in his coat lapel, "and I can't let you stay another instant, +Mr. Mavering. I know very well how many demands you have upon you and +you must go back directly to your sisters and your cousins and your +aunts, and all the rest of them; you must indeed." + +"Oh no! Don't drive me away, Mrs. Pasmer," pleaded the young man, +laughing violently, and then wiping his face. "I assure you that I've no +encumbrances of any kind here except my father, and he seems to have been +taking very good care of himself." They all laughed at this, and the +young fellow hurried on: "Don't be alarmed at my button; it only means a +love of personal decoration, if that's where you got the notion of my +being an official Senior. This isn't my spread; I shall hope to welcome +you at Beck Hall after the Tree; and I wish you'd let me be of use to +you. Wouldn't you like to go round to some of the smaller spreads? I +think it would amuse you. And have you got tickets to the Tree, to see +us make fools of ourselves? It's worth seeing, Mrs. Pasmer, I assure +you." + +He rattled on very rapidly but with such a frankness in his urgency, such +amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was pushing. +She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the transaction +as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and as she +waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which one +sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the +fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of +white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple +combination of colours was carried up into her hat, which surmounted +darker hair than Mrs. Pasmer's, and a complexion of wholesome pallor; her +eyes were grey and grave, with black brows, and her face, which was +rather narrow, had a pleasing irregularity in the sharp jut of the nose; +in profile the parting of the red lips showed well back into the cheek, + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, in her own behalf; and she added in +his, "about letting you take so much trouble," so smoothly that it would +have been quite impossible to detect the point of union in the two +utterances. + +"Well, don't call it names, anyway, Mrs. Pasmer," pleaded the young man. +"I thought it was nothing but a pleasure and a privilege--" + +"The fact is," she explained, neither consenting nor refusing, "that we +were expecting to meet some friends who had tickets for us"--young +Mavering's face fell--" and I can't imagine what's happened." + +"Oh, let's hope something dreadful," he cried. + +Perhaps you know them," she delayed further. "Professor Saintsbury!" + +"Well, rather! Why, they were here about an hour ago--both of them. +They must have been looking for you." + +"Yes; we were to meet them here. We waited to come out with other +friends, and I was afraid we were late." Mrs. Pasmer's face expressed a +tempered disappointment, and she looked at her daughter for indications +of her wishes in the circumstances; seeing in her eye a willingness to +accept young Mavering's invitation, she hesitated more decidedly than she +had yet done, for she was, other things being equal, quite willing to +accept it herself. But other things were not equal, and the whole +situation was very odd. All that she knew of Mr. Mavering the elder was +that he was the old friend of John Munt, and she knew far too little of +John Munt, except that he seemed to go everywhere, and to be welcome, not +to feel that his introduction was hardly a warrant for what looked like +an impending intimacy. She did not dislike Mr. Mavering; he was +evidently a country person of great self-respect, and no doubt of entire +respectability. He seemed very intelligent, too. He was a Harvard man; +he had rather a cultivated manner, or else naturally a clever way of +saying things. But all that was really nothing, if she knew no more +about him, and she certainly did not. If she could only have asked her +daughter who it was that presented young Mavering to her, that might have +formed some clew, but there was no earthly chance of asking this, and, +besides, it was probably one of those haphazard introductions that people +give on such occasions. Young Mavering's behaviour gave her still +greater question: his self-possession, his entire absence of anxiety; +or any expectation of rebuff or snub, might be the ease of unimpeachable +social acceptance, or it might be merely adventurous effrontery; only +something ingenuous and good in the young fellow's handsome face forbade +this conclusion. That his face was so handsome was another of the +complications. She recalled, in the dreamlike swiftness with which all +these things passed through her mind, what her friends had said to Alice +about her being sure to meet her fate on Class Day, and she looked at her +again to see if she had met it. + +"Well, mamma?" said the girl, smiling at her mother's look. + +Mrs. Pasmer thought she must have been keeping young Mavering waiting a +long time for his answer. "Why, of course, Alice. But I really don't +know what to do about the Saintsburys." This was not in the least true, +but it instantly seemed so to Mrs. Pasmer, as a plausible excuse will +when we make it. + +"Why, I'll tell you what, Mrs. Pasmer," said young Mavering, with a +cordial unsuspicion that both won and reassured her, "we'll be sure to +find them at some of the spreads. Let me be of that much use, anyway; +you must." + +"We really oughtn't to let you," said Mrs. Pasmer, making a last effort +to cling to her reluctance, but feeling it fail, with a sensation that +was not disagreeable. She could not help being pleased with the pleasure +that she saw in her daughter's face. + +Young Mavering's was radiant. "I'll be back in just half a minute," he +said, and he took a gay leave of them in running to speak to another +student at the opposite end of the hall. + + + + +III. + +"You must allow me to get you something to eat first, Mrs. Pasmer," said +the elder Mavering. + +"Oh no, thank you," Mrs. Pasmer began. But she changed her mind and +said, "Or, yes; I will, Mr. Mavering: a very little salad, please." She +had really forgotten her hunger, as a woman will in the presence of any +social interest; but she suddenly thought his going would give her a +chance for two words with her daughter, and so she sent him. As he +creaked heavily across the smooth floor of the nave; "Alice," she +whispered, "I don't know exactly what I've done: Who introduced this +young Mr. Mavering to you?" + +"Mr. Munt." + +"Mr. Munt!" + +"Yes; he came for me; he said you sent him. He introduced Mr. Mavering, +and he was very polite. Mr. Mavering said we ought to go up into the +gallery and see how it looked; and Mr. Munt said he'd been up, and Mr. +Mavering promised to bring me back to him, but he was not there when we +got back. Mr. Mavering got me some ice cream first, and then he found +you for me." + +"Really," said Mrs. Pasmer to herself, "the combat thickens!" To her +daughter she said, "He's very handsome." + +"He laughs too much," said the daughter. Her mother recognised her +uncandour with a glance. "But he waltzes well," added the girl. + +"Waltzes?" echoed the mother. "Did you waltz with him, Alice?" + +"Everybody else was dancing. He asked me for a turn or two, and of +course I did it. What difference?" + +"Oh, none--none. Only--I didn't see you." + +"Perhaps you weren't looking." + +"Yes, I was looking all the time." + +"What do you mean, mamma?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Pasmer, in a final despair, "we don't know anything +about them." + +"We're the only people here who don't, then," said her daughter. "The +ladies were bowing right left to him all the time, and he kept asking +if I knew this one and that one, and all I could say was that some of +them were distant cousins, but I wasn't acquainted with them. I would +think he'd wonder who we were." + +"Yes," said the mother thoughtfully. + +"There! he's laughing with that other student. But don't look!" + +Mrs. Pasmer saw well enough out of the corner of her eye the joking that +went on between Mavering and his friend, and it did not displease her to +think that it probably referred to Alice. While the young man came +hurrying back to them she glanced at the girl standing near her with a +keenly critical inspection, from which she was able to exclude all +maternal partiality, and justly decided that she was one of the most +effective girls in the place. That costume of hers was perfect. Mrs. +Pasmer wished now that she could have compared it more carefully with +other costumes; she had noticed some very pretty ones; and a feeling of +vexation that Alice should have prevented this by being away so long just +when the crowd was densest qualified her satisfaction. The people were +going very fast now. The line of the oval in the nave was broken into +groups of lingering talkers, who were conspicuous to each other, and Mrs. +Pasmer felt that she and her daughter were conspicuous to all the rest +where they stood apart, with the two Maverings converging upon them from +different points, the son nodding and laughing to friends of both sexes +as he came, the father wholly absorbed in not spilling the glass of +claret punch which he carried in one hand, and not falling down on the +slippery floor with the plate of salad which he bore in the other. She +had thoughts of feigning unconsciousness; she would have had no scruple +in practising this or any other social stratagem, for though she kept a +conscience in regard to certain matters--what she considered essentials-- +she lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her daughter by +precept and example to do the same. You must seem to be looking one way +when you were really looking another; you must say this when you meant +that; you must act as if you were thinking one thing when you were +thinking something quite different; and all to no end, for, as she +constantly said, people always know perfectly well what you were about, +whichever way you looked or whatever you said, or no matter how well you +acted the part of thinking what you did not think. Now, although she +seemed not to look, she saw all that has been described at a glance, and +at another she saw young Mavering slide easily up to his father and +relieve him of the plate and glass, with a laugh as pleasant and a show +of teeth as dazzling as he bestowed upon any of the ladies he had passed. +She owned to her recondite heart that she liked this in young Mavering, +though at the same time she asked herself what motive he really had in +being so polite to his father before people. But she had no time to +decide; she had only time to pack the question hurriedly away for future +consideration, when young Mavering arrived at her elbow, and she turned +with a little "Oh!" of surprise so perfectly acted that it gave her the +greatest pleasure. + + + + +IV. + +"I don't think my father would have got here alive with these things," +said young Mavering. "Did you see how I came to his rescue?" + +Mrs. Pasmer instantly threw away all pretext of not having seen. "Oh +yes! my heart was in my mouth when you bore down upon him, Mr. Mavering. +It was a beautiful instance of filial devotion." + +"Well, do sit down now, Mrs. Pasmer, and take it comfortably," said the +young fellow; and he got her one of the many empty chairs, and would not +give her the things, which he put in another, till she sat down and let +him spread a napkin over her lap. + +"Really," she said, "I feel as if I were stopping all the wheels of Class +Day. Am I keeping them from closing the Gymnasium, Mr. Mavering?" + +"Not quite," said the young man, with one of his laughs. "I don't +believe they will turn us out, and I'll see that they don't lock us in. +Don't hurry, Mrs. Pasmer. I'm only sorry you hadn't something sooner." + +"Oh, your father proposed getting me something a good while ago." + +"Did he? Then I wonder you haven't had it. He's usually on time." + +"You're both very energetic, I think," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"He's the father of his son," said the young fellow, assuming the merit +with a bow of burlesque modesty. + +It went to Mrs. Pasmer's heart. "Let's hope he'll never forget that," +she said, in an enjoyment of the excitement and the salad that was +beginning to leave her question of these Maverings a light, diaphanous +cloud on the verge of the horizon. + +The elder Mavering had been trying, without success, to think of +something to say to Miss Pasmer, he had twice cleared his throat for that +purpose. But this comedy between his son and the young lady's mother +seemed so much lighter and brighter than anything he could have said, +that he said nothing, and looked on with his mouth set in its queer +smile, while the girl listened with the gravity of a daughter who sees +that her mother is losing her head. Mrs. Pasmer buzzed on in her +badinage with the young man, and allowed him to go for a cup of coffee +before she rose from her chair, and shook out her skirts with an air of +pleasant expectation of whatever should come next. + +He came back without it. "The coffee urn has dried up here, Mrs. Pasmer. +But you can get some at the other spreads; they'd be inconsolable if you +didn't take something everywhere." + +They all started toward the door, but the elder Mavering said, holding +back a little, "Dan, I think I'll go and see--" + +"Oh no, you mustn't, father," cried the young man, laying his hand with +caressing entreaty on his father's coat sleeve. "I don't want you to go +anywhere till you've seen Professor Saintsbury. We shall be sure to meet +him at some of the spreads. I want you to have that talk with him--" +He corrected himself for the instant's deflection from the interests of +his guest, and added, "I want you to help me hunt him up for Mrs. Pasmer. +Now, Mrs. Pasmer, you're not to think it's the least trouble, or anything +but a boon, much less say it," he cried, turning to the deprecation in +Mrs. Pasmer's face. He turned away from it to acknowledge the smiles and +bows of people going out of the place, and he returned their salutations +with charming heartiness. + +In the vestibule they met the friends they were going in search of. + + + + +V. + +"With Mr. Mavering, of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Saintsbury: "I might have +known it." Mrs. Pasmer would have given anything she could think of to +be able to ask why her friend might have known it; but for the present +they could only fall upon each other with flashes of self-accusal and +explanation, and rejoicing for their deferred and now accomplished +meeting. The Professor stood by with the satirical smile with which men +witness the effusion of women. Young Mavering, after sharing the ladies' +excitement fully with them, rewarded himself by an exclusive moment with +Miss Pasmer. + +"You must get Mrs. Pasmer to let me show you all of Class Day that a +Senior can. I didn't know what a perfect serpent's tooth it was to be +one before. Mrs. Saintsbury," he broke off, "have you got tickets for +the Tree? Ah, she doesn't hear me!" + +Mrs. Saintsbury was just then saying to the elder Mavering, "I'm so glad +you decided to come today. It would have been a shame if none of you +were here." She made a feint of dropping her voice, with a glance at Dan +Mavering. "He's such a nice boy," which made him laugh, and cry out-- + +"Oh, now? Don't poison my father's mind, Mrs. Saintsbury." + +"Oh, some one would be sure to tell him," retorted the Professor's wife, +"and he'd better hear it from a friend." + +The young fellow laughed again, and then he shook hands with some ladies +going out, and asked were they going so soon, from an abstract +hospitality, apparently, for he was not one of the hosts; and so turned +once more to Miss Pasmer. "We must get away from here, or the afternoon +will get away from us, and leave us nothing to show for it. Suppose we +make a start, Miss Pasmer?" + +He led the way with her out of the vestibule, banked round with pots of +palm and fern, and down the steps into the glare of the Cambridge +sunshine, blown full, as is the case on Class Day, of fine Cambridge +dust, which had drawn a delicate grey veil over the grass of the +Gymnasium lawn, and mounted in light clouds from the wheels powdering it +finer and finer in the street. Along the sidewalks dusty hacks and +carriages were ranged, and others were driving up to let people dismount +at the entrances to the college yard. Within the temporary picket- +fences, secluding a part of the grounds for the students and their +friends, were seen stretching from dormitory to dormitory long lines of +Chinese lanterns, to be lit after nightfall, swung between the elms. +Groups of ladies came and went, nearly always under the escort of some +student; the caterers' carts, disburdened of their ice-creams and salads, +were withdrawn under the shade in the street, and their drivers lounged +or drowsed upon the seats; now and then a black waiter, brilliant as a +bobolink in his white jacket and apron, appeared on some errand; the +large, mild Cambridge policemen kept the entrances to the yard with a +benevolent vigilance which was not harsh with the little Irish children +coming up from the Marsh in their best to enjoy the sight of other +people's pleasure. + +"Isn't it a perfect Class Day?" cried young Mavering, as he crossed +Kirkland Street with Miss Pasmer, and glanced down its vaulted +perspective of elms, through which the sunlight broke, and lay in the +road in pools and washes as far as the eye reached. "Did you ever see +anything bluer than the sky to-day? I feel as if we'd ordered the +weather, with the rest of the things, and I had some credit for it as +host. Do make it a little compliment, Miss Pasmer; I assure you I'll be +very modest about it." + +"Ah, I think it's fully up to the occasion," said the girl, catching the +spirit of his amiable satisfaction. "Is it the usual Class Day weather?" + +"You spoil everything by asking that," cried the young man; "it obliges +me to make a confession--it's always good weather on Class Day. There +haven't been more than a dozen bad Class Days in the century. But you'll +admit that there can't have been a better Class Day than this?" + +"Oh yes; it's certainly the pleasantest Class Day I've seen;" said the +girl; and now when Mavering laughed she laughed too. + +"Thank you so much for saying that! I hope it will pass off in unclouded +brilliancy; it will, if I can make it. Why, hallo! They're on the other +side of the street yet, and looking about as if they were lost." + +He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and waved it at the others of +their party. + +They caught sight of it, and came hurrying over through the dust. + +Mrs. Saintsbury said, apparently as the sum of her consultations with +Mrs. Pasmer: "The Tree is to be at half-past five; and after we've seen a +few spreads, I'm going to take the ladies hone for a little rest." + +"Oh no; don't do that," pleaded the young man. After making this protest +he seemed not to have anything to say immediately in support of it. He +merely added: "This is Miss Pasmer's first Class Day, and I want her to +see it all." + +"But you'll have to leave us very soon to get yourself ready for the +Tree" suggested the Professor's lady, with a motherly prevision. + +"I shall want just fifteen minutes for that." + +"I know, better, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Saintsbury, with finality. +"You will want a good three-quarters of an hour to make yourself as +disreputable as you'll look at the Tree; and you'll have to take time for +counsel and meditation. You may stay with us just half an hour, and +then we shall part inexorably. I've seen a great many more Class +Days than you have, and I know what they are in their demands upon the +Seniors." + +"Oh; well! Then we won't think about the time," said the young man, +starting on with Miss Pasmer. + +"Well, don't undertake too much," said the lady. She came last in the +little procession, with the elder Mavering, and her husband and Mrs +Pasmer preceded her. + +"What?" young Mavering called back, with his smiling face over his +shoulder. + +"She says not to bite off more than you can chew," the professor answered +for her. + +Mavering broke into a conscious laugh, but full of delight, and with his +handkerchief to his face had almost missed the greeting of some ladies +who bowed to him. He had to turn round to acknowledge it, and he was +saluting and returning salutations pretty well all along the line of +their progress. + +"I'm afraid you'll think I'm everybody's friend but my own, Miss Pasmer, +but I assure you all this is purely accidental. I don't know so many +people, after all; only all that I do know seem to be here this morning." + +"I don't think it's a thing to be sorry for," said the girl. "I wish we +knew more people. It's rather forlorn--" + +"Oh, will you let me introduce some of the fellows to you? They'll be so +glad." + +"If you'll tell them how forlorn I said I was," said the girl, with a +smile. + +"Oh, no, no, no! I understand that. And I assure you that I didn't +suppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluous +reassurance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only there +are some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you'll +allow me--" + +"We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behind +him. + +"Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for another +burst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication of +youth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in the +young faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between the +different dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged with people +coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, the +prettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, at once +sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of the +Renaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old university +town, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly and +almost pathetically beautiful under the leafage of her hovering elms and +in, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youth +that overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poets +who have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of the +humanities who has left her. + +"Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to her +daughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor's, "did you ever see so +many pretty costumes?" + +"Never," said the girl, with equal intensity. + +"Well, it makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighed +Mrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You see +splendid dressing abroad, but it's mostly upon old people who ought to be +sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it's the young +girls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charming +in the Gymnasium, but I see you must get them out-of-doors to have the +full effect. Mr. Mavering, are they always so prettily dressed on Class +Day?" + +"Well, I'm beginning to feel as if it wouldn't be exactly modest for me +to say so, whatever I think. You'd better ask Mrs. Saintsbury; she +pretends to know all about it." + +"No, I'm bound to say they're not," said the Professor's wife candidly. +"Your daughter," she added, in a low tone for all to hear, "decides that +question." + +"I'm so glad you said that, Mrs. Saintsbury," said the young man. He +looked at the girl; who blushed with a pleasure that seemed to thrill to +the last fibre of her pretty costume. + +She could not say anything, but her mother asked, with an effort at self- +denial: "Do you think so really? It's one of those London things. They +have so much taste there now," she added yielding to her own pride in the +dress. + +"Yes; I supposed it must be," said Mrs. Saintsbury, "We used to come in +muslins and tremendous hoops--don't you remember?" + +"Did you look like your photographs?" asked young Mavering, over his +shoulder. + +"Yes; but we didn't know it then," said the Professor's wife. + +"Neither did we," said the Professor. "We supposed that there had never +been anything equal to those hoops and white muslins." + +"Thank you, my dear," said his wife, tapping him between the shoulders +with her fan. "Now don't go any further." + +"Do you mean about our first meeting here on Class Day?" asked her +husband. + +"They'll think so now," said Mrs. Saintsbury patiently, with a playful +threat of consequences in her tone. + +"When I first saw the present Mrs. Saintsbury," pursued the Professor--it +was his joking way, of describing her, as if there had been several other +Mrs. Saintsburys--"she was dancing on the green here." + +"Ah, they don't dance on the green any more, I hear," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. + +"No, they don't," said the other lady; "and I think it's just as well. +It was always a ridiculous affectation of simplicity." + +"It must have been rather public," said young Mavering, in a low voice, +to Miss Pasmer. + +"It doesn't seem as if it could ever have been in character quite," she +answered. + +"We're a thoroughly indoors people," said the Professor. "And it seems +as if we hadn't really begun to get well as a race till we had come in +out of the weather." + +"How can you say that on a day like this?" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I didn't +suppose any one could be so unromantic." + +"Don't flatter him," cried his wife. + +"Does he consider that a compliment?" + +"Not personally," he answered: "But it's the first duty of a Professor of +Comparative Literature to be unromantic." + +"I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Pasmer. + +"He will be happy to explain, at the greatest possible length," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "But you shan't spoil our pleasure now, John." + +They all laughed, and the Professor looked proud of the wit at his +expense; the American husband is so, and the public attitude of the +American husband and wife toward each other is apt to be amiably +satirical; their relation seems never to have lost its novelty, or to +lack droll and surprising contrasts for them. + +Besides these passages with her husband, Mrs. Saintsbury kept up a full +flow of talk with the elder Mavering, which Mrs. Pasmer did her best to +overhear, for it related largely to his son, whom, it seemed, from the +father's expressions, the Saintsburys had been especially kind to. + +No, I assure you, "Mrs. Pasmer heard her protest, "Mr. Saintsbury has, +been very much interested in him. I hope he has not put any troublesome +ideas into his head. Of course he's very much interested in literature, +from his point of view, and he's glad to find any of the young men +interested in it, and that's apt to make him overdo matters a little." + +"Dan wished me to talk with him, and I shall certainly be glad to do so," +said the father, but in a tone which conveyed to Mrs. Pasmer the +impression that though he was always open to conviction, his mind was +made up on this point, whatever it was. + + + + +VI. + +The party went to half a dozen spreads, some of which were on a scale of +public grandeur approaching that of the Gymnasium, and others of a +subdued elegance befitting the more private hospitalities in the +students' rooms. Mrs. Pasmer was very much interested in these rooms, +whose luxurious appointments testified to the advance of riches and of +the taste to apply them since she used to visit students' rooms in far- +off Class Days. The deep window nooks and easy-chairs upholstered in the +leather that seems sacred alike to the seats and the shelves of +libraries; the aesthetic bookcases, low and topped with bric-a-brac; the +etchings and prints on the walls, which the elder Mavering went up to +look at with a mystifying air of understanding such things; the foils +crossed over the chimney, and the mantel with its pipes, and its +photographs of theatrical celebrities tilted about over it--spoke of +conditions mostly foreign to Mrs. Pasmer's memories of Harvard. The +photographed celebrities seemed to be chosen chiefly for their beauty, +and for as much of their beauty as possible, Mrs. Pasmer perceived, with +an obscure misgiving of the sort which an older generation always likes +to feel concerning the younger, but with a tolerance, too, which was +personal to herself; it was to be considered that the massive thought and +honest amiability of Salvini's face, and the deep and spiritualized power +of Booth's, varied the effect of these companies of posturing nymphs. + +At many places she either met old friends with whom she clamoured over +the wonder of their encounter there, or was made acquainted with new +people by the Saintsburys. She kept a mother's eye on her daughter, to +whom young Mavering presented everybody within hail or reach, and whom +she could see, whenever she looked at her, a radiant centre of +admiration. She could hear her talk sometimes, and she said to herself +that really Alice was coming out; she had never heard her say so many +good things before; she did not know it was in her. She vas very glad +then that she had let her wear that dress; it was certainly +distinguished, and the girl carried it off, to her mother's amusement, +with the air of a superb lady of the period from which it dated. She +thought what a simple child Alice really was, all the time those other +children, the Seniors, were stealing their glances of bold or timid +worship at her, and doubtless thinking her a brilliant woman of the +world. But there could be no mistake that she was a success. + +Part of her triumph was of course due to Mrs. Saintsbury; whose +chaperonage; Mrs. Pasmer could see, was everywhere of effect. But it was +also largely due to the vigilant politeness of young Mavering, who seemed +bent on making her have good time, and who let no chance slip him. Mrs. +Pasmer felt his kindness truly; and she did not feel it the less because +she knew that there was but one thing that could, at his frankly selfish +age, make a young fellow wish to make a girl have a good time; except for +that reason he must be bending the whole soul of egotistic youth to +making some other girl have a good time. But all the same, it gave her +pause when some one to whom she was introduced spoke to her of her +friends the Maverings, as if they were friends of the oldest standing +instead of acquaintances of very recent accident. She did not think of +disclaiming the intimacy, but "Really I shall die of these Maverings," +she said to herself, "unless I find out something about them pretty +soon." + +"I'm not going to take you to the Omicron spread, Mrs. Pasmer," said +young Mavering, coming up to her with such an effect of sympathetic +devotion that she had to ask herself, "Are they my friends, the +Maverings?" "The Saintsburys have been there already, and it is a little +too common." The tone of superiority gave Mrs. Pasmer courage. "They're +good fellows; and all that, but I want you to see the best. I suppose it +will get back to giving the spreads all in the fellows' rooms again. +It's a good deal pleasanter, don't you think?" + +"Oh yes, indeed," assented Mrs. Pasmer, though she had really been +thinking the private spreads were not nearly so amusing as the large +spread she had seen at the Gymnasium. She had also wondered where all +Mr. Mavering's relations and friends were, and the people who had social +claims on him, that he could be giving up his Class Day in this reckless +fashion to strangers. Alice would account for a good deal, but she would +not account for everything. Mrs. Pasmer would have been willing to take +him from others, but if he were so anomalous as to have no one to be +taken from, of course it lessened his value as a trophy. These things +went in and out of her mind, with a final resolution to get a full +explanation from Mrs. Saintsbury, while she stood and smiled her winning +assent up into the young man's handsome face. + +Mrs. Saintsbury, caught sight of them, and as if suddenly reminded of a +forgotten duty, rushed vividly upon him. + +"Mr. Mavering, I shall not let you stay with us another minute. You must +go to your room now and get ready. You ought to have a little rest." + +He broke out in his laugh. "Do you think I want to go and lie down +awhile, like a lady before a party?" + +"I'm sure you'd be the stronger for it," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "But go, +upon any theory. Don't you see there isn't a Senior left?" + +He would not look round. "They've gone to other spreads," he said. +"But now I'll tell you: it is pretty, near time, and if you'll take me to +my room, I'll go." + +"You're a spoiled boy," said Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"But I want Mrs. Pasmer to see the room of a real student--a reading man, +and all that--and we'll come, to humour you." + +"Well, come upon any theory," said young Mavering. + +His father, and Professor Saintsbury, who had been instructed by his wife +not to lose sight of her, were at hand, and they crossed to that old hall +which keeps its favour with the students in spite of the rivalry of the +newer dormitories--it would be hard to say why. + +Mrs. Pasmer willingly assented to its being much better, out of pure +complaisance, though the ceilings were low and the windows small, and it +did not seem to her that the Franklin stove and the aesthetic papering +and painting of young Mavering's room brought it up to the level of those +others that she had seen. But with her habit of saying some friendly +lying thing, no matter what her impressions were, she exclaimed; "Oh, how +cosy!" and glad of the word, she went about from one to another, asking, +"Isn't this cosy?" + +Mrs. Saintsbury said: "It's supposed to be the cell of a recluse; but it +is cosy--yes." + +"It looks as if some hermit had been using it as a store-room," said her +husband; for there were odds and ends of furniture and clothes and boxes +and handbags scattered about the floor. + +"I forgot all about them when I asked you," cried Mavering, laughing out +his delight. "They belong to some fellows that are giving spreads in +their rooms, and I let them put them in here." + +"Do you commonly let people put things in your room that they want to get +rid off?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Well, not when I'm expecting company." + +"He couldn't refuse even then, if they pressed the matter," said Mrs. +Saintsbury, lecturing upon him to her friend. + +"I'm afraid you're too amiable altogether, Mr. Mavering. I'm sure you +let people impose upon you," said the other lady. "You have been letting +us impose upon you." + +"Ah! now that proves you're all wrong, Mrs. Pasmer." + +"It proves that you know how to say things very prettily." + +"Oh, thank you. I know when I'm having a good time, and I do my best to +enjoy it." He ended with the nervous laugh which seemed habitual with +him. + +"He, does laugh a good deal;" thought Mrs. Pasmer, surveying him with +smiling steadiness. "I suppose it tires Alice. Some of his teeth are +filled at the sides. That vein in his forehead--they say that means +genius." She said to him: "I hope you know when others are having a good +time too, Mr. Mavering? You ought to have that reward." + +They both looked at Alice. "Oh, I should be so happy to think you hadn't +been bored with it all, Mrs: Pasmer," he returned;--with-deep feeling. + +Alice was looking at one of the sketches which were pretty plentifully +pinned about the wall, and apparently seeing it and apparently listening +to what Professor Saintsbury was saying; but her mother believed from a +tremor of the ribbons on her hat that she was conscious of nothing but +young Mavering's gaze and the sound of his voice. + +"We've been delighted, simply enchanted," said Mrs. Pasmer. And she +thought; "Now if Alice were to turn round just as she stands, he could +see all the best points of her face. I wonder what she really thinks of +him? What is it you have there; Alice?" she asked aloud. + +The girl turned her face over her shoulder so exactly in the way her +mother wished that Mrs. Pasmer could scarcely repress a cry of joy. "A +sketch of Mr. Mavering's." + +"Oh, how very interesting!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "Do you sketch, Mr. +Mavering? But of course." She pressed forward, and studied the sketch +inattentively. "How very, very good!" she buzzed deep in her throat, +while, with a glance at her daughter, she thought, "How impassive Alice +is! But she behaves with great dignity. Yes. Perhaps that's best. +And are you going to be an artist?" she asked of Mavering. + +"Not if it can be prevented," he answered, laughing again. + +"But his laugh is very pleasant," reflected Mrs. Pasmer. "Does Alice +dislike it so much?" She repeated aloud, "If it can be prevented?" + +"They think I might spoil a great lawyer in the attempt." + +"Oh, I see. And are you going to be a lawyer? But to be a great +painter! And America has so few of them." She knew quite well that she +was talking nonsense, but she was aware, through her own indifference to +the topic that he was not minding what she said, but was trying to bring +himself into talk with Alice again. The girl persistently listened to +Professor Saintsbury. + +"Is she punishing him for something?" her mother asked herself. "What +can it be for. Does she think he's a little too pushing? Perhaps, he is +a little pushing." She reflected, with an inward sigh, that she would +know whether he was if she only knew more about him. + +He did the honours of his room very simply and nicely, and he said it was +pretty rough to think this was the last of it. After which he faltered, +and something occurred to Mrs Saintsbury. + +"Why, we're keeping you! It's time for you to dress for the Tree. +John"--she reproached her husband--"how could you let us do it?" + +"Far be it from me to hurry ladies out of other people's houses-- +especially ladies who have put themselves in charge of other people." + +"No, don't hurry," pleaded Mavering; "there's plenty of time." + +"How much time?" asked Mrs. Saintsbury. + +He looked at his watch. "Well, a good quarter of an hour." + +"And I was to have taken Mrs. Pasmer and Alice home for a little rest +before the Tree!" cried Mrs Saintsbury. "And now we must go at once, or +we shall get no sort of places." + +In the civil and satirical parley which followed, no one answered +another, but young Mavering bore as full a part as the elder ladies, and +only his father and Alice were silent: his guests got themselves out of +his room. They met at the threshold a young fellow, short and dark and +stout, in an old tennis suit. He fell back at sight of them, and took +off his hat to Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"Why, Mr. Boardman!" + +"Don't be bashful, Boardman?" young Mavering called out. "Come in and +show them how I shall look in five minutes." + +Mr. Boardman took his introductions with a sort of main-force self- +possession, and then said, "You'll have to look it in less than five +minutes now, Mavering. You're come for." + +"What? Are they ready?" + +"We must fly," panted Mrs. Saintsbury, without waiting for the answer, +which was lost in the incoherencies of all sorts of au revoirs called +after and called back. + + + + +VII. + +"That is one thing," said Mrs. Saintsbury, looking swiftly round to see +that the elder Mavering was not within hearing, as she hurried ahead with +Mrs. Pasmer, "that I can't stand in Dan Mavering. Why couldn't he have +warned us that it was getting near the time? Why should he have gone on +pretending that there was no hurry? It isn't insincerity exactly, but it +isn't candour; no, it's uncandid. Oh, I suppose it's the artistic +temperament--never coming straight to the point." + +"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Pasmer eagerly. + +"I'll tell you sometime." She looked round and halted a little for +Alice, who was walking detached and neglected by the preoccupation of the +two elderly men. "I'm afraid you're tired," she said to the girl. + +"Oh no." + +"Of course not, on Class Day. But I hope we shall get seats. What +weather!" + +The sun had not been oppressive at any time during the day, though the +crowded building had been close and warm, and now it lay like a painted +light on the grass and paths over which they passed to the entrance of +the grounds around the Tree. Holden Chapel, which enclosed the space on +the right as they went in, shed back the sun from its brick-red flank, +rising unrelieved in its venerable ugliness by any touch of the festive +preparations; but to their left and diagonally across from them high +stagings supported tiers of seats along the equally unlovely red bulks of +Hollis and of Harvard. These seats, and the windows in the stories above +them, were densely packed with people, mostly young girls dressed in a +thousand enchanting shades and colours, and bonneted and hatted to the +last effect of fashion. They were like vast terraces of flowers to the +swift glance, and here and there some brilliant parasol, spread to catch +the sun on the higher ranks, was like a flaunting poppy, rising to the +light and lolling out above the blooms of lower stature. But the +parasols were few, for the two halls flung wide curtains of shade over +the greater part of the spectators, and across to the foot of the chapel, +while a piece of the carpentry whose simplicity seems part of the Class +Day tradition shut out the glare and the uninvited public, striving to +penetrate the enclosure next the street. In front of this yellow pine +wall; with its ranks of benches, stood the Class Day Tree, girded at ten +or fifteen feet from the ground with a wide band of flowers. + +Mrs. Pasmer and her friends found themselves so late that if some +gentlemen who knew Professor Saintsbury had not given up their places +they could have got no seats. But this happened, and the three ladies +had harmoniously blended their hues with those of the others in that bank +of bloom, and the gentlemen had somehow made away with their +obstructiveness in different crouching and stooping postures at their +feet, when the Junior Class filed into the green enclosure amidst the +'rahs of their friends; and sank in long ranks on the grass beside the +chapel. Then the Sophomores appeared, and were received with cheers by +the Juniors, with whom they joined, as soon as they were placed, in +heaping ignominy upon the freshmen. The Seniors came last, grotesque in +the variety of their old clothes, and a fierce uproar of 'rahs and yells +met them from the students squatted upon the grass as they loosely +grouped themselves in front of the Tree; the men of the younger classes +formed in three rings, and began circling in different directions around +them. + +Mrs. Pasmer bent across Mrs. Saintsbury to her daughter: "Can you make +out Mr. Mavering among them, Alice?" + +"No. Hush, mamma!" pleaded the girl. + +With the subsidence of the tumult in the other classes, the Seniors had +broken from the stoical silence they kept through it, and were now with +an equally serious clamour applauding the first of a long list of +personages, beginning with the President, and ranging through their +favourites in the Faculty down to Billy the Postman. The leader who +invited them to this expression of good feeling exacted the full tale of +nine cheers for each person he named, and before he reached the last the +'rahs came in gasps from their dry throats. + +In the midst of the tumult the marshal flung his hat at the elm; then the +rush upon the tree took place, and the scramble for the flowers. The +first who swarmed up the trunk were promptly plucked down by the legs and +flung upon the ground, as if to form a base there for the operations of +the rest; who surged and built themselves up around the elm in an +irregular mass. From time to time some one appeared clambering over +heads and shoulders to make a desperate lunge and snatch at the flowers, +and then fall back into the fluctuant heap again. Yells, cries, and +clappings of hands came from the other students, and the spectators in +the, seats, involuntarily dying away almost to silence as some stronger +or wilfuler aspirant held his own on the heads and shoulders of the +others, or was stayed there by his friends among them till he could make +sure of a handful of the flowers. A rush was made upon him when be +reached the ground; if he could keep his flowers from the hands that +snatched at them, he staggered away with the fragments. The wreath began +to show wide patches of the bark under it; the surging and struggling +crowd below grew less dense; here and there one struggled out of it and +walked slowly about, panting pitiably. + +"Oh, I wonder they don't kill each other!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "Isn't it +terrible?" She would not have missed it on any account; but she liked to +get all she could out of her emotions. + +"They never get hurt," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "Oh, look! There's Dan +Mavering!" + +The crowd at the foot of the tree had closed densely, and a wilder roar +went up from all the students. A tall, slim young fellow, lifted on the +shoulders of the mass below, and staying himself with one hand against +the tree, rapidly stripped away the remnants of the wreath, and flung +them into the crowd under him. A single tuft remained; the crowd was +melting away under him in a scramble for the fallen flowers; he made a +crooked leap, caught the tuft, and tumbled with it headlong. + +"Oh!" breathed the ladies on the Benches, with a general suspiration lost +in the 'rahs and clappings, as Mavering reappeared with the bunch of +flowers in his hand. He looked dizzily about, as if not sure, of his +course; then his face, flushed and heated, with the hair pulled over the +eyes, brightened with recognition, and he advanced upon Mrs. Saintsbury's +party with rapid paces, each of which Mrs. Pasmer commentated with inward +conjecture. + +"Is he bringing the flowers to Alice? Isn't it altogether too +conspicuous? Has he really the right to do it? What will people think? +Will he give them to me for her, or will he hand them directly to her? +Which should I prefer him to do? I wonder if I know?" + +When she looked up with the air of surprise mixed with deprecation and +ironical disclaimer which she had prepared while these things were +passing through her mind, young Mavering had reached them, and had paused +in a moment's hesitation before his father. With a bow of affectionate +burlesque, from which he lifted his face to break into laughter at the +look in all their eyes, he handed the tattered nosegay to his father. + +"Oh, how delightful! how delicate! how perfect!" Mrs. Pasmer confided to +herself. + +"I think this must be for you, Mrs. Pasmer," said the elder Mavering, +offering her the bouquet, with a grave smile at his son's whim. + +"Oh no, indeed!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "For Mrs. Saintsbury, of course." + +She gave it to her, and Mrs. Saintsbury at once transferred it to Miss +Pasmer. + +"They wished me to pass this to you, Alice;" and at this consummation Dan +Mavering broke into another happy laugh. + +"Mrs. Saintsbury, you always do the right thing at once," he cried. + +"That's more than I can say of you, Mr. Mavering," she retorted. + +"Oh, thank you, Mr. Mavering!" said the girl, receiving the flowers. It +was as if she had been too intent upon them and him to have noticed the +little comedy that had conveyed them to her. + + + + +VIII. + +As soon after Class Day as Mrs. Pasmer's complaisant sense of the +decencies would let her, she went out from Boston to call on Mrs. +Saintsbury in Cambridge, and thank her for her kindness to Alice and +herself. "She will know well enough what I come for," she said to +herself, and she felt it the more important to ignore Mrs. Saintsbury's +penetration by every polite futility; this was due to them both: and she +did not go till the second day after. + +Mrs. Saintsbury came down into the darkened, syringa-scented library to +find her, and give her a fan. + +"You still live, Jenny," she said, kissing her gaily. + +They called each other by their girl names, as is rather the custom in +Boston with ladies who are in the same set, whether they are great +friends or not. In the more changeful society of Cambridge, where so +many new people are constantly coming and going in connection with the +college, it is not so much the custom; but Mrs. Saintsbury was Boston +born, as well as Mrs. Pasmer, and was Cantabrigian by marriage--though +this is not saying that she was not also thoroughly so by convincement +and usage she now rarely went into Boston society. + +"Yes, Etta--just. But I wasn't sure of it," said Mrs. Pasmer, "when I +woke yesterday. I was a mere aching jelly!" + +"And Alice?" + +"Oh; I don't think she had any physical consciousness. She was a mere +rapturous memory!" + +"She did have a good time, didn't she?" said Mrs. Saintsbury, in a +generous retrospect. "I think she was on her feet every moment in the +evening. It kept me from getting tired, to watch her." + +"I was afraid you'd be quite worn out. I'd no idea it was so late. It +must have been nearly half past seven before we got away from the Beck +Hall spread, and then by the time we had walked round the college +grounds--how extremely pretty the lanterns were, and how charming the +whole effect was!--it must have been nine before the dancing began. +Well, we owe it all to you, Etta." + +"I don't know what you mean by owing. I'm always glad of an excuse for +Class Day. And it was Dan Mavering who really managed the affair." + +"He was very kind," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a feeling which was chiefly +gratitude to her friend for bringing in his name so soon. Now that it +had been spoken, she felt it decorous to throw aside the outer integument +of pretense, which if it could have been entirely exfoliated would have +caused Mrs. Pasmer morally to disappear, like an onion stripped of its +successive laminae. + +"What did you mean," she asked, leaning forward, with, her face averted, +"about his having the artistic temperament? Is he going to be an artist? +I should hope not." She remembered without shame that she had strongly +urged him to consider how much better it would be to be a painter than a +lawyer, in the dearth of great American painters. + +"He could be a painter if he liked--up to a certain point," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "Or he could be any one of half s dozen other things--his +last craze was journalism; but you know what I mean by the artistic +temperament: it's that inability to be explicit; that habit of leaving +things vague and undefined, and hoping they'll somehow come out as you +want them of themselves; that way of taking the line of beauty to get at +what you wish to do or say, and of being very finicking about little +things and lag about essentials. That's what I mean by the artistic +temperament." + +"Yes; that's terrible," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, with the abstractly severe +yet personally pitying perception of one whose every word and act was +sincere and direct. "I know just what you mean. But how does it apply +to Mr. Mavering?" + +"It doesn't, exactly," returned her friend. "And I'm always ashamed when +I say, or even think, anything against Dan Mavering. He's sweetness +itself. We've known him ever since he came to Harvard, and I must say +that a more constant and lovely follow I never saw. It wasn't merely +when he was a Freshman, and he had that home feeling hanging about him +still that makes all the Freshmen so appreciative of anything you do for +them; but all through the Sophomore and Junior years, when they're so +taken up with their athletics and their societies and their college life +generally that they haven't a moment for people that have been kind to +them, he was just as faithful as ever." + +"How nice!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Yes, indeed! And all the allurements of Boston society haven't taken him +from us altogether. You can't imagine how much this means till you've +been at home a while and seen how the students are petted and spoiled +nowadays in the young society." + +"Oh, I've heard of it," said Mrs. Pasmer. "And is it his versatility and +brilliancy, or his amiability, that makes him such a universal +favourite?" + +"Universal favourite? I don't know that he's that." + +"Well, popular, then." + +"Oh, he's certainly very much liked. But, Jenny, there are no universal +favourites in Harvard now, if there ever were: the classes are altogether +too big. And it wouldn't be ability, and it wouldn't be amiability +alone, that would give a man any sort of leadership." + +"What in the world would it be?" + +"That question, more than anything else, shows how long you've been away, +Jenny. It would be family--family, with a judicious mixture of the +others, and with money." + +"Is it possible? But of course--I remember! Only at their age one +thinks of students as being all hail-fellow-well-met with each other--" + +"Yes; it's hard to realise how conventional they are--how very much +worldlier than the world--till one sees it as one does in Cambridge. +They pique themselves on it. And Mr. Saintsbury"--she was one of those +women whom everything reminds of their husbands "says that it isn't a bad +thing altogether. He says that Harvard is just like the world; and even +if it's a little more so, these boys have got to live in the world, and +they had better know what it is. You may not approve of the Harvard +spirit, and Mr. Saintsbury doesn't sympathise with it; he only says it's +the world's spirit. Harvard men--the swells--are far more exclusive than +Oxford men. A student, 'comme il faut', wouldn't at all like to be +supposed to know another student whom we valued for his brilliancy, +unless he was popular and well known in college." + +"Dear me!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "But of course! It's perfectly natural, +with young people. And it's well enough that they should begin to +understand how things really are in the world early; it will save them +from a great many disappointments." + +"I assure you we have very little to teach Harvard men in those matters. +They could give any of us points. Those who are of good family and +station know how to protect themselves by reserves that the others +wouldn't dare to transgress. But a merely rich man couldn't rise in +their set any more than a merely gifted man. He could get on to a +certain point by toadying, and some do; but he would never get to be +popular, like Dan Mavering." + +"And what makes him popular?--to go back to the point we started from," +said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Ah, that's hard to say. It's--quality, I suppose. I don't mean social +quality, exactly; but personal charm. He never had a mean thought; of +course we're all full of mean thoughts, and Dan is too; but his first +impulse is always generous and sweet, and at his age people act a great +deal from impulse. I don't suppose he ever met a human being without +wanting to make him like him, and trying to do it." + +"Yes, he certainly makes you like him," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. "But I +understand that he can't make people like him without family or money; +and I don't understand that he's one of those 'nouveaux riches' who are +giving Harvard such a reputation for extravagance nowadays." + +There was an inquiring note in Mrs. Pasmer's voice; and in the syringa- +scented obscurity, which protected the ladies from the expression of each +other's faces, Mrs. Saintsbury gave a little laugh of intelligence, to +which Mrs. Pasmer responded by a murmur of humorous enjoyment at being +understood. + +"Oh no! He isn't one of those. But the Maverings have plenty of money," +said Mrs. Saintsbury, "and Dan's been very free with it, though not +lavish. And he came here with a reputation for popularity from a very +good school, and that always goes a very great way in college." + +"Yes?" said Mrs. Pasmer, feeling herself getting hopelessly adrift in +these unknown waters; but reposing a pious confidence in her pilot. + +"Yes; if a sufficient number of his class said he was the best fellow in +the world, he would be pretty sure to be chosen one of the First Ten in +the 'Dickey'." + +"What mysteries!" gasped Mrs. Pasmer, disposed to make fun of them, but a +little overawed all the same. "What in the world is the 'Dickey'?" + +"It's the society that the Freshmen are the most eager to get into. +They're chosen, ten at a time, by the old members, and to be one of the +first ten--the only Freshmen chosen--is something quite ineffable." + +"I see." Mrs. Pasmer fanned herself, after taking a long breath. "And +when he had got into the ------ " + +"Then it would depend upon himself, how he spent his money, and all that, +and what sort of society success he was in Boston. That has a great deal +to do with it from the first. Then another thing is caution-- +discreetness; not saying anything censorious or critical of other men, no +matter what they do. And Dan Mavering is the perfection of prudence, +because he's the perfection of good-nature." + +Mrs. Pasmer had apparently got all of these facts that she could digest. +"And who are the Maverings?" + +"Why, it's an old Boston name--" + +"It's too old, isn't it? Like Pasmer. There are no Maverings in Boston +that I ever heard of." + +"No; the name's quite died out just here, I believe: but it's old, and it +bids fair to be replated at Ponkwasset Falls." + +"At Ponk--" + +"That's where they have their mills, or factories, or shops, or whatever +institution they make wall-paper in." + +"Wall-paper!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, austerely. After a moment she asked: +"And is wall-paper the 'thing' now? I mean--" She tried to think of +some way of modifying the commonness of her phrase, but did not. After +all, it expressed her meaning. + +"It isn't the extreme of fashion, of course. But it's manufacturing, and +it isn't disgraceful. And the Mavering papers are very pretty, and you +can live with them without becoming anaemic, or having your face twitch." + +"Face twitch?" echoed Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Yes; arsenical poisoning." + +"Oh! Conscientious as well as aesthetic. I see. And does Mr. Mavering +put his artistic temperament into them?" + +"His father does. He's a very interesting man. He has the best taste in +certain things--he knows more about etchings, I suppose, than any one +else in Boston." + +"Is it possible! And does he live at Ponkwasset Falls? It's in Rhode +Island, isn't it?" + +"New Hampshire. Yes; the whole family live there." + +"The whole family? Are there many of them? I'd fancied, somehow, that +Mr. Mavering was the only----Do tell me about them, Etta," said Mrs. +Pasmer, leaning back in her chair, and fanning herself with an effect of +impartial interest, to which the dim light of the room lent itself. + +"He's the only son. But there are daughters, of course--very cultivated +girls." + +"And is he--is the elder Mr. Mavering a--I don't know what made me think +so--a widower?" + +"Well, no--not exactly." + +"Not exactly! He's not a grass-widower, I hope?" + +"No, indeed. But his wife's a helpless invalid, and always has been. +He's perfectly devoted to her; and he hurried home yesterday, though he +wanted very much to stay for Commencement. He's never away from her +longer than he can help. She's bedridden; and you can see from the +moment you enter it that it's a man's house. Daughters can't change +that, you know." + +"Have you been there?" asked Mrs. Pasmer, surprised that she was getting +so much information, but eager for more. "Why, how long have you known +them, Etta?" + +"Only since Dan came to Harvard. Mr. Saintsbury took a fancy to him from +the start, and the boy was so fond of him that they were always insisting +upon a visit; and last summer we stopped there on our way to the +mountains." + +"And the sisters--do they stay there the whole year round? Are they +countrified?" + +"One doesn't live in the country without being countrified," said Mrs. +Saintsbury. "They're rather quiet girls, though they've been about a +good deal--to Europe with friends, and to New York in the winter. +They're older than Dan; they're more like their father. Are you afraid +of that draught at the windows?" + +"Oh no; it's delicious. And he's like the mother?" + +"Yes." + +"Then it's the father who has the artistic taste--he gets that from him; +and the mother who has the--" + +"Temperament--yes." + +"How extremely interesting! And so he's going to be a lawyer. Why +lawyer, if he's got the talent and the temperament of an artist? Does +his father wish him to be a lawyer?" + +"His father wishes him to be a wall-paper maker." + +"And the young man compromises on the law. I see," said Mrs. Pasmer. +"And you say he's been going into Boston a great deal? Where does he +go?" + +The ladies entered into this social inquiry with a zest which it would be +hard to make the reader share, or perhaps to feel the importance of. +It is enough that it ended in the social vindication of Dan Mavering. +It would not have been enough for Mrs Pasmer that he was accepted in the +best Cambridge houses; she knew of old how people were accepted in +Cambridge for their intellectual brilliancy or solidity, their personal +worth, and all sorts of things, without consideration of the mystical +something which gives vogue in Boston. + +"How superb Alice was!" Mrs. Saintsbury broke off abruptly. "She has +such a beautiful manner. Such repose." + +"Repose! Yes," said her mother, thoughtfully. "But she's very intense. +And I don't see where she gets it. Her father has repose enough, but he +has no intensity; and I'm all intensity, and no repose. But I'm no more +like my mother than Alice is like me." + +"I think she has the Hibbins face," said Mrs. Saintsbury. + +"Oh! she's got the Hibbins face," said Mrs Pasmer, with a disdain of tone +which she did not at all feel; the tone was mere absent-mindedness. + +She was about to revert to the question of Mavering's family, when the +door-bell rang, and another visitor interrupted her talk with Mrs. +Saintsbury. + + + + +IX. + +Mrs. Pasmer's husband looked a great deal older than herself, and, by +operation of a well-known law of compensation, he was lean and silent, +while she was plump and voluble. He had thick eyebrows, which remained +black after his hair and beard had become white, and which gave him an +aspect of fierceness, expressive of nothing in his character. It was +from him that their daughter got her height, and, as Mrs. Pasmer freely +owned, her distinction. + +Soon after their marriage the Pasmers had gone to live in Paris, where +they remained faithful to the fortunes of the Second Empire till its +fall, with intervals of return to their own country of a year or two +years at a time. After the fall of the Empire they made their sojourn in +England, where they lived upon the edges and surfaces of things, as +Americans must in Europe everywhere, but had more permanency of feeling +than they had known in France, and something like a real social status. +At one time it seemed as if they might end their days there; but that +which makes Americans different from all other peoples, and which finally +claims their allegiance for their own land, made them wish to come back +to America, and to come back to Boston. After all, their place in +England was strictly inferior, and must be. They knew titles, and +consorted with them, but they had none themselves, and the English +constancy which kept their friends faithful to them after they had become +an old story, was correlated with the English honesty which never +permitted them to mistake themselves for even the lowest of the nobility. +They went out last, and they did not come in first, ever. + +The invitations, upon these conditions, might have gone on indefinitely, +but they did not imply a future for the young girl in whom the interests +of her parents centred. After being so long a little girl, she had +become a great girl, and then all at once she had become a young lady. +They had to ask themselves, the mother definitely and the father +formlessly, whether they wished their daughter to marry an Englishman, +and their hearts answered them, like true Republican hearts, Not an +untitled Englishman, while they saw no prospect of her getting any other. +Mrs. Pasmer philosophised the case with a clearness and a courage which +gave her husband a series of twinges analogous to the toothache, for a +man naturally shrinks from such bold realisations. She said Alice had +the beauty of a beauty, and she had the distinction of a beauty, but she +had not the principles of a beauty; there was no use pretending that she +had. For this reason the Prince of Wales's set, so accessible to +American loveliness with the courage of its convictions, was beyond her; +and the question was whether there was money enough for a younger son, or +whether, if there was, a younger son was worth it. + +However this might be, there was no question but there was now less money +than there had been, and a great deal less. The investments had not +turned out as they promised; not only had dividends been passed, but +there had been permanent shrinkages. What was once an amiable competency +from the pooling of their joint resources had dwindled to a sum that +needed a careful eye both to the income and the outgo. Alice's becoming +a young lady had increased their expenses by the suddenly mounting cost +of her dresses, and of the dresses which her mother must now buy for the +different role she had to sustain in society. They began to ask +themselves what it was for, and to question whether, if she could not +marry a noble Englishman, Alice had not better marry a good American. + +Even with Mrs. Pasmer this question was tacit, and it need not be +explained to any one who knows our life that in her most worldly dreams +she intended at the bottom of her heart that her daughter should marry +for love. It is the rule that Americans marry for love, and the very +rare exception that they marry for anything else; and if our divorce +courts are so busy in spite of this fact, it is perhaps because the +Americans also unmarry for love, or perhaps because love is not so +sufficient in matters of the heart as has been represented in the +literature of people who have not been able to give it so fair a trial. +But whether it is all in all in marriage, or only a very marked +essential, it is certain that Mrs. Pasmer expected her daughter's +marriage to involve it. She would have shrunk from intimating anything +else to her as from a gross indecency; and she could not possibly, by any +finest insinuation, have made her a partner in her design for her +happiness. That, so far as Alice was concerned, was a thing which was to +fall to her as from heaven; for this also is part of the American plan. +We are the children of the poets, the devotees of the romancers, so far +as that goes; and however material and practical we are in other things, +in this we are a republic of shepherds and shepherdesses, and we live in +a golden age; which if it sometimes seems an age of inconvertible paper, +is certainly so through no want of faith in us. + +Though the Pasmers said that they ought to go home for Alice's sake, they +both understood that they were going home experimentally, and not with +the intention of laying their bones in their native soil, unless they +liked it, or found they could afford it. Mrs. Pasmer had no illusions in +regard to it. She had learned from her former visits home that it was +frightfully expensive; and, during the fifteen years which they had spent +chiefly abroad, she had observed the decay of that distinction which +formerly attended returning sojourners from Europe. She had seen them +cease gradually from the romantic reverence which once clothed them, and +decline through a gathering indifference into something like slight and +compassion, as people who have not been able to make their place or hold +their own at home; and she had taught herself so well how to pocket the +superiority natural to the Europeanised American before arriving at +consciousness of this disesteem, that she paid a ready tribute to people +who had always stayed at home. + +In fact Mrs. Pasmer was a flatterer, and it cannot be claimed for her +that she flattered adroitly always. But adroitness in flattery is not +necessary for its successful use. There is no morsel of it too gross for +the condor gullet and the ostrich stomach of human vanity; there is no +society in which it does not give the utterer instant honour and +acceptance in greater or less degree. Mrs. Pasmer, who was very good- +natured, employed it because she liked it herself, and knowing how +absolutely worthless it was from her own tongue, prized it from others. +She could have rested perfectly safe without it in her social position, +which she found unchanged by years of absence. She had not been a +Hibbins for nothing, and she was not a Pasmer for nothing, though why she +should have been either for something it would not be easy to say. + +But while confessing the foibles of Mrs. Pasmer, it would not be fair to +omit from the tale of her many virtues the final conscientiousness of her +openly involuted character. Not to mention other things, she instituted +and practised economies as alien to her nature as to her husband's, and +in their narrowing affairs she kept him out of debt. She was prudent; +she was alert; and while presenting to the world all the outward effect +of a butterfly, she possessed some of the best qualities of the bee. + +With his senatorial presence, his distinction of person and manner, Mr. +Pasmer was inveterately selfish in that province of small personal things +where his wife left him unmolested. In what related to his own comfort +and convenience he was undisputed lord of himself. It was she who +ordered their comings and goings, and decided in which hemisphere they +should sojourn from time to time, and in what city, street, and house, +but always with the understanding that the kitchen and all the domestic +appointments were to her husband's mind. He was sensitive to degrees of +heat and cold, and luxurious in the matter of lighting, and he had a fine +nose for plumbing. If he had not occupied himself so much with these +details, he was the sort of man to have thought Mrs. Pasmer, with her +buzz of activities and pretences, rather a tedious little woman. He had +some delicate tastes, if not refined interests, and was expensively fond +of certain sorts of bric-a-brac: he spent a great deal of time in packing +and unpacking it, and he had cases stored in Rome and London and Paris; +it had been one of his motives in consenting to come home that he might +get them out, and set up the various objects of bronze and porcelain in +cabinets. He had no vices, unless absolute idleness ensuing +uninterruptedly upon a remotely demonstrated unfitness for business can +be called a vice. Like other people who have always been idle, he did +not consider his idleness a vice. He rather plumed himself upon it, for +the man who has done nothing all his life naturally looks down upon +people who have done or are doing something. In Europe he had not all +the advantage of this superiority which such a man has here; he was often +thrown with other idle people, who had been useless for so many +generations that they had almost ceased to have any consciousness of it. +In their presence Pasmer felt that his uselessness had not that passive +elegance which only ancestral uselessness can give; that it was positive, +and to that degree vulgar. + +A life like this was not one which would probably involve great passions +or affections, and it would be hard to describe exactly the feeling with +which he regarded his daughter. He liked her, of course, and he had +naturally expected certain things of her, as a ladylike intelligence, +behaviour, and appearance; but he had never shown any great tenderness +for her, or even pride in her. She had never given him any displeasure, +however, and he had not shared his wife's question of mind at a temporary +phase of Alice's development when she showed a decided inclination for a +religious life. He had apparently not observed that the girl had a +pensive temperament in spite of the effect of worldly splendour which her +mother contrived for her, and that this pensiveness occasionally deepened +to gloom. He had certainly never seen that in a way of her own she was +very romantic. Mrs. Pasmer had seen it, with amusement sometimes, and +sometimes with anxiety, but always with the courage to believe that she +could cope with it when it was necessary. + +Whenever it was necessary she had all the moral courage she wanted; it +seemed as if she could have it or not as she liked; and in coming home +she had taken a flat instead of a house, though she had not talked with +her friends three minutes without perceiving that the moment when flats +had promised to assert their social equality with houses in Boston was +past for ever. There were, of course, cases in which there could be no +question of them; but for the most part they were plainly regarded as +makeshifts, the resorts of people of small means, or the defiances or +errors of people who had lived too much abroad. They stamped their +occupants as of transitory and fluctuant character; good people might +live in them, and did, as good people sometimes boarded; but they could +not be regarded as forming a social base, except in rare instances. They +presented peculiar difficulties in calling, and for any sort of +entertainment they were too--not public, perhaps, but--evident. + +In spite of these objections Mrs. Pasmer took a flat in the Cavendish, +and she took it furnished from people who were going abroad for a year. + + + + +X. + +Mrs. Pasmer stood at the drawing-room window of this apartment, the +morning after her call upon Mrs. Saintsbury, looking out on the passage +of an express-wagon load of trunks through Cavendish Square, and +commenting the fact with the tacit reflection that it was quite time she +should be getting away from Boston too, when her daughter, who was +looking out of the other window, started significantly back. + +"What is it, Alice?" + +"Nothing! Mr. Mavering, I think, and that friend of his----" + +"Which friend? But where? Don't look! They will think we were watching +them. I can't see them at all. Which way were they going?" Mrs. Pasmer +dramatised a careless unconsciousness to the square, while vividly +betraying this anxiety to her daughter. + +Alice walked away to the furthest part of the room. "They are coming +this way," she said indifferently. + +Before Mrs. Pasmer had time to prepare a conditional mood, adapted either +to their coming that way or going some other, she heard the janitor below +in colloquy with her maid in the kitchen, and then the maid came in to +ask if she should say the ladies were at home. "Oh, certainly," said +Mrs. Pasmer, with a caressing politeness that anticipated the tone she +meant to use with Mavering and his friend. "Were you going, Alice? +Better stay. It would be awkward sending out for you. You look well +enough." + +"Well!" + +The young men came in, Mavering with his nervous laugh first, and then +Boardman with his twinkling black eyes, and his main-force self- +possession. + +"We couldn't go away as far as New London without coming to see whether +you had really survived Class Day," said the former, addressing his +solicitude to Mrs. Pasmer. "I tried to find out from, Mrs. Saintsbury, +but she was very noncommittal." He laughed again, and shook hands with +Alice, whom he now included in his inquiry. + +"I'm glad she was," said Mrs. Pasmer--inwardly wondering what he meant by +going to New London--"if it sent you to ask in person." She made them +sit down; and she made as little as possible of the young ceremony they +threw into the transaction. To be cosy, to be at ease instantly, was +Mrs. Pasmer's way. "We've not only survived, we've taken a new lease of +life from Class Day. I'd for gotten how charming it always was. Or +perhaps it didn't use to be so charming? I don't believe they have +anything like it in Europe. Is it always so brilliant?" + +"I don't know," said Mavering. "I really believe it was rather a nice +one." + +"Oh, we were both enraptured," cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Alice added a quiet "Yes, indeed," and her mother went on-- + +"And we thought the Beck Hall spread was the crowning glory of the whole +affair. We owe ever so much to your kindness." + +"Oh, not at all," said Mavering. + +"But we were talking afterward, Alice and I, about the sudden +transformation of all that disheveled crew around the Tree into the +imposing swells--may I say howling swells?--" + +"Yes, do say 'howling,' Mrs. Pasmer!" implored the young man. + +"--whom we met afterward at the spread," she concluded. "How did you +manage it all? Mr. Irving in the 'Lyons Mail' was nothing to it. We +thought we had walked directly over from the Tree; and there you were, +all ready to receive us, in immaculate evening dress." + +"It was pretty quick work," modestly admitted the young man. "Could you +recognise any one in that hurly-burly round the Tree?" + +"We didn't till you rose, like a statue of Victory, and began grabbing +for the spoils from the heads and shoulders of your friends. Who was +your pedestal?" + +Mavering put his hand on his friend's broad shoulder, and gave him a +playful push. + +Boardman turned up his little black eyes at him, with a funny gleam in +them. + +"Poor Mr. Boardman!" said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"It didn't hurt him a bit," said Mavering, pushing him. "He liked it." + +"Of course he did," said Mrs. Pasmer, implying, in flattery of Mavering, +that Boardman might be glad of the distinction; and now Boardman looked +as if he were not. She began to get away in adding, "But I wonder you +don't kill each other." + +"Oh, we're not so easily killed," said Mavering. + +"And what a fairy scene it was at the spread!" said Mrs. Pasmer, turning +to Boardman. She had already talked its splendours over with Mavering the +same evening. "I thought we should never get out of the Hall; but when +we did get out of the window upon that tapestried platform, and down on +the tennis-ground, with Turkey rugs to hide the bare spots in it--" She +stopped as people do when it is better to leave the effect to the +listener's imagination. + +"Yes, I think it was rather nice," said Boardman. + +"Nice?" repeated Mrs. Pasmer; and she looked at Mavering. "Is that the +famous Harvard Indifferentism?" + +"No, no, Mrs. Pasmer! It's just his personal envy. He wasn't in the +spread, and of course he doesn't like to hear any one praise it. Go on!" +They all laughed. + +"Well, even Mr. Boardman will admit," said Mrs. Pasmer; "that nothing +could have been prettier than that pavilion at the bottom of the lawn, +and the little tables scattered about over it, and all those charming +young creatures under that lovely evening sky." + +"Ah! Even Boardman can't deny that. We did have the nicest crowd; +didn't we?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Pasmer, playfully checking herself in a ready adhesion, +"that depends a good deal upon where Mr. Boardman's spread was." + +"Thank you," said Boardman. + +"He wasn't spreading anywhere," cried his friend. "Except himself--he +was spreading himself everywhere." + +"Then I think I should prefer to remain neutral," said Mrs. Pasmer, with +a mock prudence which pleased the young men. In the midst of the +pleasure the was giving and feeling she was all the time aware that her +daughter had contributed but one remark to the conversation, and that she +must be seeming very stiff and cold. She wondered what that meant, and +whether she disliked this little Mr. Boardman, or whether she was again +trying to punish Mr: Mavering for something, and, if so, what it was. +Had he offended her in some way the other day? At any rate, she had no +right to show it. She longed for some chance to scold the girl, and tell +her that it would not do, and make her talk. Mr. Mavering was merely a +friendly acquaintance, and there could be no question of anything +personal. She forgot that between young people the social affair is +always trembling to the personal affair. + +In the little pause which these reflections gave her mother, the girl +struck in, with the coolness that always astonished Mrs. Pasmer, and as +if she had been merely waiting till some phase of the talk interested +her. + +"Are many of the students going to the race?" she asked Boardman. + +"Yes; nearly everybody. That is--" + +"The race?" queried Mrs. Pasmer. + +Yes, at New London," Mavering broke in. "Don't you know? The University +race--Harvard and Yale." + +"Oh--oh yes," cried Mrs. Pasmer, wondering how her daughter should know +about the race, and she not. "Had they talked it over together on Class +Day?" she asked herself. She felt herself, in spite of her efforts to +keep even with them; left behind and left out, as later age must be +distanced and excluded by youth. "Are you gentlemen going to row?" she +asked Mavering. + +"No; they've ruled the tubs out this time; and we should send anything +else to the bottom." + +Mrs. Pasmer perceived that he was joking, but also that they were not of +the crew; and she said that if that was the case the should not go. + +"Oh, don't let that keep you away! Aren't you going? I hoped you were +going," continued the young man, speaking with his eyes on Mrs. Pasmer, +but with his mind, as she could see by his eyes, on her daughter. + +"No, no." + +"Oh, do go, Mrs. Pasmer!" he urged: "I wish you'd go along to chaperon +us." + +Mrs. Pasmer accepted the notion with amusement. "I should think you +might look after each other. At any rate, I think I must trust you to +Mr. Boardman this time." + +"Yes; but he's going on business," persisted Mavering, as if for the +pleasure he found in fencing with the air, "and he can't look after me." + +"On business?" said Mrs. Pasmer, dropping her outspread fan on her lap, +incredulously. + +"Yes; he's going into journalism--he's gone into it," laughed Mavering; +"and he's going down to report the race for the 'Events'." + +"Really!" asked Mrs. Pasmer, with a glance at Boardman, whose droll +embarrassment did not contradict his friend's words. "How splendid!" she +cried. "I had, heard that a great many Harvard men were taking up +journalism. I'm so glad of it! It will do everything to elevate its +tone." + +Boardman seemed to suffer under these expectations a little, and he stole +a glance of comical menace at his friend. + +"Yes," said Mavering; "you'll see a very different tone about the fires, +and the fights, and the distressing accidents, in the 'Events' after +this." + +"What does he mean?" she asked Boardman, giving him unavoidably the +advantage of the caressing manner which was in her mind for Mavering. + +"Well, you see," said Boardman, "we have to begin pretty low down." + +"Oh, but all departments of our press need reforming, don't they?" she +inquired consolingly. "One hears such shocking things about our papers +abroad. I'm sure that the more Harvard men go into them the better. And +how splendid it is to have them going into politics the way they are! +They're going into politics too, aren't they?" She looked from one young +man to the other with an idea that she was perhaps shooting rather wild, +and an amiable willingness to be laughed at if she were. "Why don't you +go into politics, Mr. Mavering?" + +"Well, the fact is--" + +"So many of the young University men do in England," said Mrs. Pasmer, +fortifying her position. + +"Well, you see, they haven't got such a complete machine in England--" + +"Oh yes, that dreadful machine!" sighed Mrs. Pasmer, who had heard of it, +but did not know in the least what it was. + +"Do you think the Harvard crew will beat this time?" Alice asked of +Boardman. + +"Well, to tell you the truth--" + +"Oh, but you must never believe him when he begins that way!" cried +Mavering. "To be sure they will beat. And you ought to be there to see +it. Now, why won't you come, Mrs. Pasmer?" he pleaded, turning to her +mother. + +"Oh, I'm afraid we must be getting away from Boston by that time. It's +very tiresome, but there seems to be nobody left; and one can't stay +quite alone, even if you're sick of moving about. Have you ever been-- +we think of going there--to Campobello?" + +"No; but I hear that it's charming, there. I had a friend who was there +last year, and he said it was charming. The only trouble is it's so far. +You're pretty well on the way to Europe when you get there. You know +it's all hotel life?" + +"Yes. It's quite a new place, isn't it?" + +"Well, it's been opened up several years. And they say it isn't like the +hotel life anywhere else; it's charming. And there's the very nicest +class of people." + +"Very nice Philadelphia people, I hear," said Mrs. Pasmer; "and +Baltimore. Don't you think it's well;" she asked deferentially, and +under correction, if she were hazarding too much, "to see somebody +besides Boston people sometimes--if they're nice? That seems to be one +of the great advantages of living abroad." + +"Oh, I think there are nice people everywhere," said the young man, with +the bold expansion of youth. + +"Yes," sighed Mrs. Pasmer. "We saw two such delightful young people +coming in and out of the hotel in Rome. We were sure they were English. +And they were from Chicago! But there are not many Western people at +Campobello, are there?" + +"I really don't know," said Mavering. "How is it, Boardman? Do many of +your people go there?" + +"You know you do make it so frightfully expensive with your money," said +Mrs. Pasmer, explaining with a prompt effect of having known all along +that Boardman was from the West, "You drive us poor people all away." + +"I don't think my money would do it," said Boardman quietly. + +"Oh, you wait till you're a Syndicate Correspondent," said, Mavering, +putting his hand on his friend's shoulder, and rising by aid of it. He +left Mrs. Pasmer to fill the chasm that had so suddenly yawned between +her and Boardman; and while she tumbled into every sort of flowery +friendliness and compliment, telling him she should look out for his +account of the race with the greatest interest, and expressing the hope +that he would get as far as Campobello during the summer, Mavering found +some minutes for talk with Alice. He was graver with her--far graver +than with her mother--not only because she was a more serious nature, but +because they were both young, and youth is not free with youth except by +slow and cautious degrees. In that little space of time they talked of +pictures, 'a propos' of some on the wall, and of books, because of those +on the table. + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Pasmer when they paused, and she felt that her piece +of difficult engineering had been quite successful, "Mrs. Saintsbury was +telling me what a wonderful connoisseur of etchings your father is." + +"I believe he does know something about them," said the young man +modestly. + +"And he's gone back already?" + +"Oh yes. He never stays long away from my mother. I shall be going home +myself as soon as I get back from the race." + +"And shall you spend the summer there?" + +"Part of it. I always like to do that." + +"Perhaps when you get away you'll come as far as Campobello--with Mr. +Boardman," she added. + +"Has Boardman promised to go?" laughed Mavering. "He will promise +anything. Well, I'll come to Campobello if you'll come to New London. +Do come, Mrs. Pasmer!" + +The mother stood watching the two young men from the window as they made +their way across the square together. She had now, for some reason; no +apparent scruple in being seen to do so. + +"How ridiculous that stout little Mr. Boardman is with him!" said Mrs. +Pasmer. "He hardly comes up to his shoulder. Why in the world should he +have brought him?" + +"I thought he was very pleasant," said the girl. + +"Yes, yes, of course. And I suppose he'd have felt that it was rather +pointed coming alone." + +"Pointed?" + +"Young men are so queer! Did you like that kind of collar he had on?" + +"I didn't notice it." + +"So very, very high." + +"I suppose he has rather a long neck." + +"Well, what did you think of his urging us to go to the race? Do you +think he meant it? Do you think he intended it for an invitation?" + +"I don't think he meant anything; or, if he did, I think he didn't know +what." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer vaguely; "that must be what Mrs. Saintsbury meant +by the artistic temperament." + +"I like people to be sincere, and not to say things they don't mean, or +don't know whether they mean or not," said Alice. + +"Yes, of course, that's the best way," admitted Mrs. Pasmer. "It's the +only way," she added, as if it were her own invariable practice. Then +she added further, "I wonder what he did mean?" + +She began to yawn, for after her simulation of vivid interest in them the +visit of the young men had fatigued her. In the midst of her yawn her +daughter went out of the room, with an impatient gesture, and she +suspended the yawn long enough to smile, and then finished it. + + + +XI. + +After first going to the Owen, at Campobello, the Pasmers took rooms at +the Ty'n-y-Coed, which is so much gayer, even if it is not so +characteristic of the old Welsh Admiral's baronial possession of the +island. It is characteristic enough, and perched on its bluff +overlooking the bay, or whatever the body of water is, it sees a score of +pretty isles and long reaches of mainland coast, with a white marble +effect of white-painted wooden Eastport, nestled in the wide lap of the +shore, in apparent luxury and apparent innocence of smuggling and the +manufacture of herring sardines. The waters that wrap the island in +morning and evening fog temper the air of the latitude to a Newport +softness in summer, with a sort of inner coolness that is peculiarly +delicious, lulling the day with long calms and light breezes, and after +nightfall commonly sending a stiff gale to try the stops of the hotel's +gables and casements, and to make the cheerful blaze on its public +hearths acceptable. Once or twice a day the Eastport ferry-boat arrives, +with passengers from the southward, at a floating wharf that sinks or +swims half a hundred feet on the mighty tides of the Northeast; but all +night long the island is shut up to its own memories and devices. The +pretty romance of the old sailor who left England to become a sort of +feudal seigneur here, with a holding of the entire island, and its +fisher-folk for his villeins, forms a picturesque background for the +aesthetic leisure and society in the three hotels remembering him and his +language in their names, and housing with a few cottages all the +sojourners on the island. By day the broad hotel piazzas shelter such of +the guests as prefer to let others make their excursions into the heart +of the island, and around its rocky, sea-beaten borders; and at night, +when the falling mists have brought the early dark, and from lighthouse +to lighthouse the fog-horns moan and low to one another, the piazzas cede +to the corridors and the parlours and smoking-rooms. The life does not +greatly differ from other seaside hotel life on the surface, and if one +were to make distinctions one would perhaps begin by saying that hotel +society there has much of the tone of cottage society elsewhere, with a +little more accessibility. As the reader doubtless knows, the great mass +of Boston society, thoughtful of its own weight and bulk, transports +itself down the North Shore scarcely further than Manchester at the +furthest; but there are more courageous or more detachable spirits who +venture into more distant regions. These contribute somewhat toward +peopling Bar Harbour in the summer, but they scarcely characterise it in +any degree; while at Campobello they settle in little daring colonies, +whose self-reliance will enlist the admiration of the sympathetic +observer. They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies of other +stirps and origins, and they even combine in temporary alliance with +them. But, after all, Boston speaks one language, and New York another, +and Washington a third, and though the several dialects have only slight +differences of inflection, their moral accents render each a little +difficult for the others. In fact every society is repellant of +strangers in the degree that it is sufficient to itself, and is incurious +concerning the rest of the world. If it has not the elements of self- +satisfaction in it, if it is uninformed and new and restless, it is more +hospitable than an older society which has a sense of merit founded upon +historical documents, and need no longer go out of itself for comparisons +of any sort, knowing that if it seeks anything better it will probably be +disappointed. The natural man, the savage, is as indifferent to others +as the exclusive, and those who accuse the coldness of the Bostonians, +and their reluctant or repellant behaviour toward unknown people, accuse +not only civilisation, but nature itself. + +That love of independence which is notable in us even in our most +acquiescent phases at home is perhaps what brings these cultivated and +agreeable people so far away, where they can achieve a sort of sylvan +urbanity without responsibility, and without that measuring of purses +which attends the summer display elsewhere. At Campobello one might be +poor with almost as little shame as in Cambridge if one were cultivated. +Mrs. Pasmer, who seldom failed of doing just the right thing for herself, +had promptly divined the advantages of Campobello for her family. She +knew, by dint of a little inquiry, and from the volunteer information of +enthusiasts who had been there the summer before, just who was likely to +be there during the summer with which she now found herself confronted. +Campobello being yet a new thing, it was not open to the objection that +you were sure to meet such and such people, more or less common or +disagreeable, there; whatever happened, it could be lightly handled in +the retrospect as the adventure of a partial and fragmentary summer when +really she hardly cared where they went. + +They did not get away from Boston before the middle of July, and after +the solitude they left behind them there, the Owen at first seemed very +gay. But when they had once or twice compared it with the Ty'n-y-Coed, +riding to and fro in the barge which formed the connecting link with the +Saturday evening hops of the latter hotel, Mrs. Pasmer decided that, from +Alice's point of view, they had made a mistake, and she repaired it +without delay. The young people were, in fact, all at the Ty'n-y-Coed, +and though she found the Owen perfectly satisfying for herself and Mr. +Pasmer, she was willing to make the sacrifice of going to a new place: it +was not a great sacrifice for one who had dwelt so long in tents. + +There were scarcely any young girls at the Owen, and no young men, of +course. Even at the Ty'n-y-Coed, where young girls abounded, it would +not be right to pretend that there were young men enough. Nowhere, +perhaps, except at Bar Harbour, is the long-lost balance of the sexes +trimmed in New England; and even there the observer, abstractly +delighting in the young girls and their dresses at that grand love- +exchange of Rodick's, must question whether the adjustment is perfectly +accurate. + +At Campobello there were not more than half enough young men, and there +was not enough flirtation to affect the prevailing social mood of the +place: an unfevered, expectationless tranquillity, in which to-day is +like yesterday, and to-morrow cannot be different. It is a quiet of +light reading, and slowly, brokenly murmured, contented gossip for the +ladies, of old newspapers and old stories and luxuriously meditated +cigars for the men, with occasional combinations for a steam-launch +cruise among the eddies and islands of the nearer waters, or a voyage +further off in the Bay of Fundy to the Grand Menan, and a return for the +late dinner which marks the high civilisation of Campobello, and then an +evening of more reading and gossip and cigars, while the night wind +whistles outside, and the brawl and crash of the balls among the tenpins +comes softened from the distant alleys. There are pleasant walks, which +people seldom take, in many directions, and there are drives and bridle- +paths all through the dense, sad, Northern woods which still savagely +clothe the greater part of the island to its further shores, where there +are shelves and plateaus of rock incomparable for picnicking. + +One need ask nothing better, in fact, than to stroll down the sylvan road +that leads to the Owen, past the little fishing-village with its sheds +for curing herring; and the pale blue smoke and appetising savour +escaping from them; and past the little chapel with which the old Admiral +attested his love of the Established rite. On this road you may +sometimes meet a little English bishop from the Provinces, in his apron. +and knee-breeches; and there is a certain bridge over a narrow estuary, +where in the shallow land-locked pools of the deeply ebbing tide you may +throw stones at sculpin, and witness the admirable indifference of those +fish to human cruelty and folly. In the middle distance you will see a +group of herring weirs, which with their coronals of tufted saplings form +the very most picturesque aspect of any fishing industry. You may, now +and then find an artist at this point, who, crouched over his easel, or +hers, seems to agree with you about the village and the weirs. + +But Alice Pasmer cared little more for such things than her mother did, +and Mrs. Pasmer regarded Nature in all her aspects simply as an adjunct +of society, or an occasional feature of the entourage. The girl had no +such worldly feeling about it, but she found slight sympathy in the moods +of earth and sky with her peculiar temperament. This temperament, whose +recondite origin had almost wholly broken up Mrs. Pasmer's faith in +heredity, was like other temperaments, not always in evidence, and Alice +was variously regarded as cold, of shy, or proud, or insipid, by the +various other temperaments brought in contact with her own. She was apt +to be liked because she was as careful of others as she was of herself, +and she never was childishly greedy about such admiration as she won, as +girls often are, perhaps because she did not care for it. Up to this +time it is doubtful if her heart had been touched even by the fancies +that shake the surface of the soul of youth, and perhaps it was for this +reason that her seriousness at first fretted Mrs. Pasmer with a vague +anxiety for her future. + +Mrs. Pasmer herself remained inalienably Unitarian, but she was aware of +the prodigious-growth which the Church had been making in society, and +when Alice showed her inclination for it, she felt that it was not at all +as if she had developed a taste for orthodoxy; when finally it did not +seem likely to go too far, it amused Mrs. Pasmer that her daughter should +have taken so intensely to the Anglican rite. + +In the hotel it attached to her by a common interest several of the +ladies who had seen her earnestly responsive at the little Owen chapel-- +ladies left to that affectional solitude which awaits long widowhood +through the death or marriage of children; and other ladies, younger, +but yet beginning to grow old with touching courage. Alice was +especially a favourite with the three or four who represented their class +and condition at the Ty'n-y Coed, and who read the best books read there, +and had the gentlest manners. There was a tacit agreement among these +ladies, who could not help seeing the difference in the temperaments of +the mother and daughter, that Mrs. Pasmer did not understand Alice; but +probably there were very few people except herself whom Mrs. Pasmer did +not understand quite well. She understood these ladies and their +compassion for Alice, and she did not in the least resent it. She was +willing that people should like Alice for any reason they chose, if they +did not go too far. With her little flutter of futile deceits, her +irreverence for every form of human worth and her trust in a providence +which had seldom failed her, she smiled at the cult of Alice's friends, +as she did at the girl's seriousness, which also she felt herself able to +keep from going too far. + +While she did not object to the sympathy of these ladies, whatever +inspired it, she encouraged another intimacy which grew up +contemporaneously with theirs, and which was frankly secular and +practical, though the girl who attached herself to Alice with one of +those instant passions of girlhood was also in every exterior observance +a strict and diligent Churchwoman. The difference was through the +difference of Boston and New York in everything: the difference between +idealising and the realising tendency. The elderly and middle-aged +Boston women who liked Alice had been touched by something high yet sad +in the beauty of her face at church; the New York girl promptly owned +that she had liked her effect the first Sunday she saw her there, and she +knew in a minute she never got those things on this side; her obeisances +and genuflections throughout the service, much more profound and +punctilious than those of any one else there, had apparently not +prevented her from making a thorough study of Alice's costume and a +correct conjecture as to its authorship. + +Miss Anderson, who claimed a collateral Dutch ancestry by the Van Hook, +tucked in between her non-committal family name and the Julia given her +in christening, was of the ordinary slender make of American girlhood, +with dull blond hair, and a dull blond complexion, which would have left +her face uninteresting if it had not been for the caprice of her nose in +suddenly changing from the ordinary American regularity, after getting +over its bridge, and turning out distinctly 'retrousse'. This gave her +profile animation and character; you could not expect a girl with that +nose to be either irresolute or commonplace, and for good or for ill Miss +Anderson was decided and original. She carried her figure, which was no +great things of a figure as to height, with vigorous erectness; she +walked with long strides, knocking her skirts into fine eddies and +tangles as she went; and she spoke in a bold, deep voice, with tones like +a man in it, all the more amusing and fascinating because of the +perfectly feminine eyes with which she looked at you, and the nervous, +feminine gestures which she used while she spoke. + +She took Mrs. Pasmer into her confidence with regard to Alice at an early +stage of their acquaintance, which from the first had a patronising or +rather protecting quality in it; if she owned herself less fine, she knew +herself shrewder, and more capable of coping with actualities. + +"I think she's moybid, Alice is," she said. "She isn't moybid in the +usual sense of the word, but she expects more of herself and of the woyld +generally than anybody's going to get out of it. She thinks she's going +to get as much as she gives, and that's a great mistake, Mrs. Pasmer," +she said, with that peculiar liquefaction of the canine letter which the +New-Yorkers alone have the trick of, and which it would be tiresome and +futile to try to represent throughout her talk. + +"Oh yes, I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Pasmer, deep in her throat, +and reserving deeper still her enjoyment of this early wisdom of Miss +Anderson's. + +"Now, even at church--she carries the same spirit into the church. She +doesn't make allowance for human nature, and the church does." + +"Oh, certainly!" Mrs. Pasmer agreed. + +"She isn't like a person that's been brought up in the church. It's more +like the old Puritan spirit.--Excuse me, Mrs. Pasmer!" + +"Yes, indeed! Say anything you like about the Puritans!" said Mrs. +Pasmer, delighted that, as a Bostonian, she should be thought to care for +them. + +"I always forget that you're a Bostonian," Miss Anderson apologized. + +"Oh, thank you!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. + +"I'm going to try to make her like other girls," continued Miss Anderson. + +"Do," said Alice's mother, with the effect of wishing her joy of the +undertaking. + +"If there were a few young men about, a little over seventeen and a +little under fifty, it would be easier," said Miss Anderson thoughtfully. +"But how are you going to make a girl like other girls when there are no +young men?" + +"That's very true," said Mrs. Pasmer, with an interest which she of +course did her best to make impersonal. "Do you think there will be +more, later on?" + +"They will have to Huey up if they are comin'," said Miss Anderson. +"It's the middle of August now, and the hotel closes the second week in +September." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, vaguely looking at Alice. She had just appeared +over the brow of the precipice, along whose face the arrivals and +departures by the ferry-boat at Campobello obliquely ascend and descend. + +She came walking swiftly toward the hotel, and, for her, so excitedly +that Mrs. Pasmer involuntarily rose and went to meet her at the top of +the broad hotel steps. + +"What is it, Alice?" + +"Oh, nothing! I thought I saw Mr. Munt coming off the boat." + +"Mr. Munt?" + +"Yes." She would not stay for further question. + +Her mother looked after her with the edge of her fan over her mouth till +she disappeared in the depths of the hotel corridor; then she sat down +near the steps, and chatted with some half-grown boys lounging on the +balustrade, and waited for Munt to come up over the brink of the +precipice. Dan Mavering came with him, running forward with a polite +eagerness at sight of Mrs. Pasmer. She distributed a skillful +astonishment equally between the two men she had equally expected to see, +and was extremely cordial with them, not only because she was pleased +with them, but because she was still more pleased with her daughter's +being, after all, like other girls, when it came to essentials. + + + + +XII. + +Alice came down to lunch in a dress which reconciled the seaside and the +drawing-room in an effect entirely satisfactory to her mother, and gave +her hand to both the gentlemen without the affectation of surprise at +seeing either. + +"I saw Mr. Munt coning up from the boat," she said in answer to +Mavering's demand for some sort of astonishment from her. "I wasn't +certain that it was you." + +Mrs. Pasmer, whose pretences had been all given away by this simple +confession, did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her +daughter's evident excitement at the young man's having come. Without +being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of +hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the +hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her +there. They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after a +little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their +acquaintance had been making progress in the interval. She took him +about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him to +Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom, within +five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some winning +service. She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with deep +respect and said "Sir" to. She showed him the bowling alley, and began +to play tennis with him. + +Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite +attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified as +they went on. + +"Alice," she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the +evening, and then she hesitated for the right word. + +"Well; mamma?" said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk up +and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a +Tam-o'-Shanter cap. + +"Don't--overdo--the honours." + +"What do you mean, mamma?" asked the girl; dropping her arms before her, +and letting the shawl trail on the floor. + +"Don't you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?" + +Her mother laughed. "But every one mayn't know it's gratitude." + +Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her +room without speaking to any one. + +The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed for +her succeeded one another during Mavering's stay. He did not need +Alice's chaperonage long. By the next morning he seemed to know and to +like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which at +that moment had no exceptions. In the afternoon he began to organise +excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson. + +The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with an +authority which every one tacitly admitted, just as every one recognised +that Mavering had come to Campobello because she was there. Such a phase +is perhaps the prettiest in the history of a love affair. All is yet in +solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact. The parties to +it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do; +they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that. +It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American of +all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or +imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any +outside influences. + +The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk +between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief, +might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it. + +She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his +taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year. + +"Oh, I've abandoned Europe altogether for the present," he said laughing. +"And I don't know but I may go back on the law too." + +"Indeed! Then you are going to be an artist?" + +"Oh no; not so bad as that. It isn't settled yet, and I'm off here to +think it over a while before the law school opens in September. My +father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in +designing wall-papers." + +"Oh, how very interesting!" At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the +whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper maker +in it. But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said: it was +manufacturing. This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys +lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge, +though. + +"And we shall actually see a young man," she said finally, "in the act of +deciding his own destiny!" + +He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage. "Yes; only don't give me +away. Nobody else knows it." + +"Oh no, indeed. Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering. Shall you let me know +when you've decided? I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too high- +minded to ask." + +It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life, and +Mavering said, "You will learn from the expression of my eyes." + + + + +XIII. + +The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody like him +were interested in his differentiation of the attentions he offered every +age and sex from those he paid Alice. But while they all agreed that +there never was a sweeter fellow, they would have been puzzled to say in +just what this difference consisted, and much as they liked him, the +ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him till they decided +that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which was perfectly +fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is, he did nice +things for others without asking; but with her there was always an +explicit pause, and an implicit prayer and permission, first. Upon this +condition they consented to the glamour which he had for her, and which +was evident to every one probably but him. + +Once agreeing that no one was good enough for Alice Pasmer, whose +qualities they felt that only women could really appreciate, they were +interested to see how near Mavering could come to being good enough; and +as the drama played itself before their eyes, they pleased themselves in +analysing its hero. + +"He is not bashful, certainly," said one of a little group who sat midway +of the piazza while Alice and Mavering walked up and down together. +"But don't you think he's modest? There's that difference, you know." + +The lady addressed waited so long before answering that the young couple +came abreast of the group, and then she had to wait till they were out of +hearing. "Yes," she said then, with a tender, sighing thoughtfulness, +"I've felt that in him. And really think he is a very loveable nature. +The only question would be whether he wasn't too loveable." + +"Yes," said the first lady, with the same kind of suspiration, "I know +what you mean. And I suppose they ought to be something more alike in +disposition." + +"Or sympathies?" suggested the other. + +"Yes, or sympathies." + +A third lady laughed a little. "Mr. Mavering has so many sympathies that +he ought to be like her in some of them." + +"Do you mean that he's too sympathetic--that he isn't sincere?" asked the +first--a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a little knot +of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by the unremitting +effort of half a century to do and say exactly the truth, and to find it +out. + +Mrs. Brinkley, whom she addressed, was of that obesity which seems often +to incline people to sarcasm. "No, I don't think he's insincere. I +think he always means what he says and does--Well, do you think a little +more concentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose +--if she has it?" + +"Yes, I see," said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixed +wistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. +"I wonder what the men think of him?" + +"You might ask Miss Anderson," said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Oh, do you think they tell her?" + +"Not that exactly," said Mrs. Brinkley, shaking with good-humoured +pleasure in her joke. + +"Her voice--oh yes. She and Alice are great friends, of course." + +"I should think," said Mrs. Stamwell, the second speaker, "that Mr. +Mavering would be jealous sometimes--till he looked twice." + +"Yes," said Miss Cotton, obliged to admit the force of the remark, but +feeling that Mr. Mavering had been carried out of the field of her vision +by the turn of the talk. "I suppose," she continued, "that he wouldn't +be so well liked by other young men as she is by other girls, do you +think?" + +"I don't think, as a rule," said Mrs. Brinkley, "that men are half so +appreciative of one another as women are. It's most amusing to see the +open scorn with which two young fellows treat each other if a pretty girl +introduces them." + +All the ladies joined in the laugh with which Mrs. Brinkley herself led +off. But Miss Cotton stopped laughing first. + +"Do you mean,", she asked, "that if a gentleman were generally popular +with gentlemen it would be--" + +"Because he wasn't generally so with women? Something like that--if +you'll leave Mr. Mavering out of the question. Oh, how very good of +them!" she broke off, and all the ladies glanced at Mavering and Alice +where they had stopped at the further end of the piazza, and were looking +off. "Now I can probably finish before they get back here again. What I +do mean, Miss Cotton, is that neither sex willingly accepts the +favourites of the other." + +"Yes," said Miss Cotton admissively. + +"And all that saves Miss Pasmer is that she has not only the qualities +that women like in women, but some of the qualities that men, like in +them. She's thoroughly human." + +A little sensation, almost a murmur, not wholly of assent, went round +that circle which had so nearly voted Alice a saint. + +"In the first place, she likes to please men." + +"Oh!" came from the group. + +"And that makes them like her--if it doesn't go too far, as her mother +says." + +The ladies all laughed, recognising a common turn of phrase in Mrs. +Pasmer. + +"I should think," said Mrs. Stamwell, "that she would believe a little in +heredity if she noticed that in her daughter;" and the ladies laughed +again. + +"Then," Mrs. Brinkley resumed concerning Alice, "she has a very pretty +face--an extremely pretty face; she has a tender voice, and she's very, +very graceful--in rather an odd way; perhaps it's only a fascinating +awkwardness. Then she dresses--or her mother dresses her--exquisitely." +The ladies, with another sensation, admitted the perfect accuracy with +which these points had been touched. + +"That's what men like, what they fall in love with, what Mr. Mavering's +in love with this instant. It's no use women's flattering themselves +that they don't, for they do. The rest of the virtues and graces and +charms are for women. If that serious girl could only know the silly +things that that amiable simpleton is taken with in her, she'd--" + +"Never speak to him again?" suggested Miss Cotton. + +"No, I don't say that. But she would think twice before marrying him." + +"And then do it," said Mrs. Stamwell pensively, with eyes that seemed +looking far into the past. + +"Yes, and quite right to do it," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I don't know that +we should be very proud ourselves if we confessed just what caught our +fancy in our husbands. For my part I shouldn't like to say how much a +light hat that Mr. Brinkley happened to be wearing had to do with the +matter." + +The ladies broke into another laugh, and then checked themselves, so that +Mrs. Pasmer, coming out of the corridor upon them, naturally thought they +were laughing at her. She reflected that if she had been in their place +she would have shown greater tact by not stopping just at that instant. + +But she did not mind. She knew that they talked her over, but having a +very good conscience, she simply talked them over in return. "Have you +seen my daughter within a few minutes?" she asked. + +"She was with Mr. Mavering at the end of the piazza a moment ago," said +Mrs. Brinkley. "They must leave just gone round the corner of the +building." + +"Oh," said Mrs. Pasmer. She had a novel, with her finger between its +leaves, pressed against her heart, after the manner of ladies coming out +on hotel piazzas. She sat down and rested it on her knee, with her hand +over the top. + +Miss Cotton bent forward, and Mrs. Pasmer lifted her fingers to let her +see the name of the book. + +"Oh yes," said Miss Cotton. "But he's so terribly pessimistic, don't you +think?" + +"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Fumee," said Mrs. Pasmer, laying the book title upward on her lap for +every one to see. + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, fanning herself. "Tourguenief. That man +gave me the worst quarter of an hour with his 'Lisa' that I ever had." + +"That's the same as the 'Nichee des Gentilshommes', isn't it?" asked Mrs. +Pasmer, with the involuntary superiority of a woman who reads her +Tourguenief in French. + +"I don't know. I had it in English. I don't build my ships to cross the +sea in, as Emerson says; I take those I find built." + +"Ah! I was already on the other side," said Mrs. Pasmer softly. She +added: "I must get Lisa. I like a good heart-break; don't you? If +that's what gave you the bad moment." + +"Heart-break? Heart-crush! Where Lavretsky comes back old to the scene +of his love for Lisa, and strikes that chord on the piano--well, I simply +wonder that I'm alive to recommend the book to you. + +"Do you know," said Miss Cotton, very deferentially, "that your daughter +always made me think of Lisa?" + +"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, not wholly pleased, but gratified that she +was able to hide her displeasure. "You make me very curious." + +"Oh, I doubt if you'll see more than a mere likeness of temperament," +Mrs. Brinkley interfered bluntly. "All the conditions are so different. +There couldn't be an American Lisa. That's the charm of these Russian +tragedies. You feel that they're so perfectly true there, and so +perfectly impossible here. Lavretsky would simply have got himself +divorced from Varvara Pavlovna, and no clergyman could have objected to +marrying him to Lisa." + +"That's what I mean by his pessimism," said Miss Cotton. "He leaves you +no hope. And I think that despair should never be used in a novel except +for some good purpose; don't you, Mrs. Brinkley?" + +"Well," said Mrs. Brinkley, "I was trying to think what good purpose +despair could be put to, in a book or out of it." + +"I don't think," said Mrs. Pasmer, referring to the book in her lap, +"that he leaves you altogether in despair here, unless you'd rather he'd +run off with Irene than married Tatiana." + +"Oh, I certainly didn't wish that;" said Miss Cotton, in self-defence, as +if the shot had been aimed at her. + +"The book ends with a marriage; there's no denying that," said Mrs. +Brinkley, with a reserve in her tone which caused Mrs. Pasmer to continue +for her-- + +"And marriage means happiness--in a book." + +"I'm not sure that it does in this case. The time would come, after +Litvinof had told Tatiana everything, when she would have to ask herself, +and not once only, what sort of man it really was who was willing to +break his engagement and run off with another man's wife, and whether he +could ever repent enough for it. She could make excuses for him, and +would, but at the bottom of her heart--No, it seems to me that there, +almost for the only time, Tourguenief permitted himself an amiable +weakness. All that part of the book has the air of begging the +question." + +"But don't you see," said Miss Cotton, leaning forward in the way she had +when very earnest, "that he means to show that her love is strong enough +for all that?" + +"But he doesn't, because it isn't. Love isn't strong enough to save +people from unhappiness through each other's faults. Do you suppose that +so many married people are unhappy in each other because they don't love +each other? No; it's because they do love each other that their faults +are such a mutual torment. If they were indifferent, they wouldn't mind +each other's faults. Perhaps that's the reason why there are so many +American divorces; if they didn't care, like Europeans, who don't marry +for love, they could stand it." + +"Then the moral is," said Mrs. Pasmer, at her lightest through the +surrounding gravity, "that as all Americans marry for love, only +Americans who have been very good ought to get married." + +"I'm not sure that the have-been goodness is enough either," said Mrs. +Brinkley, willing to push it to the absurd. "You marry a man's future as +well as his past." + +"Dear me! You are terribly exigeante, Mrs. Brinkley," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"One can afford to be so--in the abstract," answered Mrs. Brinkley. + +They all stopped talking and looked at John Munt, who was coming toward +them, and each felt a longing to lay the matter before him. + +There was probably not a woman among them but had felt more, read more, +and thought more than John Munt, but he was a man, and the mind of a man +is the court of final appeal for the wisest women. Till some man has +pronounced upon their wisdom, they do not know whether it is wisdom or +not. + +Munt drew up his chair, and addressed himself to the whole group through +Mrs. Pasmer: "We are thinking of getting up a little picnic to-morrow." + + + + +XIV. + +The day of the picnic struggled till ten o'clock to peer through the fog +that wrapt it with that remote damp and coolness and that nearer drouth +and warmth which some fogs have. The low pine groves hung full of it, +and it gave a silvery definition to the gossamer threads running from one +grass spear to another in spacious networks over the open levels of the +old fields that stretch back from the bluff to the woods. At last it +grew thinner, somewhere over the bay; then you could see the smooth water +through it; then it drifted off in ragged fringes before a light breeze: +when you looked landward again it was all gone there, and seaward it had +gathered itself in a low, dun bank along the horizon. It was the kind of +fog that people interested in Campobello admitted as apt to be common +there, but claimed as a kind of local virtue when it began to break away. +They said that it was a very dry fog, not like Newport, and asked you to +notice that it did not wet you at all. + +Four or five carriages, driven by the gentlemen of the party, held the +picnic, which was destined for that beautiful cove on the Bay of Fundy +where the red granite ledges, smooth-washed by ages of storm and sun, +lend themselves to such festivities as if they had been artificially +fashioned into shelves and tables. The whole place is yet so new to men +that this haunt has not acquired that air of repulsive custom which the +egg shells and broken bottles and sardine boxes of many seasons give. Or +perhaps the winter tempests heap the tides of the bay over the ledge, and +wash it clean of these vulgar traces of human resort, and enable it to +offer as fresh a welcome to the picnics of each successive summer as if +there had never been a picnic in that place before. + +This was the sense that Mavering professed to have received from it, when +he jumped out of the beach wagon in which he had preceded the other +carriages through the weird forest lying between the fringe of farm +fields and fishing-villages on the western shore of the island and these +lonely coasts of the bay. As far as the signs of settled human +habitation last, tho road is the good hard country road of New England, +climbing steep little hills, and presently leading through long tracts of +woodland. But at a certain point beyond the furthest cottage you leave +it, and plunge deep into the heart of the forest, vaguely traversed by +the wheel-path carried through since the island was opened to summer +sojourn. Road you can hardly call it, remembering its curious pauses and +hesitations when confronted with stretches of marshy ground, and its +staggering progress over the thick stubble of saplings through which it +is cut. The progress of teams over it is slow, but there is such joy of +wildness in the solitudes it penetrates that; if the horses had any gait +slower than a walk, one might still wish to stay them. It is a Northern +forest, with the air of having sprang quickly up in the fierce heat and +haste of the Northern summers. The small firs are set almost as dense as +rye in a field, and in their struggle to the light they have choked one +another so that there is a strange blight of death and defeat on all that +vigour of life. Few of the trees have won any lofty growth; they seem to +have died and fallen when they were about to outstrip the others in size, +and from their decay a new sylvan generation riots rankly upward. The +surface of the ground is thinly clothed with a deciduous undergrowth, +above which are the bare, spare stems of the evergreens, and then their +limbs thrusting into one another in a sombre tangle, with locks of long +yellowish-white moss, like the grey pendants of the Southern pines, +dripping from them and draining their brief life. + +In such a place you must surrender yourself to its influences, profoundly +yet vaguely melancholy, or you must resist them with whatever gaiety is +in you, or may be conjured out of others. It was conceded that Mavering +was the life of the party, as the phrase goes. His light-heartedness, as +kindly and sympathetic as it was inexhaustible, served to carry them over +the worst places in the road of itself. He jumped down and ran back, +when he had passed a bad bit, to see if the others were getting through +safely; the least interesting of the party had some proof of his +impartial friendliness; he promised an early and triumphant emergence +from all difficulties; he started singing, and sacrificed himself in +several tunes, for he could not sing well; his laugh seemed to be always +coming back to Alice, where she rode late in the little procession; +several times, with the deference which he delicately qualified for her, +he came himself to see if he could not do something for her. + +"Miss Pasmer," croaked her friend Miss Anderson, who always began in that +ceremonious way with her, and got to calling her Alice further along in +the conversation, "if you don't drop something for that poor fellow to +run back two or three miles and get, pretty soon, I'll do it myself. +It's peyfectly disheaytening to see his disappointment when you tell him +theye's nothing to be done." + +"He seems to get over it," said Alice evasively. She smiled with +pleasure in Miss Anderson's impeachment, however. + +"Oh, he keeps coming, if that's what you mean. But do drop an umbrella, +or a rubber, or something, next time, just to show a proper +appreciation." + +But Mavering did not come any more. Just before they got to the cove, +Miss Anderson leaned over again to whisper in Alice's ear, "I told you he +was huyt. Now you must be very good to him the rest of the time." + +Upon theory a girl of Alice Pasmer's reserve ought to have resented this +intervention, but it is not probable she did. She flushed a little, but +not with offence, apparently; and she was kinder to Mavering, and let him +do everything for her that he could invent in transferring the things +from the wagons to the rocks. + +The party gave a gaiety to the wild place which accented its proper +charm, as they scattered themselves over the ledges on the bright shawls +spread upon the level spaces. On either hand craggy bluffs hemmed the +cove in, but below the ledge it had a pebbly beach strewn with drift- +wood, and the Bay of Fundy gloomed before it with small fishing craft +tipping and tilting on the swell in the foreground, and dim sail melting +into the dun fog bank at the horizon's edge. + +The elder ladies of the party stood up, or stretched themselves on the +shawls, as they found this or that posture more restful after their long +drive; one, who was skilled in making coffee, had taken possession of the +pot, and was demanding fire and water for it. The men scattered +themselves over the beach, and brought her drift enough to roast an ox; +two of them fetched water from the spring at the back of the ledge, +whither they then carried the bottles of ale to cool in its thrilling +pool. Each after his or her fashion symbolised a return to nature by +some act or word of self-abandon. + +"You ought to have brought heavier shoes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a +serious glance at her daughter's feet. "Well, never mind," she added. +"It doesn't matter if you do spoil them." + +"Really," cried Mrs Brinkley, casting her sandals from her, "I will not +be enslaved to rubbers in such a sylvan scene as this, at any rate." + +"Look at Mrs. Stamwell!" said Miss Cotton. "She's actually taken her hat +off." + +Mrs. Stamwell had not only gone to this extreme, but had tied a lightly +fluttering handkerchief round her hair. She said she should certainly +not put on that heavy thing again till she got in sight of civilisation. + +At these words Miss Cotton boldly drew off her gloves, and put them in +her pocket. + +The young girls, slim in their blues flannel skirts and their broad white +canvas belts, went and came over the rocks. There were some children in +the party, who were allowed to scream uninterruptedly in the games which +they began to play as soon as they found their feet after getting out of +the wagons. + +Some of the gentlemen drove a stake into the beach, and threw stones at +it, to see which could knock off the pebble balanced on its top. Several +of the ladies joined them in the sport, and shrieked and laughed when +they made wild shots with the missiles the men politely gathered for +them. + +Alice had remained with Mavering to help the hostess of the picnic lay +the tables, but her mother had followed those who went down to the beach. +At first Mrs. Pasmer looked on at the practice of the stone-throwers with +disapproval; but suddenly she let herself go in this, as she did in other +matters that her judgment condemned, and began to throw stones herself; +she became excited, and made the wildest shots of any, accepting missiles +right and left, and making herself dangerous to everybody within a wide +circle. A gentleman who had fallen a victim to her skill said, "Just +wait, Mrs. Pasmer, till I get in front of the stake." + +The men became seriously interested, and worked themselves red and hot; +the ladies soon gave it up, and sat down on the sand and began to talk. +They all owned themselves hungry, and from time to time they looked up +anxiously at the preparations for lunch on the ledge, where white napkins +were spread, with bottles at the four corners to keep them from blowing +away. This use of the bottles was considered very amusing; the ladies +tried to make jokes about it, and the desire to be funny spread to +certain of the men who had quietly left off throwing at the stake because +they had wrenched their shoulders; they succeeded in being merry. They +said they thought that coffee took a long time to boil. + +A lull of expectation fell upon all; even Mavering sat down on the rocks +near the fire, and was at rest a few minutes, by order of Miss Anderson, +who said that the sight of his activity tired her to death. + +"I wonder why always boiled ham at a picnic!" said the lady who took a +final plate of it from a basket. "Under the ordinary conditions, few of +us can be persuaded to touch it." + +"It seems to be dear to nature, and to nature's children," said Mrs. +Brinkley. "Perhaps because their digestions are strong." + +"Don't you wish that something could be substituted for it?" asked Miss. +Cotton. + +"There have been efforts to replace it with chicken and tongue in +sandwiches;" said Mrs. Brinkley; "but I think they've only measurably +succeeded--about as temperance drinks have in place of the real strong +waters." + +"On the boat coming up," said Mavering, "we had a troupe of genuine darky +minstrels. One of them sang a song about ham that rather took me-- + +"'Ham, good old ham! +Ham is de best ob meat; +It's always good and sweet; +You can bake it, you can boil it, +You can fry it, you can broil it-- +Ham, good old ham!'" + +"Oh, how good!" sighed Mrs. Brinkley. "How sincere! How native! Go on, +Mr. Mavering, for ever." + +"I haven't the materials," said Mavering, with his laugh. "The rest was +da capo. But there was another song, about a coloured lady--" + +"'Six foot high and eight foot round, +Holler ob her foot made a hole in de ground.'" + +"Ah, that's an old friend," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I remember hearing of +that coloured lady when I was a girl. But it's a fine flight of the +imagination. What else did they sing?" + +"I can't remember. But there was something they danced--to show how a +rheumatic old coloured uncle dances." + +He jumped nimbly up, and sketched the stiff and limping figure he had +seen. It was over in a flash. He dropped down again, laughing. + +"Oh, how wonderfully good!" cried Mrs. Brinkley, with frank joy. "Do it +again." + +"Encore! Oh, encore!" came from the people on the beach. + +Mavering jumped to his feet, and burlesqued the profuse bows of an actor +who refuses to repeat; he was about to drop down again amidst their wails +of protest. + +"No, don't sit down, Mr. Mavering," said the lady who had introduced the +subject of ham. "Get some of the young ladies, and go and gather some +blueberries for the dessert. There are all the necessaries of life here, +but none of the luxuries." + +"I'm at the service of the young ladies as an escort," said Mavering +gallantly, with an infusion of joke. "Will you come and pick blueberries +under my watchful eyes, Miss Pasmer?" + +"They've gone to pick blueberries," called the lady through her tubed +hand to the people on the beach, and the younger among them scrambled up +the rocks for cups and bowls to follow them. + +Mrs. Pasmer had an impulse to call her daughter back, and to make some +excuse to keep her from going. She was in an access of decorum, +naturally following upon her late outbreak, and it seemed a very +pronounced thing for Alice to be going off into the woods with the young +man; but it would have been a pronounced thing to prevent her, and so +Mrs. Pasmer submitted. + +"Isn't it delightful," asked Mrs. Brinkley, following them with her eyes, +"to see the charm that gay young fellow has for that serious girl? She +looked at him while he was dancing as if she couldn't take her eyes off +him, and she followed him as if he drew her by an invisible spell. Not +that spells are ever visible," she added, saving herself. "Though this +one seems to be," she added further, again saving herself. + +"Do you really think so?" pleaded Miss Cotton. + +"Well, I say so, whatever I think. And I'm not going to be caught up on +the tenter-hooks of conscience as to all my meanings, Miss Cotton. I +don't know them all. But I'm not one of the Aliceolaters, you know." + +"No; of course not. But shouldn't you--Don't you think it would be a +great pity--She's so superior, so very uncommon in every way, that it +hardly seems--Ah, I should so like to see some one really fine--not a +coarse fibre in him, don't you know. Not that Mr. Mavering's coarse. +But beside her he does seem so light!" + +"Perhaps that's the reason she likes him." + +"No, no! I can't believe that. She must see more in him than we can." + +"I dare say she thinks she does. At any rate, it's a perfectly evident +case on both sides; and the frank way he's followed her up here, and +devoted himself to her, as if--well, not as if she were the only girl in +the world, but incomparably the best--is certainly not common." + +"No," sighed Miss Cotton, glad to admit it; "that's beautiful." + + + +XV. + +In the edge of the woods and the open spaces among the trees the +blueberries grew larger and sweeter in the late Northern summer than a +more southern sun seems to make them. They hung dense upon the low +bushes, and gave them their tint through the soft grey bloom that veiled +their blue. Sweet-fern in patches broke their mass here and there, and +exhaled its wild perfume to the foot or skirt brushing through it. + +"I don't think there's anything much prettier than these clusters; do +you, Miss Pasmer?" asked Mavering, as he lifted a bunch pendent from the +little tree before he stripped it into the bowl he carried. "And see! +it spoils the bloom to gather them." He held out a handful, and then +tossed them away. "It ought to be managed more aesthetically for an +occasion like this. I'll tell you what, Miss Pasmer: are you used to +blueberrying?" + +"No," she said; "I don't know that I ever went blueberrying before. +Why?" she asked. + +"Because, if you haven't, you wouldn't be very efficient perhaps, and so +you might resign yourself to sitting on that log and holding the berries +in your lap, while I pick them." + +"But what about the bowls, then?" + +"Oh, never mind them. I've got an idea. See here!" He clipped off a +bunch with his knife, and held it up before her, tilting it this way and +that. "Could anything be more graceful! My idea is to serve the +blueberry on its native stem at this picnic. What do you think? Sugar +would profane it, and of course they've only got milk enough for the +coffee." + +"Delightful!" Alice arranged herself on the log, and made a lap for the +bunch. He would not allow that the arrangement was perfect till he had +cushioned the seat and carpeted the ground for her feet with sweet-fern. + +"Now you're something like a wood-nymph," he laughed. "Only, wouldn't a +real wood-nymph have an apron?" he asked, looking down at her dress. + +"Oh, it won't hurt the dress. You must begin now, or they'll be calling +us." + +He was standing and gazing at her with a distracted enjoyment of her +pose. "Oh yes, yes," he answered, coming to himself, and he set about +his work. + +He might have got on faster if he had not come to her with nearly every +bunch he cut at first, and when he began to deny himself this pleasure he +stopped to admire an idea of hers. + +"Well, that's charming--making them into bouquets." + +"Yes, isn't it?" she cried delightedly, holding a bunch of the berries up +at arm's-length to get the effect. + +"Ah, but you must have some of this fern and this tall grass to go with +it. Why, it's sweet-grass--the sweet-grass of the Indian baskets!" + +"Is it?" She looked up at him. "And do you think that the mixture would +be better than the modest simplicity of the berries, with a few leaves of +the same?" + +"No; you're right; it wouldn't," he said, throwing away his ferns. "But +you'll want something to tie the stems with; you must use the grass." He +left that with her, and went back to his bushes. He added, from beyond a +little thicket, as if what he said were part of the subject, "I was +afraid you wouldn't like my skipping about there on the rocks, doing the +coloured uncle." + +"Like it?" + +"I mean--I--you thought it undignified--trivial--" + +She said, after a moment: "It was very funny; and people do all sorts of +things at picnics. That's the pleasure of it, isn't it?" + +"Yes, it is; but I know you don't always like that kind of thing." + +"Do I seem so very severe?" she asked. + +"Oh no, not severe. I should be afraid of you if you were. I shouldn't +have dared to come to Campobello." + +He looked at her across the blueberry bushes. His gay speech meant +everything or nothing. She could parry it with a jest, and then it would +mean nothing. She let her head droop over her work, and made no answer. + +"I wish you could have seen those fellows on the boat," said Mavering. + +"Hello, Mavering!" called the voice of John Munt, from another part of +the woods. + +"Alice!--Miss Pasmer!" came that of Miss Anderson. + +He was going to answer, when he looked at Alice. "We'll let them see if +they can find us," he said, and smiled. + +Alice said nothing at first; she smiled too. "You know more about the +woods than I do. I suppose if they keep looking--" + +"Oh yes." He came toward her with a mass of clusters which he had +clipped. "How fast you do them!" he said, standing and looking down at +her. "I wish you'd let me come and make up the withes for you when you +need them." + +"No, I couldn't allow that on any account," she answered, twisting some +stems of the grass together. + +"Well, will you let me hold the bunches while you tie them; or tie them +when you hold them?" + +"No." + +"This once, then?" + +"This once, perhaps." + +"How little you let me do for you!" he sighed. + +"That gives you a chance to do more for other people," she answered; and +then she dropped her eyes, as if she had been surprised into that answer. +She made haste to add: "That's what makes you so popular with--everybody!" + +"Ah, but I'd rather be popular with somebody!" + +He laughed, and then they both laughed together consciously; and still +nothing or everything had been said. A little silly silence followed, +and he said, for escape from it, "I never saw such berries before, even +in September, on the top of Ponkwasset." + +"Why, is it a mountain?" she asked. "I thought it was a--falls." + +"It's both," he said. + +"I suppose it's very beautiful, isn't it! All America seems so lovely, +so large." + +"It's pretty in the summer. I don't know that I shall like it there in +the winter if I conclude to--Did your--did Mrs. Pasmer tell you what my +father wants me to do?" + +"About going there to--manufacture?" + +Mavering nodded. "He's given me three weeks to decide whether I would +like to do that or go in for law. That's what I came up here for." + +There was a little pause. She bent her head down over the clusters she +was grouping. "Is the light of Campobello particularly good on such +questions?" she asked. + +"I don't mean that exactly, but I wish you could help me to some +conclusion." + +"Yes; why not?" + +"It's the first time I've ever had a business question referred to me." + + Well, then, you can bring a perfectly fresh mind to it." + +"Let me see," she said, affecting to consider. "It's really a very +important matter?" + +"It is to me." + +After a moment she looked up at him. "I should think that you wouldn't +mind living there if your business was there. I suppose it's being idle +in places that makes them dull. I thought it was dull in London. One +ought to be glad--oughtn't he?--to live in any place where there's +something to do." + +"Well, that isn't the way people usually feel," said Mavering. "That's +the kind of a place most of them fight shy of." + +Alice laughed with an undercurrent of protest, perhaps because she had +seen her parents' whole life, so far as she knew it, passed in this sort +of struggle. "I mean that I hate my own life because there seems nothing +for me to do with it. I like to have people do something." + +"Do you really?" asked Mavering soberly, as if struck by the novelty of +the idea. + +"Yes!" she said, with exaltation. "If I were a man--" + +He burst into a ringing laugh. "Oh no; don't!" + +"Why?" she demanded, with provisional indignation. + +"Because then there wouldn't be any Miss Pasmer." + +It seemed to Alice that this joking was rather an unwarranted liberty. +Again she could not help joining in his light-heartedness; but she +checked herself so abruptly, and put on a look so austere, that he was +quelled by it. + +"I mean," he began--"that is to say--I mean that I don't understand why +ladies are always saying that. I am sure they can do what they like, as +it is." + +"Do you mean that everything is open to them now?" she asked, +disentangling a cluster of the berries from those in her lap, and +beginning a fresh bunch. + +"Yes," said Mavering. "Something like that--yes. They can do anything +they like. Lots of them do." + +"Oh yes, I know," said the girl. "But people don't like them to." + +"Why, what would you like to be?" he asked. + +She did not answer, but sorted over the clusters in her lap. "We've got +enough now, haven't we?" she said. + +"Oh, not half," he said. "But if you're tired you must let me make up +some of the bunches." + +"No, no! I want to do them all myself," she said, gesturing his offered +hands away, with a little nether appeal in her laughing refusal + +"So as to feel that you've been of some use in the world?" he said, +dropping contentedly on the ground near her, and watching her industry. + +"Do you think that would be very wrong?" she asked. "What made that +friend of yours--Mr. Boardman--go into journalism?" + +"Oh, virtuous poverty. You're not thinking of becoming a newspaper +woman, Miss Pasmer!" + +"Why not?" She put the final cluster into the bunch in hand, and began +to wind a withe of sweet-grass around the stems. He dropped forward on +his knees to help her, and together they managed the knot. They were +both flushed a little when it was tied, and were serious. + +"Why shouldn't one be a newspaper woman, if Harvard graduates are to be +journalists?" + +"Well, you know, only a certain kind are." + +"What kind?" + +"Well, not exactly what you'd call the gentlemanly sort." + +"I thought Mr. Boardman was a great friend of yours?" + +"He is. He is one of the best fellows in the world. But you must have +seen that he wasn't a swell." + +"I should think he'd be glad he was doing something at once. If I were +a--" She stopped, and they laughed together. "I mean that I should hate +to be so long getting ready to do something as men are." + +"Then you'd rather begin making wall-paper at once than studying law?" + +"Oh, I don't say that. I'm not competent to advise. But I should like +to feel that I was doing something. I suppose it's hereditary." +Mavering stared a little. "One of my father's sisters has gone into a +sisterhood. She's in England." + +"Is she a--Catholic?" asked Mavering. + +"She isn't a Roman Catholic." + +"Oh yes!" He dropped forward on his knees again to help her tie the +bunch she had finished. It was not so easy as the first. + +"Oh, thank you!" she said, with unnecessary fervour. + +"But you shouldn't like to go into a sisterhood, I suppose?" said +Mavering, ready to laugh. + +"Oh, I don't know. Why not?" She looked at him with a flying glance, +and dropped her eyes. + +"Oh, no reason, if you have a fancy for that kind of thing." + +"That kind of thing?" repeated Alice severely. + +"Oh, I don't mean anything disrespectful to it," said Mavering, throwing +his anxiety off in the laugh he had been holding back. "And I beg your +pardon. But I don't suppose you're in earnest." + +"Oh no, I'm not in earnest," said the girl, letting her wrists fall upon +her knees, and the clusters drop from her hands. "I'm not in earnest +about anything; that's the truth--that's the shame. Wouldn't you like," +she broke off, "to be a priest, and go round among these people up here +on their frozen islands in the winter?" + +"No," shouted Mavering, "I certainly shouldn't. I don't see how anybody +stands it. Ponkwasset Falls is bad enough in the winter, and compared to +this region Ponkwasset Falls is a metropolis. I believe in getting all +the good you can out of the world you were born in--of course without +hurting anybody else." He stretched his legs out on the bed of sweet- +fern, where he had thrown himself, and rested his head on his hand lifted +on his elbow. "I think this is what this place is fit for--a picnic; and +I wish every one well out of it for nine months of the year." + +"I don't," said the girl, with a passionate regret in her voice. "It +would be heavenly here with--But you--no, you're different. You always +want to share your happiness." + +"I shouldn't call that happiness. But don't you?" asked Mavering. + +"No. I'm selfish." + +"You don't expect me to be believe that, I suppose." + +"Yes," she went on, "it must be selfishness. You don't believe I'm so, +because you can't imagine it. But it's true. If I were to be happy, I +should be very greedy about it; I couldn't endure to let any one else +have a part in it. So it's best for me to be wretched, don't you see--to +give myself up entirely to doing for others, and not expect any one to do +anything for me; then I can be of some use in the world. That's why I +should like to go into a sisterhood." + +Mavering treated it as the best kind of joke, and he was confirmed in +this view of it by her laughing with him, after a first glance of what he +thought mock piteousness. + + + + +XVI. + +The clouds sailed across the irregular space of pale blue Northern sky +which the break in the woods opened for them overhead. It was so still +that they heard, and smiled to hear, the broken voices of the others, who +had gone to get berries in another direction--Miss Anderson's hoarse +murmur and Munt's artificial bass. Some words came from the party on the +rocks. + +"Isn't it perfect?" cried the young fellow in utter content. + +"Yes, too perfect," answered the girl, rousing herself from the reverie +in which they had both lost themselves, she did not know how long. +"Shall you gather any more?" + +"No; I guess there's enough. Let's count them." He stooped over on his +hand's and knees, and made as much of counting the bunches as he could. +"There's about one bunch and a half a piece. How shall we carry them? +We ought to come into camp as impressively as possible." + +"Yes," said Alice, looking into his face with dreamy absence. It was +going through her mind, from some romance she had read, What if he were +some sylvan creature, with that gaiety, that natural gladness and +sweetness of his, so far from any happiness that was possible to her? +Ought not she to be afraid of him? She was thinking she was not afraid. + +"I'll tell you," he said. "Tie the stems of all the bunches together, +and swing them over a pole, like grapes of Eshcol. Don't you know the +picture?" + +"Oh yes." + +"Hold on! I'll get the pole." He cut a white birch sapling, and swept +off its twigs and leaves, then he tied the bunches together, and slung +them over the middle of the pole. + +"Well?" she asked. + +"Now we must rest the ends on our shoulders." + +"Do you think so?" she asked, with the reluctance that complies. + +"Yes, but not right away. I'll carry them out of the woods, and we'll +form the procession just before we come in sight." + +Every one on the ledge recognised the tableau when it appeared, and +saluted it with cheers and hand-clapping. Mrs. Pasmer bent a look on her +daughter which she faced impenetrably. + +"Where have you been?" "We thought you were lost!" "We were just +organising a search expedition!" different ones shouted at them. + +The lady with the coffee-pot was kneeling over it with her hand on it. +"Have some coffee, you poor things! You must be almost starved." + +"We looked about for you everywhere," said Munt, "and shouted ourselves +dumb." + +Miss Anderson passed near Alice. "I knew where you were all the time!" + +Then the whole party fell to praising the novel conception of the +bouquets of blueberries, and the talk began to flow away from Alice and +Mavering in various channels. + +All that had happened a few minutes ago in the blueberry patch seemed a +far-off dream; the reality had died out of the looks and words. + +He ran about from one to another, serving every one; in a little while +the whole affair was in his hospitable hands, and his laugh interspersed +and brightened the talk. + +She got a little back of the others, and sat looking wistfully out over +the bay, with her hands in her lap. + +"Hold on just half a minute, Miss Pasmer! don't move!" exclaimed the +amateur photographer, who is now of all excursions; he jumped to his +feet, and ran for his apparatus. She sat still, to please him; but when +he had developed his picture, in a dark corner of the rocks, roofed with +a waterproof, he accused her of having changed her position. "But it's +going to be splendid," he said, with another look at it. + +He took several pictures of the whole party, for which they fell into +various attitudes of consciousness. Then he shouted to a boat-load of +sailors who had beached their craft while they gathered some drift for +their galley fire. They had flung their arm-loads into the boat, and had +bent themselves to shove it into the water. + +"Keep still! don't move!" he yelled at them, with the imperiousness of +the amateur photographer, and they obeyed with the helplessness of his +victims. But they looked round. + +"Oh, idiots!" groaned the artist. + +"I always wonder what that kind of people think of us kind of people," +said Mrs. Brinkley, with her eye on the photographer's subjects. + +"Yes, I wonder what they do?" said Miss Cotton, pleased with the +speculative turn which the talk might take from this. "I suppose they +envy us?" she suggested. + +"Well, not all of them; and those that do, not respectfully. They view, +us as the possessors of ill-gotten gains, who would be in a very +different place if we had our deserts." + +"Do you really think so?" + +"Yes, I think so; but I don't know that I really think so. That's +another matter," said Mrs. Brinkley, with the whimsical resentment which +Miss Cotton's conscientious pursuit seemed always to rouse in her. + +"I supposed," continued Miss Cotton, "that it was only among the poor in +the cities, who have begin misled by agitators, that the-well-to-do +classes were regarded with suspicion." + +"It seems to have begun a great while ago," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and not +exactly with agitators. It was considered very difficult for us to get +into the kingdom of heaven, you know." + +"Yes, I know," assented Miss Cotton. + +"And there certainly are some things against us. Even when the chance +was given us to sell all we had and give it to the poor, we couldn't +bring our minds to it, and went away exceeding sorrowful." + +"I wonder," said Miss Cotton, "whether those things were ever intended to +be taken literally?" + +"Let's hope not," said John Munt, seeing his chance to make a laugh. + +Mrs. Stamwell said, "Well, I shall take another cup of coffee, at any +rate," and her hardihood raised another laugh. + +"That always seems to me the most pitiful thing in the whole Bible," said +Alice, from her place. "To see the right so clearly, and not to be +strong enough to do it." + +"My dear, it happens every day," said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"I always felt sorry for that poor fellow, too," said Mavering. "He +seemed to be a good fellow, and it was pretty hard lines for him." + +Alice looked round at him with deepening gravity. + +"Confound those fellows!" said the photographer, glancing at his hastily +developed plate. "They moved." + + + + +XVII. + +The picnic party gathered itself up after the lunch, and while some of +the men, emulous of Mavering's public spirit, helped some of the ladies +to pack the dishes and baskets away under the wagon seats, others threw a +corked bottle into the water, and threw stones at it. A few of the +ladies joined them, but nobody hit the bottle, which was finally left +bobbing about on the tide. + +Mrs. Brinkley addressed the defeated group, of whom her husband was one, +as they came up the beach toward the wagons. "Do you think that display +was calculated to inspire the lower middle classes with respectful envy?" + +Her husband made himself spokesman for the rest: "No; but you can't tell +how they'd have felt if we'd hit it." + +They all now climbed to a higher level, grassy and smooth, on the bluff, +from which there was a particular view; and Mavering came, carrying the +wraps of Mrs. Pasmer and Alice, with which he associated his overcoat. A +book fell out of one of the pockets when he threw it down. + +Miss Anderson picked the volume up. "Browning! He reads Browning! +Superior young man!" + +"Oh, don't say that!" pleaded Mavering. + +"Oh, read something aloud!" cried another of the young ladies. + +"Isn't Browning rather serious for a picnic?" he asked, with a glance at +Alice; he still had a doubt of the effect of the rheumatic uncle's dance +upon her, and would have been glad to give her some other aesthetic +impression of him. + +"Oh no!" said Mrs. Brinkley, "nothing is more appropriate to a picnic +than conundrums; they always have them. Choose a good tough one." + +"I don't know anything tougher than the 'Legend of Pernik'--or lovelier," +he said, and he began to read, simply, and with a passionate pleasure in +the subtle study, feeling its control over his hearers. + +The gentlemen lay smoking about at their ease; at the end a deep sigh +went up from the ladies, cut short by the question which they immediately +fell into. + +They could not agree, but they said, one after another: "But you read +beautifully, Mr. Mavering!" "Beautifully!" "Yes, indeed!" + +"Well, I'm glad there is one point clear," he said, putting the book +away, and "I'm afraid you'll think I'm rather sentimental," he added, in +a low voice to Alice, "carrying poetry around with me." + +"Oh no!" she replied intensely; "I thank you." + +"I thank you," he retorted, and their eyes met in a deep look. + +One of the outer circle of smokers came up with his watch in his hand, +and addressed the company, "Do you know what time it's got to be? It's +four o'clock." + +They all sprang up with a clamour of surprise. + +Mrs. Pasmer, under cover of the noise, said, in a low tone, to her +daughter, "Alice, I think you'd better keep a little more with me now." + +"Yes," said the girl, in a sympathy with her mother in which she did not +always find herself. + +But when Mavering, whom their tacit treaty concerned, turned toward them, +and put himself in charge of Alice, Mrs. Pasmer found herself +dispossessed by the charm of his confidence, and relinquished her to him. +They were going to walk to the Castle Rocks by the path that now loses +and now finds itself among the fastnesses of the forest, stretching to +the loftiest outlook on the bay. The savage woodland is penetrated only +by this forgetful path, that passes now and then aver the bridge of a +ravine, and offers to the eye on either hand the mystery deepening into +wilder and weirder tracts of solitude. The party resolved itself into +twos and threes, and these straggled far apart, out of conversational +reach of one another. Mrs. Pasmer found herself walking and talking with +John Munt. + +"Mr. Pasmer hasn't much interest in these excursions," he suggested. + +"No; he never goes," she answered, and, by one of the agile intellectual +processes natural to women, she arrived at the question, "You and the +Maverings are old friends, Mr. Munt?" + +"I can't say about the son, but I'm his father's friend, and I suppose +that I'm his friend too. Everybody seems to be so," suggested Munt. + +"Oh Yes," Mrs. Pasmer assented; "he appears to be a universal favourite." + +"We used to expect great things of Elbridge Mavering in college. We were +rather more romantic than the Harvard men are nowadays, and we believed +in one another more than they do. Perhaps we idealised one another. +But, anyway, our class thought Mavering could do anything. You know +about his taste for etchings?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of deep appreciation. "What gifted +people!" + +"I understand that the son inherits all his father's talent." + +"He sketches delightfully." + +"And Mavering wrote. Why, he was our class poet!" cried Munt, +remembering the fact with surprise and gratification to himself. "He was +a tremendous satirist." + +"Really? And he seems so amiable now." + +"Oh, it was only on paper." + +"Perhaps he still keeps it up--on wall-paper?" suggested Mrs. Pasmer. + +Munt laughed at the little joke with a good-will that flattered the +veteran flatterer. "I should like to ask him that some time. Will you +lend it to me?" + +"Yes, if such a sayer of good things will deign to borrow--" + +"Oh, Mrs. Pasmer!" cried Munt, otherwise speechless. + +"And the mother? Do you know Mrs. Mavering?" + +"Mrs. Mavering I've never seen." + +"Oh!" said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried to +console her. + +"I've never even been at their place. He asked me once a great while +ago; but you know how those things are. I've heard that she used to be +very pretty and very gay. They went about a great deal, to Saratoga and +Cape May and such places--rather out of our beat." + +"And now?" + +"And now she's been an invalid for a great many years. Bedridden, I +believe. Paralysis, I think." + +Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind." + +"Well," said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which this +remark let him understand he had not materially increased, "I think Mrs. +Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper--or her money. Mavering was +poor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent." + +"How very interesting! And is that the reason--its being ancestral--that +Mr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?" + +"Is he going into it?" asked Munt. + +"He's come up here to think about it." + +"I should suppose it would be a very good thing," said Munt. + +"What a very remarkable forest!" said Mrs. Pasmer, examining it on either +side, and turning quite round. This gave her, from her place in the van +of the straggling procession, a glimpse of Alice and Dan Mavering far in +the rear. + +"Don't you know," he was saying to the girl at the same moment, "it's +like some of those Dore illustrations to the Inferno, or the Wandering +Jew." + +"Oh yes. I was trying to think what it was made me think I had seen it +before," she answered. "It must be that. But how strange it is!" she +exclaimed, "that sensation of having been there before--in some place +before where you can't possibly have been." + +"And do you feel it here?" he asked, as vividly interested as if they two +had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been a psychical +consolation to so many young observers. + +"Yes," she cried. + +"I hope I was with you," he said, with a sudden turn of levity, which did +not displease her, for there seemed to be a tender earnestness lurking in +it. "I couldn't bear to think of your being alone in such a howling +wilderness." + +"Oh, I was with a large picnic," she retorted gaily. "You might have +been among the rest. I didn't notice." + +"Well, the next time, I wish you'd look closer. I don't like being left +out." They were so far behind the rest that he devoted himself entirely +to her, and they had grown more and more confidential. + + +They came to a narrow foot-bridge over a deep gorge. The hand-rail had +fallen away. He sprang forward and gave her his hand for the passage. +"Who helped you over here?" he demanded. "Don't say I didn't." + +"Perhaps it was you," she murmured, letting him keep the fingers to which +he clung a moment after they had crossed the bridge. Then she took them +away, and said: "But I can't be sure. There were so many others." + +"Other fellows?" he demanded, placing himself before her on the narrow +path, so that she could not get by. "Try to remember, Miss Pasmer. This +is very important. It would break my heart if it was really some one +else." She stole a glance at his face, but it was smiling, though his +voice was so earnest. "I want to help you over all the bad places, and I +don't want any one else to have a hand in it." + +The voice and the face still belied each other, and between them the girl +chose to feel herself trifled with by the artistic temperament. "If +you'll please step out of the way, Mr. Mavering," she said severely, "I +shall not need anybody's help just here." + +He instantly moved aside, and they were both silent, till she said, as +she quickened her pace to overtake the others in front, "I don't see how +you can help liking nature in such a place as this." + +"I can't--human nature," he said. It was mere folly; and an abstract +folly at that; but the face that she held down and away from him flushed +with sweet consciousness as she laughed. + +On the cliff beetling above the bay, where she sat to look out over the +sad northern sea, lit with the fishing sail they had seen before, and the +surge washed into the rocky coves far beneath them, he threw himself at +her feet, and made her alone in the company that came and went and tried +this view and that from the different points where the picnic hostess +insisted they should enjoy it. She left the young couple to themselves, +and Mrs. Pasmer seemed to have forgotten that she had bidden Alice to be +a little more with her. + +Alice had forgotten it too. She sat listening to Mavering's talk with a +certain fascination, but not so much apparently because the meaning of +the words pleased her as the sound of his voice, the motion of his lips +in speaking, charmed her. At first he was serious, and even melancholy, +as if he were afraid he had offended her; but apparently he soon believed +that he had been forgiven, and began to burlesque his own mood, but still +with a deference and a watchful observance of her changes of feeling +which was delicately flattering in its way. Now and then when she +answered something it was not always to the purpose; he accused her of +not hearing what he said, but she would have it that she did, and then he +tried to test her by proofs and questions. It did not matter for +anything that was spoken or done; speech and action of whatever sort were +mere masks of their young joy in each other, so that when he said, after +he had quoted some lines befitting the scene they looked out on; "Now was +that from Tennyson or from Tupper?" and she answered, "Neither; it was +from Shakespeare," they joined, in the same happy laugh, and they laughed +now and then without saying anything. Neither this nor that made them +more glad or less; they were in a trance, vulnerable to nothing but the +summons which must come to leave their dream behind, and issue into the +waking world. + +In hope or in experience such a moment has come to all, and it is so +pretty to those who recognise it from the outside that no one has the +heart to hurry it away while it can be helped. The affair between Alice +and Mavering had evidently her mother's sanction, and all the rest were +eager to help it on. When the party had started to return, they called +to them, and let them come behind together. At the carriages they had +what Miss Anderson called a new deal, and Alice and Mavering found +themselves together in the rear seat of the last. + +The fog began to come in from the sea, and followed them through the +woods. When they emerged upon the highway it wrapped them densely round, +and formed a little world, cosy, intimate, where they two dwelt alone +with these friends of theirs, each of whom they praised for delightful +qualities. The horses beat along through the mist, in which there seemed +no progress, and they lived in a blissful arrest of time. Miss Anderson +called back from the front seat, "My ear buyns; you're talkin' about me." + +"Which ear?" cried Mavering. + +"Oh, the left, of couyse." + +"Then it's merely habit, Julie. You ought to have heard the nice things +we were saying about you," Alice called. + +"I'd like to hear all the nice things you've been saying." + +This seemed the last effect of subtle wit. Mavering broke out in his +laugh, and Alice's laugh rang above it. + +Mrs. Pasmer looked involuntarily round from the carriage ahead. + +"They seem to be having a good time," said Mrs. Brinkley at her side. + +"Yes; I hope Alice isn't overdoing." + +"I'm afraid you're dreadfully tired," said Mavering to the girl, in a low +voice, as he lifted her from her place when they reached the hotel +through the provisional darkness, and found that after all it was only +dinner-time. + +"Oh no. I feel as if the picnic were just beginning." + +"Then you will come to-night?" + +"I will see what mamma says." + +"Shall I ask her?" + +"Oh, perhaps not," said the girl, repressing his ardour, but not +severely. + + + + +XVIII. + +They were going to have some theatricals at one of the cottages, and the +lady at whose house they were to be given made haste to invite all the +picnic party before it dispersed. Mrs. Pasmer accepted with a mental +reservation, meaning to send an excuse later if she chose; and before she +decided the point she kept her husband from going after dinner into the +reading-room, where he spent nearly all his time over a paper and a +cigar, or in sitting absolutely silent and unoccupied, and made him go to +their own room with her. + +"There is something that I must speak to you about," she said, closing +the door, "and you must decide for yourself whether you wish to let it go +any further." + +"What go any further?" asked Mr. Pasmer, sitting down and putting his +hand to the pocket that held his cigar-case with the same series of +motions. + +"No, don't smoke," she said, staying his hand impatiently. "I want you +to think." + +"How can I think if I don't smoke?" + +"Very well; smoke, then. Do you want this affair with young Mavering to +go any farther?" + +"Oh!" said Pasmer, "I thought you had been looking after that." He had +in fact relegated that to the company of the great questions exterior to +his personal comfort which she always decided. + +"I have been looking after it, but now the time has come when you must, +as a father, take some interest in it." + +Pasmer's noble mask of a face, from the point of his full white beard to +his fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressed +all the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such an affair; +but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have to +intervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" he asked. + +"Why, I don't know that he's going to ask you anything. I don't know +whether he's said anything to Alice yet," said Mrs. Pasmer, with some +exasperation. + +Her husband was silent, but his silence insinuated a degree of wonder +that she should approach him prematurely on such a point. + +"They have been thrown together all day, and there is no use to conceal +from ourselves that they are very much taken with each other?" + +"I thought," Pasmer said, "that you said that from the beginning. Didn't +you want them to be taken with each other?" + +"That is what you are to decide." + +Pasmer silently refused to assume the responsibility. + +"Well?" demanded his wife, after waiting for him to speak. + +"Well what?" + +"What do you decide?" + +"What is the use of deciding a thing when it is all over?" + +"It isn't over at all. It can be broken off at any moment." + +"Well, break it off, then, if you like." + +Mrs. Pasmer resumed the responsibility with a sigh. She felt the burden, +the penalty, of power, after having so long enjoyed its sweets, and she +would willingly have abdicated the sovereignty which she had spent her +whole married life in establishing. But there was no one to take it up. +"No, I shall not break it off," she said resentfully; "I shall let it go +on." Then seeing that her husband was not shaken by her threat from his +long-confirmed subjection, she added: "It isn't an ideal affair, but I +think it will be a very good thing for Alice. He is not what I expected, +but he is thoroughly nice, and I should think his family was nice. I've +been talking with Mr. Munt about them to-day, and he confirms all that +Etta Saintsbury said. I don't think there can be any doubt of his +intentions in coming here. He isn't a particularly artless young man, +but he's been sufficiently frank about Alice since he's been here." Her +husband smoked on. "His father seems to have taken up the business from +the artistic side, and Mr. Mavering won't be expected to enter into the +commercial part at once. If it wasn't for Alice, I don't believe he +would think of the business for a moment; he would study law. Of course +it's a little embarrassing to have her engaged at once before she's seen +anything of society here, but perhaps it's all for the best, after all: +the main thing is that she should be satisfied, and I can see that she's +only too much so. Yes, she's very much taken with him; and I don't +wonder. He is charming." + +It was not the first time that Mrs. Pasmer had reasoned in this round; +but the utterance of her thoughts seemed to throw a new light on them, +and she took a courage from them that they did not always impart. She +arrived at the final opinion expressed, with a throb of tenderness for +the young fellow whom she believed eager to take her daughter from her, +and now for the first time she experienced a desolation in the prospect, +as if it were an accomplished fact. She was morally a bundle of +finesses, but at the bottom of her heart her daughter was all the world +to her. She had made the girl her idol, and if, like some other heathen, +she had not always used her idol with the greatest deference, if she had +often expected the impossible from it, and made it pay for her +disappointment, still she had never swerved from her worship of it. She +suddenly asked herself, What if this young fellow, so charming and so +good, should so wholly monopolise her child that she should no longer +have any share in her? What if Alice, who had so long formed her first +care and chief object in life, should contentedly lose herself in the +love and care of another, and both should ignore her right to her? She +answered herself with a pang that this might happen with any one Alice +married, and that it would be no worse, at the worst, with Dan Mavering +than with another, while her husband remained impartially silent. Always +keeping within the lines to which his wife's supremacy had driven him, he +felt safe there, and was not to be easily coaxed out of them. + +Mrs. Pasmer rose and left him, with his perfect acquiescence, and went +into her daughter's room. She found Alice there, with a pretty evening +dress laid out on her bed. Mrs. Pasmer was very fond of that dress, and +at the thought of Alice in it her spirits rose again. + +"Oh, are you going, Alice?" + +"Why, yes," answered the girl. "Didn't you accept?" + +"Why, yes," Mrs. Pasmer admitted. "But aren't you tired?" + +"Oh, not in the least. I feel as fresh as I did this morning. Don't you +want me to go?" + +"Oh yes, certainly, I want you to go--if you think you'll enjoy it." + +"Enjoy it? Why, why shouldn't I enjoy it, mamma!" What are you thinking +about? It's going to be the greatest kind of fun." + +"But do you think you ought to look at everything simply as fun?" asked +the mother, with unwonted didacticism. + +"How everything? What are you thinking about, mamma?" + +"Oh, nothing! I'm so glad you're going to wear that dress." + +"Why, of course! It's my best. But what arc you driving at, mamma?" + +Mrs. Pasmer was really seeking in her daughter that comfort of a distinct +volition which she had failed to find in her husband, and she wished to +assure herself of it more and more, that she might share with some one +the responsibility which he had refused any part in. + +"Nothing. But I'm glad you wish so much to go." The girl dropped her +hands and stared. "You must have enjoyed yourself to-day," she added, as +if that were an explanation. + +"Of course I enjoyed myself! But what has that to do with my wanting to +go to-night?" + +"Oh, nothing. But I hope, Alice, that there is one thing you have looked +fully in the face." + +"What thing?" faltered the girl, and now showed herself unable to +confront it by dropping her eyes. + +"Well, whatever you may have heard or seen, nobody else is in doubt about +it. What do you suppose has brought Mr. Mavering here!" + +"I don't know." The denial not only confessed that she did know, but it +informed her mother that all was as yet tacit between the young people. + +"Very well, then, I know," said Mrs. Pasmer; "and there is one thing that +you must know before long, Alice." + +"What?" she asked faintly. + +"Your own mind," said her mother. "I don't ask you what it is, and I +shall wait till you tell me. Of course I shouldn't have let him stay +here if I had objected--" + +"O mamma!" murmured the girl, dyed with shame to have the facts so boldly +touched, but not, probably, too deeply displeased. + +"Yes. And I know that he would never have thought of going into that +business if he had not expected--hoped--" + +"Mamma!" + +"And you ought to consider--" + +"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" implored the girl. + +"That's all," said her mother, turning from Alice, who had hidden her +face in her hands, to inspect the costume on the bed. She lifted one +piece of it after another, turned it over, looked at it, and laid it +down. "You can never get such a dress in this country." + +She went out of the room, as the girl dropped her face in the pillow. An +hour later they met equipped for the evening's pleasure. To the keen +glance that her mother gave her, the daughter's eyes had the brightness +of eyes that have been weeping, but they were also bright with that +knowledge of her own mind which Mrs. Pasmer had desired for her. She met +her mother's glance fearlessly, even proudly, and she carried her stylish +costume with a splendour to which only occasions could stimulate her. +They dramatised a perfect unconsciousness to each other, but Mrs. Pasmer +was by no means satisfied with the decision which she had read in her +daughter's looks. Somehow it did not relieve her of the responsibility, +and it did not change the nature of the case. It was gratifying, of +course, to see Alice the object of a passion so sincere and so ardent; so +far the triumph was complete, and there was really nothing objectionable +in the young man and his circumstances, though there was nothing very +distinguished. But the affair was altogether different from anything +that Mrs. Pasmer had imagined. She had supposed and intended that Alice +should meet some one in Boston, and go through a course of society before +reaching any decisive step. There was to be a whole season in which to +look the ground carefully over, and the ground was to be all within +certain well-ascertained and guarded precincts. But this that had +happened was outside of these precincts, of at least on their mere +outskirts. Class Day, of course, was all right; and she could not say +that the summer colony at Campobello was not thoroughly and essentially +Boston; and yet she felt that certain influences, certain sanctions, were +absent. To tell the truth, she would not have cared for the feelings of +Mavering's family in regard to the matter, except as they might afterward +concern Alice, and the time had not come when she could recognise their +existence in regard to the affair; and yet she could have wished that +even as it was his family could have seen and approved it from the start. +It would have been more regular. + + +With Alice it was a simpler matter, and of course deeper. For her it was +only a question of himself and herself; no one else existed to the +sublime egotism of her love. She did not call it by that name; she did +not permit it to assert itself by any name; it was a mere formless joy in +her soul, a trustful and blissful expectance, which she now no more +believed he could disappoint than that she could die within that hour. +All the rebellion that she had sometimes felt at the anomalous attitude +exacted of her sex in regard to such matters was gone. She no longer +thought it strange that a girl should be expected to ignore the +admiration of a young man till he explicitly declared it, and should then +be fully possessed of all the materials of a decision on the most +momentous question in life; for she knew that this state of ignorance +could never really exist; she had known from the first moment that he had +thought her beautiful. To-night she was radiant for him. Her eyes shone +with the look in which they should meet and give themselves to each other +before they spoke--the look in which they had met already, in which they +had lived that whole day. + + + + +XIX. + +The evening's entertainment was something that must fail before an +audience which was not very kind. They were to present a burlesque of +classic fable, and the parts, with their general intention, had been +distributed to the different actors; but nothing had been written down, +and, beyond the situations and a few points of dialogue, all had to be +improvised. The costumes and properties had been invented from such +things as came to hand. Sheets sculpturesquely draped the deities who +took part; a fox-pelt from the hearth did duty as the leopard skin of +Bacchus; a feather duster served Neptune for a trident; the lyre of +Apollo was a dust-pan; a gull's breast furnished Jove with his grey +beard. + +The fable was adapted to modern life, and the scene had been laid in +Campobello, the peculiarities of which were to be satirised throughout. +The principal situation was to be a passage between Jupiter, represented +by Mavering, and Juno, whom Miss Anderson personated; it was to be a +scene of conjugal reproaches and reprisals, and to end in reconciliation, +in which the father of the gods sacrificed himself on the altar of +domestic peace by promising to bring his family to Campobello every year. + +This was to be followed by a sketch of the Judgment of Paris, in which +Juno and Pallas were to be personated by two young men, and Miss Anderson +took the part of Venus. + +The pretty drawing-room of the Trevors--young people from Albany, and +cousins of Miss Anderson--was curtained off at one end for a stage, and +beyond the sliding doors which divided it in half were set chairs for the +spectators. People had come in whatever dress they liked; the men were +mostly in morning coats; the ladies had generally made some attempt at +evening toilet, but they joined in admiring Alice Pasmer's costume, and +one of them said that they would let it represent them all, and express +what each might have done if she would. There was not much time for +their tributes; all the lamps were presently taken away and set along the +floor in front of the curtain as foot-lights, leaving the company in a +darkness which Mrs. Brinkley pronounced sepulchral. She made her +reproaches to the master of the house, who had effected this +transposition of the lamps. "I was just thinking some very pretty and +valuable things about your charming cottage, Mr. Trevor: a rug on a bare +floor, a trim of varnished pine, a wall with half a dozen simple etchings +on it, an open fire, and a mantelpiece without bric-a-brac, how entirely +satisfying it all is! And how it upbraids us for heaping up upholstery +as we do in town!" + +"Go on," said the host. "Those are beautiful thoughts." + +"But I can't go on in the dark," retorted Mrs. Brinkley. "You can't +think in the dark, much less talk! Can you, Mrs. Pasmer?" Mrs. Pasmer, +with Alice next to her, sat just in front of Mrs. Brinkley. + +"No," she assented; "but if I could--YOU can thick anywhere, Mrs. +Brinkley--Mrs. Trevor's lovely house would inspire me to it." + +"Two birds with one stone--thank you, Mrs. Pasmer, for my part of the +compliment. Pick yourself up, Mr. Trevor." + +"Oh, thank you, I'm all right," said Trevor, panting after the ladies' +meanings, as a man must. "I suppose thinking and talking in the dark is +a good deal like smoking in the dark." + +"No; thinking and talking are not at all like smoking under any +conditions. Why in the world should they be?" + +"Oh, I can't get any fun out of a cigar unless I can see the smoke," the +host explained. + +"Do you follow him, Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"Yes, perfectly." + +"Thank you, Mrs. Pasmer," said Trevor. + +"I'll get you to tell me how you did it some time," said Mrs. Brinkley. +"But your house is a gem, Mr. Trevor." + +"Isn't it?" cried Trevor. "I want my wife to live here the year round." +It was the Trevors' first summer in their cottage, and the experienced +reader will easily recognise his mood. "But she's such a worldly spirit, +she won't." + +"Oh, I don't know about the year round. Do you, Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"I should," said Alice, with the suddenness of youth, breaking into the +talk which she had not been supposed to take any interest in. + +"Is it proper to kiss a young lady's hand?" said Trevor gratefully, +appealing to Mrs. Brinkley. + +"It isn't very customary in the nineteenth century," said Mrs. Brinkley. +"But you might kiss her fan. He might kiss her fan, mightn't he, Mrs. +Pasmer?" + +"Certainly. Alice, hold out your fan instantly." + +The girl humoured the joke, laughing. + +Trevor pressed his lips to the perfumed sticks. "I will tell Mrs. +Trevor," he said, "and that will decide her." + +"It will decide her not to come here at all next year if you tell her +all." + +"He never tells me all," said Mrs. Trevor, catching so much of the talk +as she came in from some hospitable cares in the dining-room. "They're +incapable of it. What has he been doing now?" + +"Nothing. Or I will tell you when we are alone, Mrs. Trevor," said Mrs. +Brinkley, with burlesque sympathy. "We oughtn't to have a scene on both +sides of the foot-lights." + +A boyish face, all excitement, was thrust out between the curtains +forming the proscenium of the little theatre. "All ready, Mrs. Trevor?" + +"Yes, all ready, Jim." + +He dashed the curtains apart, and marred the effect of his own +disappearance from the scene by tripping over the long legs of Jove, +stretched out to the front, where he sat on Mrs. Trevor's richest rug, +propped with sofa cushions on either hand. + +"So perish all the impious race of titans, enemies of the gods!" said +Mavering solemnly, as the boy fell sprawling. "Pick the earth-born giant +up, Vulcan, my son." + +The boy was very small for his age; every one saw that the accident had +not been premeditated, and when Vulcan appeared, with an exaggerated +limp, and carried the boy off, a burst of laughter went up from the +company. + +It did not matter what the play was to have been after that; it all +turned upon the accident. Juno came on, and began to reproach Jupiter +for his carelessness. "I've sent Mercury upstairs for the aynica; but he +says it's no use: that boy won't be able to pass ball for a week. How +often have I told you not to sit with your feet out that way! I knew +you'd hurt somebody." + +"I didn't have my feet out," retorted Jupiter. "Besides," he added, with +dignity, and a burlesque of marital special pleading which every wife and +husband recognised, "I always sit with my feet out so, and I always will, +so long as I've the spirit of a god." + +"Isn't he delicious?" buzzed Mrs. Pasmer, leaning backward to whisper to +Mrs. Brinkley; it was not that she thought what Dan had just said was so +very fanny, but people are immoderately applausive of amateur dramatics, +and she was feeling very fond of the young fellow. + +The improvisation went wildly and adventurously on, and the curtains +dropped together amidst the facile acclaim of the audience: + +"It's very well for Jupiter that he happened to think of the curtain," +said Mrs. Brinkley. "They couldn't have kept it up at that level much +longer." + +"Oh, do you think so?" softly murmured Mrs. Pasmer. "It seemed as if +they could have kept it up all night if they liked." + +"I doubt it. Mr. Trevor," said Mrs. Brinkley to the host, who had come +up for her congratulations, "do you always have such brilliant +performances?" + +"Well, we have so far," he answered modestly; and Mrs. Brinkley laughed +with him. This was the first entertainment at Trevor cottage. + +"'Sh!" went up all round them, and Mrs. Trevor called across the room, in +a reproachful whisper loud enough for every one to hear, "My dear!-- +enjoying yourself!" while Mavering stood between the parted curtains +waiting for the attention of the company. + +"On account of an accident to the call-boy and the mental exhaustion of +some of the deities, the next piece will be omitted, and the performance +will begin with the one after. While the audience is waiting, Mercury +will go round and take up a collection for the victim of the recent +accident, who will probably be indisposed for life. The collector will +be accompanied by a policeman, and may be safely trusted." + +He disappeared behind the curtain with a pas and r swirl of his draperies +like the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, and the audience again abandoned +itself to applause. + +"How very witty he is!" said Miss Cotton, who sat near John Munt. "Don't +you think he's really witty?" + +"Yes," Munt assented critically. "But you should have known his father." + +"Oh, do you know his father?" + +"I was in college with him." + +"Oh, do tell me about him, and all Mr. Mavering's family. We're so +interested, you know, on account of--Isn't it pretty to have that little +love idyl going on here? I wonder--I've been wondering all the time-- +what she thinks of all this. Do you suppose she quite likes it?" His +costume is so very remarkable!" Miss Cotton, in the absence of any lady +of her intimate circle, was appealing confidentially to John Munt. + +"Why, do you think there's anything serious between them?" he asked, +dropping his head forward as people do in church when they wish to +whisper to some one in the same pew. + +"Why, yes, it seems so," murmured Miss Cotton. "His admiration is quite +undisguised, isn't it?" + +"A man never can tell," said Munt. "We have to leave those things to you +ladies." + +"Oh, every one's talking of it, I assure you. And you know his family?" + +"I knew his father once rather better than anybody else." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes." Munt sketched rather a flattered portrait of the elder Mavering, +his ability, his goodness, his shyness, which he had always had to make +such a hard fight with. Munt was sensible of an access of popularity in +knowing Dan Mavering's people, and he did not spare his colours. + +"Then it isn't from his father that he gets everything. He isn't in the +least shy," said Miss Cotton. + +"That must be the mother." + +"And the mother?" + +"The mother I don't know." + +Miss Cotton sighed. "Sometimes I wish that he did show a little more +trepidation. It would seem as if he were more alive to the great +difference that there is between Alice Pasmer and other girls." + +Munt laughed a man's laugh. "I guess he's pretty well alive to that, if +he's in love with her." + +"Oh, in a certain way, of course, but not in the highest way. Now, for +instance, if he felt all her fineness as--as we do, I don't believe he'd +be willing to appear before her just like that." The father of the gods +wore a damask tablecloth of a pale golden hue and a classic pattern; his +arms were bare, and rather absurdly white; on his feet a pair of lawn- +tennis shoes had a very striking effect of sandals. + + +"It seems to me," Miss Cotton pursued; "that if he really appreciated her +in the highest way, he would wish never to do an undignified or trivial +thing in her presence." + +"Oh, perhaps it's that that pleases her in him. They say we're always +taken with opposites." + +"Yes--do you think so?" asked Miss Cotton. + +The curtains were flung apart, and the Judgment of Paris followed rather +tamely upon what had gone before, though the two young fellows who did +Juno and Minerva were very amusing, and the dialogue was full of hits. +Some of the audience, an appreciative minority, were of opinion that +Mavering and Miss Anderson surpassed themselves in it; she promised him +the most beautiful and cultured wife in Greece. "That settles it," he +answered. They came out arm in arm, and Paris, having put on a striped +tennis coat over his short-sleeved Greek tunic, moved round among the +company for their congratulations, Venus ostentatiously showing the apple +she had won. + +"I can haydly keep from eating it," she explained to Alice; before whom +she dropped Mavering's arm. "I'm awfully hungry. It's hayd woyk." + +Alice stood with her head drawn back, looking at the excited girl with a +smile, in which seemed to hover somewhere a latent bitterness. + +Mavering, with a flushed face and a flying tongue, was exchanging sallies +with her mother, who smothered him in flatteries. + +Mrs. Trevor came toward the group, and announced supper. "Mr. Paris, +will you take Miss Aphrodite out?" + +Miss Anderson swept a low bow of renunciation, and tacitly relinquished +Mavering to Alice. + +"Oh, no, no!" said Alice, shrinking back from him, with an +intensification of her uncertain smile. "A mere mortal?" + +"Oh, how very good!" said Mrs. Trevor. + +There began to be, without any one's intending it, that sort of tacit +misunderstanding which is all the worse because it can only follow upon a +tacit understanding like that which had established itself between Alice +and Mavering. They laughed and joked together gaily about all that went +on; they were perfectly good friends; he saw that she and her mother were +promptly served; he brought them salad and ice-cream and coffee himself, +only waiting officially upon Miss Anderson first, and Alice thanked him, +with the politest deprecation of his devotion; but if their eyes met, it +was defensively, and the security between them was gone. Mavering +vaguely felt the loss, without knowing how to retrieve it, and it made +him go on more desperately with Miss Anderson. He laughed and joked +recklessly, and Alice began to mark a more explicit displeasure with her. +She made her mother go rather early. + +On her part, Miss Anderson seemed to find reason for resentment in +Alice's bearing toward her. As if she had said to herself that her frank +loyalty had been thrown away upon a cold and unresponsive nature, and +that her harmless follies in the play had been met with unjust +suspicions, she began to make reprisals, she began in dead earnest to +flirt with Mavering. Before the evening passed she had made him seem +taken with her; but how justly she had done this, and with how much fault +of his, no one could have said. There were some who did not notice it at +all, but these were not people who knew Mavering, or knew Alice very +well. + + + + +XX. + +The next morning Alice was walking slowly along the road toward the +fishing village, when she heard rapid, plunging strides down the wooded +hillside on her right. She knew them for Mavering's, and she did not +affect surprise when he made a final leap into the road, and shortened +his pace beside her. + +"May I join you, Miss Pasmer?" + +"I am only going down to the herring-houses," she began. + +"And you'll let me go with you?" said the young fellow. "The fact is-- +you're always so frank that you make everything else seem silly--I've +been waiting up there in the woods for you to come by. Mrs. Pasmer told +me you had started this way, and I cut across lots to overtake you, and +then, when you came in sight, I had to let you pass before I could screw +my courage up to the point of running after you. How is that for open- +mindedness?" + +"It's a very good beginning, I should think." + +"Well, don't you think you ought to say now that you're sorry you were so +formidable?" + +"Am I so formidable?" she asked, and then recognised that she had been +trapped into a leading question. + +"You are to me. Because I would like always to be sure that I had +pleased you, and for the last twelve hours I've only been able to make +sure that I hadn't. That's the consolation I'm going away with. I +thought I'd get you to confirm my impression explicitly. That's why I +wished to join you." + +"Are you--were you going away?" + +"I'm going by the next boat. What's the use of staying? I should only +make bad worse. Yesterday I hoped But last night spoiled everything. +'Miss Pasmer,'" he broke out, with a rush of feeling, "you must know why I +came up here to Campobello." + +His steps took him a little ahead of her, and he could look back into her +face as he spoke. But apparently he saw nothing in it to give him +courage to go on, for he stopped, and then continued, lightly: "And I'm +going away because I feel that I've made a failure of the expedition. I +knew that you were supremely disgusted with me last night; but it will be +a sort of comfort if you'll tell me so." + +"Oh," said Alice, "everybody thought it was very brilliant, I'm sure." + +"And you thought it was a piece of buffoonery. Well, it was. I wish +you'd say so, Miss Pasmer; though I didn't mean the playing entirely. It +would be something to start from, and I want to make a beginning--turn +over a new leaf. Can't you help me to inscribe a good resolution of the +most iron-clad description on the stainless page? I've lain awake all +night composing one. Wouldn't you like to hear it?" + +"I can't see what good that would do," she said, with some relenting +toward a smile, in which he instantly prepared himself to bask. + +"But you will when I've done it. Now listen!" + +"Please don't go on." She cut him short with a return to her severity, +which he would not recognise. + +"Well, perhaps I'd better not," he consented. "It's rather a long +resolution, and I don't know that I've committed it perfectly yet. But I +do assure you that if you were disgusted last night, you were not the +only one. I was immensely disgusted myself; and why I wanted you to tell +me so, was because when I have a strong pressure brought to bear I can +brace up, and do almost anything," he said, dropping into earnest. Then +he rose lightly again, and added, "You have no idea how unpleasant it is +to lie awake all night throwing dust in the eyes of an accusing +conscience." + +"It must have been, if you didn't succeed," said Alice drily. + +"Yes, that's it--that's just the point. If I'd succeeded, I should be +all right, don't you see. But it was a difficult case." She turned her +face away, but he saw the smile on her cheek, and he laughed as if this +were what he had been trying to make her do. "I got beaten. I had to +give up, and own it. I had to say that I had thrown my chance away, +and I had better take myself off." He looked at her with a real anxiety +in his gay eyes. + +"The boat goes just after lunch, I believe," she said indifferently. + +"Oh yes, I shall have time to get lunch before I go," he said, with +bitterness. "But lunch isn't the only thing; it isn't even the main +thing, Miss Pasmer." + +"No?" She hardened her heart. + +He waited for her to say something more, and then he went on. "The +question is whether there's time to undo last night, abolish it, erase it +from the calendar of recorded time--sponge it out, in short--and get back +to yesterday afternoon." She made no reply to this. "Don't you think it +was a very pleasant picnic, Miss Pasmer?" he asked, with pensive +respectfulness. + +"Very," she answered drily. + +He cast a glance at the woods that bordered the road on either side. +"That weird forest--I shall never forget it." + +"No; it was something to remember," she said. + +"And the blueberry patch? We mustn't forget the blueberry patch." + +"There were a great many blueberries." + +She walked on, and he said, "And that bridge--you don't have that feeling +of having been here before?" + +"No." + +"Am I walking too fast for you, Miss Pasmer?" + +"No; I like to walk fast." + +"But wouldn't you like to sit down? On this wayside log, for example?" +He pointed it out with his stick. "It seems to invite repose, and I know +you must be tired." + +"I'm not tired." + +"Ah, that shows that you didn't lie awake grieving over your follies all +night. I hope you rested well, Miss Pasmer." She said nothing. "If I +thought--if I could hope that you hadn't, it would be a bond of sympathy, +and I would give almost anything for a bond of sympathy just now, Miss +Pasmer. Alice!" he said, with sudden seriousness. "I know that I'm not +worthy even to think of you, and that you're whole worlds above me in +every way. It's that that takes all heart out of me, and leaves me +without a word to say when I'd like to say so much. I would like to +speak--tell you--" + +She interrupted him. "I wish to speak to you, Mr. Mavering, and tell you +that--I'm very tired, and I'm going back to the hotel. I must ask you to +let me go back alone." + +"Alice, I love you." + +"I'm sorry you said it--sorry, sorry." + +"Why?" he asked, with hopeless futility. + +"Because there can be no love between us--not friendship even--not +acquaintance." + +"I shouldn't have asked for your acquaintance, your friendship, if--" +His words conveyed a delicate reproach, and they stung her, because they +put her in the wrong. + +"No matter," she began wildly. "I didn't mean to wound you. But we must +part, and we must never see each other again:" + +He stood confused, as if he could not make it out or believe it. "But +yesterday--" + +"It's to-day now." + +"Ah, no! It's last night. And I can explain." + +"No!" she cried. "You shall not make me out so mean and vindictive. I +don't care for last night, nor for anything that happened." This was not +true, but it seemed so to her at the moment; she thought that she really +no longer resented his association with Miss Anderson and his separation +from herself in all that had taken place. + +"Then what is it?" + +"I can't tell you. But everything is over between us--that's all." + +"But yesterday--and all these days past--you seemed--" + +"It's unfair of you to insist--it's ungenerous, ungentlemanly." + +That word, which from a woman's tongue always strikes a man like a blow +in the face, silenced Mavering. He set his lips and bowed, and they +parted. She turned upon her way, and he kept the path which she had been +going. + +It was not the hour when the piazzas were very full, and she slipped into +the dim hotel corridor undetected, or at least undetained. She flung +into her room, and confronted her mother. + +Mrs. Pasmer was there looking into a trunk that had overflowed from her +own chamber. "What is the matter?" she said to her daughter's excited +face. + +"Mr. Mavering--" + +"Well?" + +"And I refused him." + +Mrs. Pasmer was one of those ladies who in any finality have a keen +retrovision of all the advantages of a different conclusion. She had +been thinking, since she told Dan Mavering which way Alice had gone to +walk, that if he were to speak to her now, and she were to accept him, it +would involve a great many embarrassing consequences; but she had +consoled herself with the probability that he would not speak so soon +after the effects of last night, but would only try at the furthest to +make his peace with Alice. Since he had spoken, though, and she had +refused him, Mrs. Pasmer instantly saw all the pleasant things that would +have followed in another event. "Refused him?" she repeated +provisionally, while she gathered herself for a full exploration of all +the facts. + +"Yes, mamma; and I can't talk about it. I wish never to hear his name +again, or to see him, or to speak to him." + +"Why, of course not," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a fine smile, from the +vantage-ground of her superior years, "if you've refused him." She left +the trunk which she had been standing over, and sat down, while Alice +swept to and fro before her excitedly. "But why did you refuse him, my +dear?" + +"Why? Because he's detestable--perfectly ignoble." + +Her mother probably knew how to translate these exalted expressions into +the more accurate language of maturer life. "Do you mean last night?" + +"Last night?" cried Alice tragically. "No. Why should I care for last +night?" + +"Then I don't understand what you mean," retorted Mrs. Pasmer. "What did +he say?" she demanded, with authority. + +"Mamma, I can't talk about it--I won't." + +"But you must, Alice. It's your duty. Of course I must know about it. +What did he say?" + +Alice walked up and down the room with her lips firmly closed--like +Mavering's lips, it occurred to her; and then she opened them, but +without speaking. + +"What did he say?" persisted her mother, and her persistence had its +effect. + +"Say?" exclaimed the girl indignantly. "He tried to make me say." + +"I see," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Well?" + +"But I forced him to speak, and then--I rejected him. That's all." + +"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "He was afraid of you." + +"And that's what made it the more odious. Do you think I wished him to +be afraid of me? Would that be any pleasure? I should hate myself if I +had to quell anybody into being unlike themselves." She sat down for a +moment, and then jumped up again, and went to the window, for no reason, +and came back. + +"Yes," said her mother impartially, "he's light, and he's roundabout. He +couldn't come straight at anything." + +"And would you have me accept such a--being?" + +Mrs. Pasmer smiled a little at the literary word, and continued: "But +he's very sweet, and he's as good as the day's long, and he's very fond +of you, and--I thought you liked him." + +The girl threw up her arms across her eyes. "Oh, how can you say such a +thing, mamma?" + +She dropped into a chair at the bedside, and let her face fall into her +hands, and cried. + +Her mother waited for the gust of tears to pass before she said, "But if +you feel so about it--" + +"Mamma!" Alice sprang to her feet. + +"It needn't come from you. I could make some excuse to see him--write +him a little note--" + +"Never!" exclaimed Alice grandly. "What I've done I've done from my +reason, and my feelings have nothing to do with it." + +"Oh, very well," said her mother, going out of the room, not wholly +disappointed with what she viewed as a respite, and amused by her +daughter's tragics. "But if you think that the feelings have nothing to +do with such a matter, you're very much mistaken." If she believed that +her daughter did not know her real motives in rejecting Dan Mavering, or +had not been able to give them, she did not say so. + +The little group of Aliceolaters on the piazza, who began to canvass the +causes of Mavering's going before the top of his hat disappeared below +the bank on the path leading to the ferry-boat, were of two minds. One +faction held that he was going because Alice had refused him, and that +his gaiety up to the last moment was only a mask to hide his despair. +The other side contended that, if he and Alice were not actually engaged, +they understood each other, and he was going away because he wanted to +tell his family, or something of that kind. Between the two opinions +Miss Cotton wavered with a sentimental attraction to either. "What do +you really think?" she asked Mrs. Brinkley, arriving from lunch at the +corner of the piazza where the group was seated. + +"Oh, what does it matter, at their age?" she demanded. + +"But they're just of the age when it does happen to matter," suggested +Mrs. Stamwell. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and that's what makes the whole thing so +perfectly ridiculous. Just think of two children, one of twenty and the +other of twenty-three, proposing to decide their lifelong destiny in such +a vital matter! Should we trust their judgment in regard to the smallest +business affair? Of course not. They're babes in arms, morally and +mentally speaking. People haven't the data for being wisely in love till +they've reached the age when they haven't the least wish to be so. Oh, I +suppose I thought that I was a grown woman too when I was twenty; I can +look back and see that I did; and, what's more preposterous still, I +thought Mr. Brinkley was a man at twenty-four. But we were no more fit +to accept or reject each other at that infantile period--" + +"Do you really think so?" asked Miss Cotton, only partially credulous of +Mrs. Brinkley's irony. + +"Yes, it does seem out of all reason," admitted Mrs. Stamwell. + +"Of course it is," said Mrs. Brinkley. "If she has rejected him, she's +done a very safe thing. Nobody should be allowed to marry before fifty. +Then, if people married, it would be because they knew that they loved +each other." + +Miss Cotton reflected a moment. "It is strange that such an important +question should have to be decided at an age when the judgment is so far +from mature. I never happened to look at it in that light before." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley--and she made herself comfortable in an arm +chair commanding a stretch of the bay over which the ferry-boat must +pass--"but it's only part and parcel of the whole affair. I'm sure that +no grown person can see the ridiculous young things--inexperienced, +ignorant, featherbrained--that nature intrusts with children, their +immortal little souls and their extremely perishable little bodies, +without rebelling at the whole system. When you see what most young +mothers are, how perfectly unfit and incapable, you wonder that the whole +race doesn't teeth and die. Yes, there's one thing I feel pretty sure +of--that, as matters are arranged now, there oughtn't to be mothers at +all, there ought to be only grandmothers." + +The group all laughed, even Miss Cotton, but she was the first to become +grave. At the bottom of her heart there was a doubt whether so light a +way of treating serious things was not a little wicked. + +"Perhaps," she said, "we shall have to go back to the idea that +engagements and marriages are not intended to be regulated by the +judgment, but by the affections." + +"I don't know what's intended," said Mrs. Brinkley, "but I know what is. +In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the affections have it their own +way, and I must say I don't think the judgment could make a greater mess +of it. In fact," she continued, perhaps provoked to the excess by the +deprecation she saw in Miss Cotton's eye, "I consider every broken +engagement nowadays a blessing in disguise." + +Miss Cotton said nothing. The other ladies said, "Why, Mrs. Brinkley!" + +"Yes. The thing has gone altogether too far. The pendulum has swung in +that direction out of all measure. We are married too much. And as a +natural consequence we are divorced too much. The whole case is in a +nutshell: if there were no marriages, there would be no divorces, and +that great abuse would be corrected, at any rate." + +All the ladies laughed, Miss Cotton more and more sorrowfully. She liked +to have people talk as they do in genteel novels. Mrs. Brinkley's bold +expressions were a series of violent shocks to her nature, and imparted a +terrible vibration to the fabric of her whole little rose-coloured ideal +world; if they had not been the expressions of a person whom a great many +unquestionable persons accepted, who had such an undoubted standing, she +would have thought them very coarse. As it was, they had a great +fascination for her. "But in a case like that of"--she looked round and +lowered her voice--"our young friends, I'm sure you couldn't rejoice if +the engagement were broken off." + +"Well, I'm not going to be 'a mush of concession,' as Emerson says, Miss +Cotton. And, in the first place, how do you know they're engaged?" + +"Ah, I don't; I didn't mean that they were. But wouldn't it be a little +pathetic if, after all that we've seen going on, his coming here +expressly on her account, and his perfect devotion to her for the past +two weeks, it should end in nothing?" + +"Two weeks isn't a very long time to settle the business of a lifetime." + +"No." + +"Perhaps she's proposed delay; a little further acquaintance." + +"Oh, of course that would be perfectly right. Do you think she did?" + +"Not if she's as wise as the rest of us would have been at her age. But +I think she ought." + +"Yes?" said Miss Cotton semi-interrogatively. + +"Do you think his behaviour last night would naturally impress her with +his wisdom and constancy?" + +"No, I can't say that it would, but--" + +"And this Alice of yours is rather a severe young person. She has her +ideas, and I'm afraid they're rather heroic. She'd be just with him, of +course. But there's nothing a man dreads so much as justice--some men." + +"Yes," pursued Miss Cotton, "but that very disparity--I know they're very +unlike--don't you think--" + +"Oh yes, I know the theory about that. But if they were exactly alike in +temperament, they'd be sufficiently unlike for the purposes of +counterparts. That was arranged once for all when 'male and female +created He them.' I've no doubt their fancy was caught by all the kinds +of difference they find in each other; that's just as natural as it's +silly. But the misunderstanding, the trouble, the quarrelling, the wear +and tear of spirit, that they'd have to go through before they +assimilated--it makes me tired, as the boys say. No: I hope, for the +young man's own sake, he's got his conge." + +"But he's so kind, so good--" + +"My dear, the world is surfeited with kind, good men. There are half a +dozen of them at the other end of the piazza smoking; and there comes +another to join them," she added, as a large figure, semicircular in +profile, advanced itself from a doorway toward a vacant chair among the +smokers. "The very soul of kindness and goodness." She beckoned toward +her husband, who caught sight of her gesture. "Now I can tell you all +his mental processes. First, surprise at seeing some one beckoning; then +astonishment that it's I, though who else should beckon him?--then wonder +what I can want; then conjecture that I may want him to come here; then +pride in his conjecture; rebellion; compliance." + +The ladies were in a scream of laughter as Mr. Brinkley lumbered heavily +to their group. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"Do you believe in broken engagements? Now quick--off-hand!" + +"Who's engaged?" + +"No matter." + +"Well, you know Punch's advice to those about to marry?" + +"I know--chestnuts," said his wife scornfully. They dismissed each other +with tender bluntness, and he went in to get a match. + +"Ah, Mrs. Brinkley," said one of the ladies, "it would be of no use for +you to preach broken engagements to any one who saw you and Mr. Brinkley +together." They fell upon her, one after another, and mocked her with +the difference between her doctrine and practice; and they were all the +more against her because they had been perhaps a little put down by her +whimsical sayings. + +"Yes," she admitted. "But we've been thirty years coming to the +understanding that you all admire so much; and do you think it was worth +the time?" + + + + +XXI. + +Mavering kept up until he took leave of the party of young people who had +come over on the ferry-boat to Eastport for the frolic of seeing him off. +It was a tremendous tour de force to accept their company as if he were +glad of it, and to respond to all their gay nothings gaily; to maintain +a sunny surface on his turbid misery. They had tried to make Alice come +with them, but her mother pleaded a bad headache for her; and he had to +parry a hundred sallies about her, and from his sick heart humour the +popular insinuation that there was an understanding between them, and +that they had agreed together she should not come. He had to stand about +on the steamboat wharf and listen to amiable innuendoes for nearly an +hour before the steamer came in from St. John. The fond adieux of his +friends, their offers to take any message back, lasted during the +interminable fifteen minutes that she lay at her moorings, and then he +showed himself at the stern of the boat, and waved his handkerchief in +acknowledgment of the last parting salutations on shore. + +When it was all over, he went down into his state-room, and shut himself +in, and let his misery rollover him. He felt as if there were a flood of +it, and it washed him to and fro, one gall of shame, of self-accusal, of +bitterness, from head to foot. But in it all he felt no resentment +toward Alice, no wish to wreak any smallest part of his suffering upon +her. Even while he had hoped for her love, it seemed to him that he had +not seen her in all that perfection which she now had in irreparable +loss. His soul bowed itself fondly over the thought of her; and, stung +as he was by that last cruel word of hers, he could not upbraid her. +That humility which is love casting out selfishness, the most egotistic +of the passions triumphing over itself--Mavering experienced it to the +full. He took all the blame. He could not see that she had ever +encouraged him to hope for her love, which now appeared a treasure +heaven--far beyond his scope; he could only call himself fool, and fool, +and fool, and wonder that he could have met her in the remoteness of that +morning with the belief that but for the follies of last night she might +have answered him differently. He believed now that, whatever had gone +before, she must still have rejected him. She had treated his +presumption very leniently; she had really spared him. + +It went on, over and over. Sometimes it varied a little, as when he +thought of how, when she should tell her mother, Mrs. Pasmer must laugh. +He pictured them both laughing at him; and then Mr. Pasmer--he had +scarcely passed a dozen words with him-coming in and asking what they +were laughing at, and their saying, and his laughing too. + +At other times he figured them as incensed at his temerity, which must +seem to them greater and greater, as now it seemed to him. He had never +thought meanly of himself, and the world so far had seemed to think well +of him; but because Alice Pasmer was impossible to him, he felt that it +was an unpardonable boldness in him to have dreamed of her. What must +they be saying of his having passed from the ground of society +compliments and light flirtation to actually telling Alice that he loved +her? + +He wondered what Mrs. Pasmer had thought of his telling her that he had +come to Campobello to consider the question whether he should study law +or go into business, and what motive she had supposed he had in telling +her that. He asked himself what motive he had, and tried to pretend that +he had none. He dramatised conversations with Mrs. Pasmer in which he +laughed it off. + +Ho tried to remember all that had passed the day before at the picnic, +and whether Alice had done or said anything to encourage him, and he +could not find that she had. All her trust and freedom was because she +felt perfectly safe with him from any such disgusting absurdity as he had +been guilty of. The ride home through the mist, with its sweet intimacy, +that parting which had seemed so full of tender intelligence, were parts +of the same illusion. There had been nothing of it on her side from the +beginning but a kindliness which he had now flung away for ever. + +He went back to the beginning, and tried to remember the point where he +had started in this fatal labyrinth of error. She had never misled him, +but he had misled himself from the first glimpse of her. + +Whatever was best in his light nature, whatever was generous and self- +denying, came out in this humiliation. From the vision of her derision +he passed to a picture of her suffering from pity for him, and wrung with +a sense of the pain she had given him. He promised himself to write to +her, and beg her not to care for him, because he was not worthy of that. +He framed a letter in his mind, in which he posed in some noble +attitudes, and brought tears into his eyes by his magnanimous appeal to +her not to suffer for the sake of one so unworthy of her serious thought. +He pictured her greatly moved by some of the phrases, and he composed for +her a reply, which led to another letter from him, and so to a +correspondence and a long and tender friendship. In the end he died +suddenly, and then she discovered that she had always loved him. He +discovered that he was playing the fool again, and he rose from the berth +where he had tumbled himself. The state-room had that smell of parboiled +paint which state-rooms have, and reminded him of the steamer in which he +had gone to Europe when a boy, with the family, just after his mother's +health began to fail. + +He went down on the deck near the ladies' saloon, where the second-class +passengers were gathered listening to the same band of plantation negroes +who had amused him so much on the eastward trip. The passengers were +mostly pock marked Provincials, and many of them were women; they lounged +on the barrels of apples neatly piled up, and listened to the music +without smiling. One of the negroes was singing to the banjo, and +another began to do the rheumatic uncle's breakdown. Mavering said to +himself: "I can't stand that. Oh, what a fool I am! Alice, I love you. +O merciful heavens! O infernal jackass! Ow! Gaw!" + +At the bow of the boat he found a gang of Italian labourers returning to +the States after some job in the Provinces. They smoked their pipes and +whined their Neapolitan dialect together. It made Mavering think of +Dante, of the Inferno, to which he passed naturally from his self- +denunciation for having been an infernal jackass. The inscription on the +gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make his life-- +his desolate, broken life--a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At the same +time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh, +idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he took out +his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all the +cigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determined to +spend the miserable remnant of his life in going about doing good and +bestowing alms. + +He groaned aloud, so that the Italians noticed it, and doubtless spoke of +it among themselves. He could not understand their dialect, but he +feigned them saying respectfully compassionate things. Then he gnashed +his teeth again, and cursed his folly. When the bell rang for supper he +found himself very hungry, and ate heavily. After that he went out in +front of the cabin, and walked up and down, thinking, and trying not to +think. The turmoil in his mind tired him like a prodigious physical +exertion. + +Toward ten o'clock the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescent +that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows and +wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in +flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came +and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the water +was reflected on their faces, and showed them to each other. + +"Well, I never saw anything like this before. Looks like hell; don't +it?" said the officer. + +"Yes," said Mavering. "Is it uncommon?" + +"Well, I should say so. I guess we're going to have a picnic." + +Mavering thought of blueberries, but he did not say anything. + +"I guess it's going to be a regular circus." + +Mavering did not care. He asked incuriously, "How do you find your +course in such weather?" + +"Well, we guess where we are, and then give her so many turns of the +wheel." The officer laughed, and Mavering laughed too. He was struck by +the hollow note in his laugh; it seemed to him pathetic; he wondered if +he should now always laugh so, and if people would remark it. He tried +another laugh; it sounded mechanical. + +He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began to +dream. A face came up out of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as in +that picture of Vedder's which he calls "Memory," but the hair was not +blond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyes +were like it. "Horrible! horrible!" he tried to shriek, but he cried, +"Alice, I love you." There was a burglar in the room, and he was running +after Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fists +fell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long, +washing sound like water. + +Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves. The boat +was pitching frightfully. He struggled out into the saloon, and saw that +it was five o'clock. In five hours more it would be a day since he told +Alice that he loved her; it now seemed very improbable. There were a +good many half-dressed people in the saloon, and a woman came running out +of her state-room straight to Mavering. She was in her stocking feet, +and her hair hung down her back. + +"Oh! are we going down?" she implored him. "Have we struck? Oughtn't we +to pray--somebody? Shall I wake the children?" + +"Mavering reassured her, and told her there was no danger. + +"Well, then," she said, "I'll go back for my shoes." + +"Yes, better get your shoes." + +The saloon rose round him and sank. He controlled his sickness by +planting a chair in the centre and sitting in it with his eyes shut. As +he grew more comfortable he reflected how he had calmed that woman, and +he resolved again to spend his life in doing good. "Yes, that's the only +ticket," he said to himself, with involuntary frivolity. He thought of +what the officer had said, and he helplessly added, "Circus ticket-- +reserved seat." Then he began again, and loaded himself with execration. + +The boat got into Portland at nine o'clock, and Mavering left her, taking +his hand-bag with him, and letting his trunk go on to Boston. + +The officer who received his ticket at the gangplank noticed the +destination on it, and said, "Got enough?" + +"Yes, for one while." Mavering recognised his acquaintance of the night +before. + +"Don't like picnics very much." + +"No," said Mavering, with abysmal gloom. "They don't agree with me. +Never did." He was aware of trying to make his laugh bitter. The +officer did not notice. + +Mavering was surprised, after the chill of the storm at sea, to find it +rather a warm, close morning in Portland. The restaurant to which the +hackman took him as the best in town was full of flies; they bit him +awake out of the dreary reveries he fell into while waiting for his +breakfast. In a mirror opposite he saw his face. It did not look +haggard; it looked very much as it always did. He fancied playing a part +through life--hiding a broken heart under a smile. "O you incorrigible +ass!" he said to himself, and was afraid he had said it to the young lady +who brought him his breakfast, and looked haughtily at him from under her +bang. She was very thin, and wore a black jersey. + +He tried to find out whether he had spoken aloud by addressing her +pleasantly. "It's pretty cold this morning." + +"What say?" + +"Pretty cool." + +"Oh yes. But it's pretty clo-ose," she replied, in her Yankee +cantillation. She went away and left him to the bacon and eggs he had +ordered at random. There was a fly under one of the slices of bacon, and +Mavering confined himself to the coffee. + +A man came up in a white cap and jacket from a basement in the front of +the restaurant, where confectionery was sold, and threw down a mass of +malleable candy on a marble slab, and began to work it. Mavering watched +him, thinking fuzzily all the time of Alice, and holding long, fatiguing +dialogues with the people at the Ty'n-y-Coed, whose several voices he +heard. + +He said to himself that it was worse than yesterday. He wondered if it +would go on getting worse every day. + +He saw a man pass the door of the restaurant who looked exactly like +Boardman as he glanced in. The resemblance was explained by the man's +coming back, and proving to be really Boardman. + + + + +XXII. + +Mavering sprang at him with a demand for the reason of his being there. + +"I thought it was you as I passed," said Boardman, "but I couldn't make +sure--so dark back here." + +"And I thought it was you, but I couldn't believe it," said Mavering, +with equal force, cutting short an interior conversation with Mr. Pasmer, +which had begun to hold itself since his first glimpse of Boardman. + +"I came down here to do a sort of one-horse yacht race to-day," Boardman +explained. + +"Going to be a yacht race? Better have some breakfast. Or better not-- +here. Flies under your bacon." + +"Rough on the flies," said Boardman, snapping the bell which summoned the +spectre in the black jersey, and he sat down. "What are you doing in +Portland?" + +Mavering told him, and then Boardman asked him how he had left the +Pasmers. Mavering needed no other hint to speak, and he spoke fully, +while Boardman listened with an agreeable silence, letting the hero of +the tale break into self-scornful groans and doleful laughs, and ease his +heart with grotesque, inarticulate noises, and made little or no +comments. + +By the time his breakfast came, Boardman was ready to say, "I didn't +suppose it was so much of a mash." + +"I didn't either," said Mavering, "when I left Boston. Of course I knew +I was going down there to see her, but when I got there it kept going on, +just like anything else, up to the last moment. I didn't realise till it +came to the worst that I had become a mere pulp." + +"Well, you won't stay so," said Boardman, making the first vain attempt +at consolation. He lifted the steak he had ordered, and peered beneath +it. All right this time, any way." + +"I don't know what you mean by staying so," replied Mavering, with gloomy +rejection of the comfort offered. + +"You'll see that it's all for the best; that you're well out of it. If +she could throw you over, after leading you on--" + +"But she didn't lead me on!" exclaimed Mavering. "Don't you understand +that it was all my mistake from the first? If I hadn't been perfectly +besotted I should have seen that she was only tolerating me. Don't you +see? Why, hang it, Boardman, I must have had a kind of consciousness of +it under my thick-skinned conceit, after all, for when I came to the +point--when I did come to the point--I hadn't the sand to stick to it +like a man, and I tried to get her to help me. Yes, I can see that I did +now. I kept fooling about, and fooling about, and it was because I had +that sort of prescience--of whatever you call it--that I was mistaken +about it from the very beginning." + +He wished to tell Boardman about the events of the night before; but he +could not. He said to himself that he did not care about their being +hardly to his credit; but he did not choose to let Alice seem to have +resented anything in them; it belittled her, and claimed too much for +him. So Boardman had to proceed upon a partial knowledge of the facts. + +"I don't suppose that boomerang way of yours, if that's what you mean, +was of much use," he said. + +"Use? It ruined me! But what are you going to do?" How are you going +to presuppose that a girl like Miss Pasmer is interested in an idiot like +you? I mean me, of course." Mavering broke off with a dolorous laugh. +"And if you can't presuppose it, what are you going to do when it comes +to the point? You've got to shillyshally, and then you've got to go it +blind. I tell you it's a leap in the dark." + +"Well, then, if you've got yourself to blame--" + +"How am I to blame, I should like to know?" retorted Mavering, rejecting +the first offer from another of the censure which he had been heaping +upon himself: the irritation of his nerves spoke. "I did speak out at +last--when it was too late. Well, let it all go," he groaned aimlessly. +"I don't care. But she isn't to blame. I don't think I could admire +anybody very much who admired me. No, sir. She did just right. I was a +fool, and she couldn't have treated me differently." + +"Oh, I guess it'll come out all right," said Boardman, abandoning himself +to mere optimism. + +"How come all right?" demanded Mavering, flattered by the hope he +refused. "It's come right now. I've got my deserts; that's all." + +"Oh no, you haven't. What harm have you done? It's all right for you to +think small beer of yourself, and I don't see how you could think +anything else just at present. But you wait awhile. When did it +happen?" + +Mavering took out his watch. "One day, one hour, twenty minutes, and +fifteen seconds ago." + +"Sure about the seconds? I suppose you didn't hang round a great while +afterward?" + +"Well, people don't, generally," said Mavering, with scorn. + +"Never tried it," said Boardman, looking critically at his fried potatoes +before venturing upon them. "If you had stayed, perhaps she might have +changed her mind," he added, as if encouraged to this hopeful view by the +result of his scrutiny. + +"Where did you get your fraudulent reputation for common-sense, +Boardman?" retorted Mavering, who had followed his examination of the +potatoes with involuntary interest. "She won't change her mind; she +isn't one of that kind. But she's the one woman in this world who could +have made a man of me, Boardman." + +"Is that so?" asked Boardman lightly. "Well, she is a good-looking +girl." + +"She's divine!" + +"What a dress that was she had on Class Day!" + +"I never think what she has on. She makes everything perfect, and then +makes you forget it." + +"She's got style; there's no mistake about that." + +"Style!" sighed Mavering; but he attempted no exemplification. + +"She's awfully graceful. What a walk she's got!" + +"Oh, don't, don't, Boardman! All that's true, and all that's nothing-- +nothing to her goodness. She's so good, Boardman! Well, I give it up! +She's religious. You wouldn't think that, may be; you can't imagine a +pretty girl religious. And she's all the more intoxicating when she's +serious; and when she's forgotten your whole worthless existence she's +ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girl when she's going +right for you. There's a kind of look comes into her eyes--kind of +absence, rapture, don't you know--when she's serious, that brings your +heart right into your mouth. She makes you think of some of those +pictures--I want to tell you what she said the other day at a picnic when +we were off getting blueberries, and you'll understand that she isn't +like other girls--that she has a soul fall of--of--you know what, +Boardman. She has high thoughts about everything. I don't believe she's +ever had a mean or ignoble impulse--she couldn't have." In the business +of imparting his ideas confidentially, Mavering had drawn himself across +the table toward Boardman, without heed to what was on it. + +"Look out! You'll be into my steak first thing you know." + +"Oh, confound your steak?" cried Mavering, pushing the dish away. What +difference does it make? I've lost her, anyway." + +"I don't believe you've lost her," said Boardman. + +"What's the reason you don't?" retorted Mavering, with contempt. + +"Because, if she's the serious kind of a girl you say she is, she +wouldn't let you come up there and dangle round a whole fortnight without +letting you know she didn't like it, unless she did like it. Now you +just go a little into detail." + +Mavering was quite willing. He went so much into detail that he left +nothing to Boardman's imagination. He lost the sense of its calamitous +close in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiled and +blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described Miss Anderson +and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladies on the margin +of a newspaper, and the tears came into his eyes when he repeated the +cruel words which Alice had used at their last meeting. + +"Oh, well, you must brace up," said Boardman. "I've got to go now. She +didn't mean it, of course." + +"Mean what?" + +"That you were ungentlemanly. Women don't know half the time how hard +they're hitting." + +"I guess she meant that she didn't want me, anyway," said Mavering +gloomily. + +"Ah, I don't know about that. You'd better ask her the next time you see +her. Good-bye." He had risen, and he offered his hand to Mavering, who +was still seated. + +"Why, I've half a mind to go with you." + +"All right, come along. But I thought you might be going right on to +Boston." + +"No; I'll wait and go on with you. How, do you go to the race?" + +"In the press boat." + +"Any women?" + +"No; we don't send them on this sort of duty." + +"That settles it. I have got all I want of that particular sex for the +time being." Mavering wore a very bitter air as he said this; it seemed +to him that he would always be cynical; he rose, and arranged to leave +his bag with the restaurateur, who put it under the counter, and then he +went out with his friend. + +The sun had come out, and the fog was burning away; there was life and +lift in the air, which the rejected lover could not refuse to feel, and +he said, looking round, and up and down the animated street. "I guess +you're going to have a good day for it." + +The pavement was pretty well filled with women who had begun shopping. +Carriages were standing beside the pavement; a lady crossed the pavement +from a shop door toward a coupe just in front of them, with her hand full +of light packages; she dropped one of them, and Mavering sprang forward +instinctively and picked it up for her. + +"Oh, thank you!" she said, with the deep gratitude which society +cultivates for the smallest services. Then she lifted her drooped +eyelashes, and, with a flash of surprise, exclaimed, "Mr. Mavering!" and +dropped all her packages that she might shake hands with him. + +Boardman sauntered slowly on, but saw with a backward glance Mavering +carrying the lady's packages to the coupe for her; saw him lift his hat +there, and shake hands with somebody in the coupe, and then stand talking +beside it. He waited at the corner of the block for Mavering to come up, +affecting an interest in the neck-wear of a furnisher's window. + +In about five minutes Mavering joined him. + +"Look here, Boardman! Those ladies have snagged onto me." + +"Are there two of them?" + +"Yes, one inside. And they want me to go with then to see the race. +Their father's got a little steam-yacht. They want you to go too." + +Boardman shook his head. + +"Well, that's what I told them--told them that you had to go on the press +boat. They said they wished they were going on the press boat too. But +I don't see how I can refuse. They're ladies that I met Class Day, and I +ought to have shown them a little more attention then; but I got so taken +up with--" + +"I see," said Boardman, showing his teeth, fine and even as grains of +pop-corn, in a slight sarcastic smile. "Sort of poetical justice," he +suggested. + +"Well, it is--sort of," said Mavering, with a shamefaced consciousness. +"What train are you going back on?" + +"Seven o'clock." + +"I'll be there." + +He hurried back to rejoin the ladies, and Boardman saw him, after some +parley and laughter, get into the coupe, from which he inferred that they +had turned down the little seat in front, and made him take it; and he +inferred that they must be very jolly, sociable girls. + +He did not see Mavering again till the train was on its way, when he came +in, looking distraughtly about for his friend. He was again very +melancholy, and said dejectedly that they had made him stay to dinner, +and had then driven him down to the station, bag and all. "The old +gentleman came too. I was in hopes I'd find you hanging round somewhere, +so that I could introduce you. They're awfully nice. None of that +infernal Boston stiffness. The one you saw me talking with is married, +though." + +Boardman was writing out his report from a little book with shorthand +notes in it. There were half a dozen other reporters in the car busy +with their work. A man who seemed to be in authority said to one of +them, "Try to throw in a little humour." + +Mavering pulled his hat over his eyes, and leaned his head on the back of +his seat, and tried to sleep. + + + + +XXIII. + +At his father's agency in Boston he found, the next morning, a letter +from him saying that he expected to be down that day, and asking Dan to +meet him at the Parker House for dinner. The letter intimated the elder +Mavering's expectation that his son had reached some conclusion in the +matter they had talked of before he left for Campobello. + +It gave Dan a shiver of self-disgust and a sick feeling of hopelessness. +He was quite willing now to do whatever his father wished, but he did not +see haw he could face him and own his defeat. + +When they met, his father did not seem to notice his despondency, and he +asked him nothing about the Pasmers, of course. That would not have been +the American way. Nothing had been said between the father and son as to +the special advantages of Campobello for the decision of the question +pending when they saw each other last; but the son knew that the father +guessed why he chose that island for the purpose; and now the elder knew +that if the younger had anything to tell him he would tell it, and if he +had not he would keep it. It was tacitly understood that there was no +objection on the father's part to Miss Pasmer; in fact, there had been a +glimmer of humorous intelligence in his eye when the son said he thought +he should run down to Bar Harbour, and perhaps to Campobello, but he had +said nothing to betray his consciousness. + +They met in the reading-room at Parker's, and Dan said, "Hello, father," +and his father answered, "Well, Dan;" and they shyly touched the hands +dropped at their sides as they pressed together in the crowd. The father +gave his boy a keen glance, and then took the lead into the dining-room, +where he chose a corner table, and they disposed of their hats on the +window-seat. + +"All well at home?" asked the young fellow, as he took up the bill of +fare to order the dinner. His father hated that, and always made him do +it. + +"Yes, yes; as usual, I believe. Minnie is off for a week at the +mountains; Eunice is at home." + +"Oh! How would you like some green goose, with apple-sauce, sweet- +potatoes, and succotash?" + +"It seems to me that was pretty good, the last time. All right, if you +like it." + +"I don't know that I care for anything much. I'm a little off my feed. +No soup," he said, looking up at the waiter bending over him; and then he +gave the order. "I think you may bring me half a dozen Blue Points, if +they're good," he called after him. + +"Didn't Bar Harbour agree with you--or Campobello?" asked Mr. Mavering, +taking the opening offered him. + +"No, not very well," said Dan; and he said no more about it, leaving his +father to make his own inferences as to the kind or degree of the +disagreement. + +"Well, have you made up your mind?" asked the father, resting his elbows +on either side of his plate, and putting his hands together softly, while +he looked across them with a cheery kindness at his boy. + +"Yes, I have," said Dan slowly. + +"Well?" + +"I don't believe I care to go into the law." + +"Sure?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, that's all right, then. I wished you to choose freely, and I +suppose you've done so." + +"Oh Yes." + +"I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off my +mind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in the +law; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great deal +of Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like." + +"I shouldn't mind going there," said Dan listlessly. + +"It won't be necessary--at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. I +want you to look up the business at this end a little." + +Dan gave a start. "In Boston?" + +"Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a +place of our own, and to put you in charge." Something in the young +man's face expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, "Would that +be distasteful to you?" + +"Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I care to +be in Boston." He lifted his face and looked his father full in the +eyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then the +father knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong. + +The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which they +could be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, and +cumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind, he +withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk. + +"Well," said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Boston +had no particular significance for him, "I don't know that I care to have +you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to have you +look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, and see +their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in our ways. +I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of the business, +but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from your grandfather; +your mother has it." + +"Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting," said Dan. + +"Well, go to France, and see how those fellows do it. Go to London, and +look up William Morris." + +"Yes, that would be very nice," admitted the young fellow, beginning to +catch on. "But I didn't suppose--I didn't expect to begin life with a +picnic." He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but at +the last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He said to +himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay and +bright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he had +noticed the undercurrent yesterday when he was laughing and joking with +those girls at Portland. + +"Oh, I don't want you to buckle down at once," said his father, smiling. +"If you'd decided upon the law, I should have felt that you'd better not +lose time. But as you're going into the business, I don't mind your +taking a year off. It won't be lost time if you keep your eyes open. I +think you'd better go down into Italy and Spain. Look up the old +tapestries and stamped leathers. You may get some ideas. How would you +like it?" + +"First-rate. I should like it," said Dan, rising on the waft of his +father's suggestion, but gloomily lapsing again. Still, it was pleasing +to picture himself going about through Europe with a broken heart, and he +did not deny himself the consolation of the vision. + +"Well, there's nobody to dislike it," said his father cheerily. He was +sure now that Dan had been jilted; otherwise he would have put forth some +objection to a scheme which must interrupt his lovemaking. "There's no +reason why, with our resources, we shouldn't take the lead in this +business." + +He went on to speak more fully of his plans, and Dan listened with a +nether reference of it all to Alice, but still with a surface +intelligence on which nothing was lost. + +"Are you going home with me to-morrow?" asked his father as they rose +from the table. + +"Well, perhaps not to-morrow. I've got some of my things to put together +in Cambridge yet, and perhaps I'd better look after them. But I've a +notion I'd better spend the winter at home, and get an idea of the +manufacture before I go abroad. I might sail in January; they say it's a +good month." + +"Yes, there's sense in that," said his father. + +"And perhaps I won't break up in Cambridge till I've been to New York and +Philadelphia. What do you think? It's easier striking them from here." + +"I don't know but you're right," said his father easily. + +They had come out of the dining-room, and Dan stopped to get some +cigarettes in the office. He looked mechanically at the theatre bills +over the cigar case. "I see Irving's at the 'Boston.'" + +"Oh, you don't say!" said his father. "Let's go and see him." + +"If you wish it, sir," said Dan, with pensive acquiescence. All the +Maverings were fond of the theatre, and made any mood the occasion or the +pretext of going to the play. If they were sad, they went; if they were +gay, they went. As long as Dan's mother could get out-of-doors she used +to have herself carried to a box in the theatre whenever she was in town; +now that she no longer left her room, she had a dominant passion for +hearing about actors and acting; it was almost a work of piety in her +husband and children to see them and report to her. + +His father left him the next afternoon, and Dan, who had spent the day +with him looking into business for the first time, with a running +accompaniment of Alice in all the details, remained to uninterrupted +misery. He spent the evening in his room, too wretched even for the +theatre. It is true that he tried to find Boardman, but Boardman was +again off on some newspaper duty; and after trying at several houses in +the hope, which he knew was vain, of finding any one in town yet, he shut +himself up with his thoughts. They did not differ from the thoughts of +the night before, and the night before that, but they were calmer, and +they portended more distinctly a life of self-abnegation and solitude +from that time forth. He tested his feelings, and found that it was not +hurt vanity that he was suffering from: it was really wounded affection. +He did not resent Alice's cruelty; he wished that she might be happy; he +could endure to see her happy. + +He wrote a letter to the married one of the two ladies he had spent the +day with in Portland, and thanked them for making pass pleasantly a day +which he would not otherwise have known how to get through. He let a +soft, mysterious melancholy pervade his letter; he hinted darkly at +trouble and sorrow of which he could not definitely speak. He had the +good sense to tear his letter up when he had finished it, and to send a +short, sprightly note instead, saying that if Mrs. Frobisher and her +sister came to Boston at the end of the month, as they had spoken of +doing, they must be sure to let him know. Upon the impulse given him by +this letter he went more cheerfully to bed, and fell instantly asleep. + +During the next three weeks he bent himself faithfully to the schemes +of work his father had outlined for him. He visited New York and +Philadelphia, and looked into the business and the processes there; and +he returned to Ponkwasset Falls to report and compare his facts +intelligently with those which he now examined in his father's +manufactory for the first time. He began to understand how his father, +who was a man of intellectual and artistic interests, should be fond of +the work. + +He spent a good deal of time with his mother, and read to her, and got +upon better terms with her than they usually were. They were very much +alike, and she objected to him that he was too light and frivolous. He +sat with his sisters, and took an interest in their pursuits. He drove +them about with his father's sorrels, and resumed something of the old +relations with them which the selfish years of his college life had +broken off. As yet he could not speak of Campobello or of what had +happened there; and his mother and sisters, whatever they thought, made +no more allusion to it than his father had done. + +They mercifully took it for granted that matters must have gone wrong +there, or else he would speak about them, for there had been some gay +banter among them concerning the objects of his expedition before he left +home. They had heard of the heroine of his Class Day, and they had their +doubts of her, such as girls have of their brothers' heroines. They were +not inconsolably sorry to have her prove unkind; and their mother found +in the probable event another proof of their father's total want of +discernment where women were concerned, for the elder Mavering had come +home from Class Day about as much smitten with this mysterious Miss +Pasmer as Dan was. She talked it over indignantly with her daughters; +they were glad of Dan's escape, but they were incensed with the girl who +could let him escape, and they inculpated her in a high degree of +heartless flirtation. They knew how sweet Dan was, and they believed him +most sincere and good. He had been brilliantly popular in college, and +he was as bright as he could be. What was it she chose not to like in +him? They vexed themselves with asking how or in what way she thought +herself better. They would not have had her love Dan, but they were hot +against her for not loving him. + +They did not question him, but they tried in every way to find out how +much he was hurt, and they watched him in every word and look for signs +of change to better or worse, with a growing belief that he was not very +much hurt. + +It could not be said that in three weeks he forgot Alice, or had begun to +forget her; but he had begun to reconcile himself to his fate, as people +do in their bereavements by death. His consciousness habituated itself +to the facts as something irretrievable. He no longer framed in his mind +situations in which the past was restored. He knew that he should never +love again, but he had moments, and more and more of them, in which he +experienced that life had objects besides love. There were times when he +tingled with all the anguish of the first moment of his rejection, when +he stopped in whatever he was doing, or stood stock-still, as a man does +when arrested by a physical pang, breathless, waiting. There were other +times when he went about steeped in gloom so black that all the world +darkened with it, and some mornings when he woke he wished that the night +had lasted for ever, and felt as if the daylight had uncovered his misery +and his shame to every one. He never knew when he should have these +moods, and he thought he should have them as long as he lived. He +thought this would be something rather fine. He had still other moods, +in which he saw an old man with a grey moustache, like Colonel Newcome, +meeting a beautiful white-haired lady; the man had never married, and he +had not seen this lady for fifty years. He bent over, and kissed her +hand. + +"You idiot!" said Mavering to himself. Throughout he kept a good +appetite. In fact, after that first morning in Portland, he had been +hungry three times a day with perfect regularity. He lost the idea of +being sick; he had not even a furred tongue. He fell asleep pretty +early, and he slept through the night without a break. He had to laugh a +great deal with his mother and sisters, since he could not very well mope +without expecting them to ask why, and he did not wish to say why. But +there were some laughs which he really enjoyed with the Yankee foreman of +the works, who was a droll, after a common American pattern, and said +things that were killingly funny, especially about women, of whom his +opinions were sarcastic. + +Dan Mavering suffered, but not solidly. His suffering was short, and +crossed with many gleams of respite and even joy. His disappointment +made him really unhappy, but not wholly so; it was a genuine sorrow, but +a sorrow to which he began to resign himself even in the monotony of +Ponkwasset Falls, and which admitted the thought of Mrs. Frobisher's +sister by the time business called him to Boston. + + + + +XXIV. + +Before the end of the first week after Dan came back to town, that which +was likely to happen whenever chance brought him and Alice together had +taken place. + +It was one of the soft days that fall in late October, when the impending +winter seems stayed, and the warm breath of the land draws seaward and +over a thousand miles of Indian summer. The bloom came and went in quick +pulses over the girl's temples as she sat with her head thrown back in +the corner of the car, and from moment to moment she stirred slightly as +if some stress of rapture made it hard for her to get her breath; a +little gleam of light fell from under her fallen eyelids into the eyes of +the young man beside her, who leaned forward slightly and slanted his +face upward to meet her glances. They said some words, now and then, +indistinguishable to the others; in speaking they smiled slightly. +Sometimes her hand wavered across her lap; in both their faces there was +something beyond happiness--a transport, a passion, the brief splendour +of a supreme moment. + +They left the car at the Arlington Street corner of the Public Garden, +and followed the winding paths diagonally to the further corner on +Charles Street. + +"How stupid we were to get into that ridiculous horse-car!" she said. +"What in the world possessed us to do it?" + +"I can't imagine," he answered. "What a waste of time it was! If we had +walked, we might have been twice as long coming. And now you're going to +send me off so soon!" + +"I don't send you," she murmured. + +"But you want me to go." + +"Oh no! But you'd better." + +"I can't do anything against your wish." + +"I wish it--for your own good." + +"Ah, do let me go home with you, Alice?" + +"Don't ask it, or I must say yes." + +"Part of the way, then?" + +"No; not a step! You must take the first car for Cambridge. What time +is it now?" + +"You can see by the clock on the Providence Depot." + +"But I wish you to go by your watch, now. Look!" + +"Alice!" he cried, in pure rapture. + +"Look!" + +"It's a quarter of one." + +"And we've been three hours together already! Now you must simply fly. +If you came home with me I should be sure to let you come in, and if I +don't see mamma alone first, I shall die. Can't you understand?" + +"No; but I can do the next best thing: I can misunderstand. You want to +be rid of me." + +"Shall you be rid of me when we've parted?" she asked, with an inner +thrill of earnestness in her gay tone. + +"Alice!" + +"You know I didn't mean it, Dan." + +"Say it again." + +"What?" + +"Dan." + +"Dan, love! Dan, dearest!" + +"Will that car of yours never come? I've promised myself not to leave +you till it does, and if I stay here any longer I shall go wild. I can't +believe it's happened. Say it again!" + +"Say what?" + +"That--" + +"That I love you? That we're engaged?" + +"I don't believe it. I can't." She looked impatiently up the street. +"Oh, there comes your car! Run! Stop it!" + +"I don't run to stop cars." He made a sign, which the conductor obeyed, +and the car halted at the further crossing. + +She seemed to have forgotten it, and made no movement to dismiss him. +"Oh, doesn't it seem too good to be standing here talking in this way, +and people think it's about the weather, or society?" She set her head a +little on one side, and twirled the open parasol on her shoulder. + +"Yes, it does. Tell me it's true, love!" + +"It's true. How splendid you are!" She said it with an effect for the +world outside of saying it was a lovely day. + +He retorted, with the same apparent nonchalance, "How beautiful you are! +How good! How divine!" + +The conductor, seeing himself apparently forgotten, gave his bell a +vicious snap, and his car jolted away. + +She started nervously. "There! you've lost your car, Dan." + +"Have I?" asked Mavering, without troubling himself to look after it. + +She laughed now, with a faint suggestion of unwillingness in her laugh. +"What are you going to do?" + +"Walk home with you." + +"No, indeed; you know I can't let you." + +"And are you going to leave me here alone on the street corner, to be run +over by the first bicycle that comes along?" + +"You can sit down in the Garden, and wait for the next car." + +"No; I would rather go back to the Art Museum, and make a fresh start." + +"To the Art Museum?" she murmured, tenderly. + +"Yes. Wouldn't you like to see it again?" + +"Again? I should like to pass my whole life in it!" + +"Well, walk back with me a little way. There's no hurry about the car." + +"Dan!" she said, in a helpless compliance, and they paced very, very +slowly along the Beacon Street path in the Garden. "This is ridiculous." + +"Yes, but it's delightful." + +"Yes, that's what I meant. Do you suppose any one ever--ever--" + +"Made love there before?" + +"How can you say such things? Yes. I always supposed it would be-- +somewhere else." +It was somewhere else--once." + +"Oh, I meant--the second time." + +"Then you did think there was going to be a second time?" + +"How do I know? I wished it. Do you like me to say that?" + +"I wish you would never say anything else." + +"Yes; there can't be any harm in it now. I thought that if you had ever- +-liked me, you would still--" + +"So did I; but I couldn't believe that you--" + +"Oh, I could." + +"Alice!" + +"Don't you like my confessing it! You asked me to." + +"Like it!" + +"How silly we are!" + +"Not half so silly as we've been for the last two months. I think we've +just come to our senses. At least I have." + +"Two months!" she sighed. "Has it really been so long as that?" + +"Two years! Two centuries! It was back in the Dark Ages when you +refused me." + +"Dark Ages! I should think so! But don't say refused. It wasn't +refusing, exactly." + +"What was it, then?" + +"Oh, I don't know. Don't speak of it now." + +"But, Alice, why did you refuse me?" + +"Oh, I don't know. You mustn't ask me now. I'll tell you some time." + +"Well, come to think of it," said Mavering, laughing it all lightly away, +"there's no hurry. Tell me why you accepted me to-day." + +"I--I couldn't help it. When I saw you I wanted to fall at your feet." + +"What an idea! I didn't want to fall at yours. I was awfully mad. I +shouldn't have spoken to you if you hadn't stopped me and held out your +hand." + +"Really? Did you really hate me, Dan?" + +"Well, I haven't exactly doted on you since we last met." + +She did not seem offended at this. "Yes, I suppose so. And I've gone on +being fonder and fonder of you every minute since that day. I wanted to +call you back when you had got half-way to Eastport." + +"I wouldn't have come. It's bad luck to turn back." + +She laughed at his drolling. "How funny you are! Now I'm of rather a +gloomy temperament. Did, you know it?" + +"You don't look it." + +"Oh, but I am. Just now I'm rather excited and--happy." + +"So glad!" + +"Go on! go on! I like you to make fun of me." + +The benches on either side were filled with nursemaids in charge of baby- +carriages, and of young children who were digging in the sand with their +little beach shovels, and playing their games back and forth across the +walk unrebuked by the indulgent policemen. A number of them had enclosed +a square in the middle of the path with four of the benches, which they +made believe was a fort. The lovers had to walk round it; and the +children, chasing one another, dashed into them headlong, or, backing off +from pursuit, bumped up against them. They did not seem to know it, but +walked slowly on without noticing: they were not aware of an occasional +benchful of rather shabby young fellows who stared hard at the stylish +girl and well-dressed young man talking together in such intense low +tones, with rapid interchange of radiant glances. + +"Oh, as to making fun of you, I was going to say--" Mavering began, and +after a pause he broke off with a laugh. "I forget what I was going to +say." + +"Try to remember." + +"I can't." + +How strange that we should have both happened to go to the Museum this +morning!" she sighed. Then, "Dan," she broke in, "do you suppose that +heaven is any different from this?" + +"I hope not--if I'm to go there." + +"Hush, dear; you mustn't talk so." + +"Why, you provoked me to it." + +"Did I? Did I really? Do you think I tempted you to do it? Then I must +be wicked, whether I knew I was doing it or not. Yes." + +The break in her voice made him look more keenly at her, and he saw the +tears glimmer in her eyes. "Alice!" + +"No; I'm not good enough for you. I always said that." + +"Then don't say it any more. That's the only thing I won't let you say." + +"Do you forbid it, really? Won't you let me even think it?" + +"No, not even think it." + +"How lovely you are! Oh! I like to be commanded by you." + +"Do you? You'll have lots of fun, then. I'm an awfully commanding +spirit." + +"I didn't suppose you were so humorous--always. I'm afraid you won't +like me. I've no sense of fun." + +"And I'm a little too funny sometimes, I'm afraid." + +"No, you never are. When?" + +"That night at the Trevors'. You didn't like it." + +"I thought Miss Anderson was rather ridiculous," said Alice. "I don't +like buffoonery in women." + +"Nor I in men," said Mavering, smiling. "I've dropped it." + +"Well, now we must part. I must go home at once," said Alice. "It's +perfectly insane." + +"Oh no, not yet; not till we've said something else; not till we've +changed the subject." + +"What subject?" + +"Miss Anderson." + +Alice laughed and blushed, but she was not vexed. She liked to have him +understand her. "Well, now," she said, as if that were the next thing, +"I'm going to cross here at once and walk up the other pavement, and you +must go back through the Garden; or else I shall never get away from +you." + +"May I look over at you?" + +"You may glance, but you needn't expect me to return your glance." + +"Oh no." + +"And I want you to take the very first Cambridge car that comes along. I +command you to." + +"I thought you wanted me to do the commanding." + +"So I do--in essentials. If you command me not to cry when I get home, I +won't." + +She looked at him with an ecstasy of self-sacrifice in her eyes. + +"Ah, I sha'n't do that. I can't tell what would open. But--Alice!" + +"Well, what?" She drifted closely to him, and looked fondly up into his +face. In walking they had insensibly drawn nearer together, and she had +been obliged constantly to put space between them. Now, standing at the +corner of Arlington Street, and looking tentatively across Beacon, she +abandoned all precautions. + +"What! I forget. Oh yes! I love you!" + +"But you said that before, dearest!" + +"Yes; but just now it struck me as a very novel idea. What if your +mother shouldn't like the idea?" + +"Nonsense! you know she perfectly idolises you. She did from the first. +And doesn't she know how I've begin behaving about you ever since I--lost +you?" + +"How have you behaved? Do tell me, Alice?" + +"Some time; not now," she said; and with something that was like a gasp, +and threatened to be a sob, she suddenly whipped across the road. He +walked back to Charles Street by the Garden path, keeping abreast of her, +and not losing sight of her for a moment, except when the bulk of a +string team watering at the trough beside the pavement intervened. He +hurried by, and when he had passed it he found himself exactly abreast of +her again. Her face was turned toward him; they exchanged a smile, lost +in space. At the corner of Charles Street he deliberately crossed over +to her. + +"O dearest love! why did you come?" she implored. + +"Because you signed to me." + +"I hoped you wouldn't see it. If we're both to be so weak as this, what +are we going to do?" But I'm glad you came. Yes: I was frightened. +They must have overheard us there when we were talking." + +"Well, I didn't say anything I'm ashamed of. Besides, I shouldn't care +much for the opinion of those nurses and babies." + +"Of course not. But people must have seen us. Don't stand here talking, +Dan! Do come on!" She hurried him across the street, and walked him +swiftly up the incline of Beacon Street. There, in her new fall suit, +with him, glossy-hatted, faultlessly gloved, at a fit distance from her +side, she felt more in keeping with the social frame of things than in +the Garden path, which was really only a shade better than the Beacon +Street Mall of the Common. "Do you suppose anybody saw us that knew us?" + +"I hope so! Don't you want people to know it?" + +"Yes, of course. They will have to know it--in the right way. Can you +believe that it's only half a year since we met? It won't be a year till +Class Day." + +"I don't believe it, Alice. I can't recollect anything before I knew +you." + +"Well, now, as time is so confused, we must try to live for eternity. We +must try to help each other to be good. Oh, when I think what a happy +girl I am, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful person under the +sun not to be good. Let's try to make our lives perfect--perfect! They +can be. And we mustn't live for each other alone. We must try to do +good as well as be good. We must be kind and forbearing with every one." + +He answered, with tender seriousness, "My life's in your hands, Alice. +It shall be whatever you wish." + +They were both silent in their deep belief of this. When they spoke +again, she began gaily: "I shall never get over the wonder of it. How +strange that we should meet at the Museum!" They had both said this +already, but that did not matter; they had said nearly everything two or +three times. "How did you happen to be there?" she asked, and the +question was so novel that she added, "I haven't asked you before." + +He stopped, with a look of dismay that broke up in a hopeless laugh. +"Why, I went there to meet some people--some ladies. And when I saw you +I forgot all about them." + +Alice laughed to; this was a part of their joy, their triumph. + +"Who are they?" she asked indifferently, and only to heighten the +absurdity by realising the persons. + +"You don't know them," he said. "Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, of +Portland. I promised to meet them there and go out to Cambridge with +them." + +"What will they think?" asked Alice. "It's too amusing." + +"They'll think I didn't come," said Mavering, with the easy conscience of +youth and love; and again they laughed at the ridiculous position +together. "I remember now I was to be at the door, and they were to take +me up in their carriage. I wonder how long they waited? You put +everything else out of my head." + +"Do you think I'll keep it out?" she asked archly. + +"Oh yes; there is nothing else but you now." + +The eyes that she dropped, after a glance at him, glistened with tears. + +A lump came into his throat. "Do you suppose," he asked huskily, "that +we can ever misunderstand each other again?" + +"Never. I see everything clearly now. We shall trust each other +implicitly, and at the least thing that isn't clear we can speak. +Promise me that you'll speak." + +"I will, Alice. But after this all will be clear. We shall deal with +each other as we do with ourselves." + +"Yes; that will be the way." + +"And we mustn't wait for question from each other. We shall know--we +shall feel--when there's any misgiving, and then the one that's caused it +will speak." + +"Yes," she sighed emphatically. "How perfectly you say it? But that's +because you feel it, because you are good." + +They walked on, treading the air in a transport of fondness for each +other. Suddenly he stopped. + +"Miss Pasmer, I feel it my duty to warn you that you're letting me go +home with you." + +"Am I? How noble of you to tell me, Dan; for I know you don't want to +tell. Well, I might as well. But I sha'n't let you come in. You won't +try, will you? Promise me you won't try." + +"I shall only want to come in the first door." + +"What for?" + +"What for? Oh, for half a second." + +She turned away her face. + +He went on. "This engagement has been such a very public affair, so far, +that I think I'd like to see my fiancee alone for a moment." + +"I don't know what in the world you can have to say more." + +He went into the first door with her, and then he went with her upstairs +to the door of Mrs. Pasmer's apartment. The passages of the Cavendish +were not well lighted; the little lane or alley that led down to this +door from the stairs landing was very dim. + +"So dark here!" murmured Alice, in a low voice, somewhat tremulous. + +"But not too dark." + + + + +XXV. + +She burst into the room where her mother sat looking over some +housekeeping accounts. His kiss and his name were upon her lips; her +soul was full of him. + +"Mamma!" she panted. + +Her mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of the +vital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing the +first autumn month's provision bill with that of the last spring month, +and trying to account for the difference. + +The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother's +hands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemed +suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's rapture +burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect +outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across +the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a +storm of tears. + +"Alice!" cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to rescue +women from the terror of any sudden shock. "What is the matter with +you?--what do you mean?" She dropped both of the provision bills to the +floor, and started toward her daughter. + +"Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room." She tried to +reach the door beyond her mother. + +"Indeed you shall not!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I will not have you behaving +so! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half +out of my senses." + +The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa, +with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother +began to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mother +she knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was, +must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them. +She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a +little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and +dropped a light shawl over the girl's shoulders, so that she should not +take cold. + +Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering +somewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him. +During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling in +regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of +them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every +woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter's ordeal in +an affair of the heart which she has favoured. + +The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting off +the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found it +hard to utter it. + +"What is it, Alice?--what is it?" urged her mother. + +"Nothing. I--Mr. Mavering--we met--I met him at the Museum, and--we're +engaged! It's really so. It seems like raving, but it's true. He came +with me to the door; I wouldn't let him come in. Don't you believe it? +Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma? You know I couldn't +have lived without him." + +She trembled on the verge of another outbreak. + +Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, and +returned quietly: "Glad, Alice! You know that I think he's the sweetest +and best fellow in the world." + +"O mamma!" + +"But are you sure--" + +"Yes, Yes. I'm not crazy; it isn't a dream. he was there--and I met him- +-I couldn't run away--I put out my hand; I couldn't help it--I thought I +should give way; and he took it; and then--then we were engaged. I don't +know what we said: I went in to look at the 'Joan of Arc' again, and there +was no one else there. He seemed to feel just as I did. I don't know +whether either of us spoke. But we, knew we were engaged, and we began to +talk." + +Mrs. Pasmer began to laugh. To her irreverent soul only the droll side of +the statement appeared. + +"Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice piteously. + +"No, no; I won't. But I hope Dan Mavering will be a little more definite +about it when I'm allowed to see him. Why couldn't he have come in with +you?" + +"It would have killed me. I couldn't let him see me cry, and I knew I +should break down." + +"He'll have to see you cry a great many times, Alice," said her mother, +with almost unexampled seriousness. + +"Yes, but not yet--not so soon. He must think I'm very gloomy, and I want +to be always bright and cheerful with him. He knows why I wouldn't let +him come in; he knew I was going to have a cry." + +Mrs. Pasmer continued to laugh. + +Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice. + +"No, I won't," replied her mother, as before. "I suppose he was +mystified. But now, if it's really settled between you, he'll be coming +here soon to see your papa and me." + +"Yes--to-night." + +"Well, it's very sudden," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Though I suppose these +things always seem so." + +"Is it too sudden?" asked Alice, with misgiving. "It seemed so to me when +it was going on, but I couldn't stop it." + +Her mother laughed at her simplicity. "No, when it begins once, nothing +can stop it. But you've really known each other a good while, and for the +last six weeks at least you've known you own mind about him pretty +clearly. It's a pity you couldn't have known it before." + +"Yes, that's what he says. He says it was such a waste of time. Oh, +everything he says is perfectly fascinating!" + +Her mother laughed and laughed again. + +"What is it, mamma? Are you laughing at me?" + +"Oh no. What an idea!" + +"He couldn't seem to understand why I didn't say Yes the first time, if I +meant it." She looked down dreamily at her hands in her lap, and then she +said, with a blush and a start, "They're very queer, don't you think?" + +"Who?" + +"Young men." + +"Oh, very." + +"Yes," Alice went on musingly. "Their minds are so different. Everything +they say and do is so unexpected, and yet it seems to be just right." + +Mrs. Pasmer asked herself if this single-mindedness was to go on for ever, +but she had not the heart to treat it with her natural levity. Probably +it was what charmed Mavering with the child. Mrs. Pasmer had the firm +belief that Mavering was not single-minded, and she respected him for it. +She would not spoil her daughter's perfect trust and hope by any of the +cynical suggestions of her own dark wisdom, but entered into her mood, as +such women are able to do, and flattered out of her every detail of the +morning's history. This was a feat which Mrs. Pasmer enjoyed for its own +sake, and it fully satisfied the curiosity which she naturally felt to +know all. She did not comment upon many of the particulars; she opened +her eyes a little at the notion of her daughter sitting for two or three +hours and talking with a young man in the galleries of the Museum, and she +asked if anybody they knew had come in. When she heard that there were +only strangers, and very few of them, she said nothing; and she had the +same consolation in regard to the walking back and forth in the Garden. +She was so full of potential escapades herself, so apt to let herself go +at times, that the fact of Alice's innocent self-forgetfulness rather +satisfied a need of her mother's nature; she exulted in it when she +learned that there were only nurses and children in the Garden. + +"And so you think you won't take up art this winter?" she said, when, in +the process of her cross-examination, Alice had left the sofa and got as +far as the door, with her hat in her hand and her sacque on her arm. + +"No." + +"And the Sisters of St. James--you won't join them either?" + +The girl escaped from the room. + +"Alice! Alice!" her mother called after her; she came back. You haven't +told me how he happened to be there." + +"Oh, that was the most amusing part of it. He had gone there to keep an +appointment with two ladies from Portland. They were to take him up in +their carriage and drive out to Cambridge, and when he saw me he forgot +all about them." + +"And what became of them?" + +"We don't know. Isn't it ridiculous?" + +If it appeared other or more than this to Mrs. Pasmer, she did not say. +She merely said, after a moment, "Well, it was certainly devoted, Alice," +and let her go. + + + + +XXVI. + +Mavering came in the evening, rather excessively well dressed, and with a +hot face and cold hands. While he waited, nominally alone, in the little +drawing room for Mr. Pasmer, Alice flew in upon him for a swift embrace, +which prolonged itself till the father's step was heard outside the door, +and then she still had time to vanish by another: the affair was so nicely +adjusted that if Mavering had been in his usual mind he might have fancied +the connivance of Mrs. Pasmer. + +He did not say what he had meant to say to Alice's father, but it seemed +to serve the purpose, for he emerged presently from the sound of his own +voice, unnaturally clamorous, and found Mr. Pasmer saying some very civil +things to him about his character and disposition, so far as they had been +able to observe it, and their belief and trust in him. There seemed to be +something provisional or probational intended, but Dan could not make out +what it was, and finally it proved of no practical effect. He merely +inferred that the approval of his family was respectfully expected, and he +hastened to say, "Oh, that's all right, sir." Mr. Pasmer went on with +more civilities, and lost himself in dumb conjecture as to whether +Mavering's father had been in the class before him or the class after him +in Harvard. He used his black eyebrows a good deal during the interview, +and Mavering conceived an awe of him greater than he had felt at +Campobello, yet not unmixed with the affection in which the newly accepted +lover embraces even the relations of his betrothed. From time to time Mr. +Pasmer looked about with the vague glance of a man unused to being so long +left to his own guidance; and one of these appeals seemed at last to bring +Mrs. Pasmer through the door, to the relief of both the men, for they had +improvidently despatched their business, and were getting out of talk. +Mr. Pasmer had, in fact, already asked Dan about the weather outside when +his wife appeared. + +Dan did not know whether he ought to kiss her or not, but Mrs. Pasmer did +not in the abstract seem like a very kissing kind of person, and he let +himself be guided by this impression, in the absence of any fixed +principle applying to the case. She made some neat remark concerning the +probable settlement of the affair with her husband, and began to laugh and +joke about it in a manner that was very welcome to Dan; it did not seem to +him that it ought to be treated so solemnly. + +But though Mrs. Pasmer laughed and joked; he was aware of her meaning +business--business in the nicest sort of a way, but business after all, +and he liked her for it. He was glad to be explicit about his hopes and +plans, and told what his circumstances were so fully that Mrs. Pasmer, +whom his frankness gratified and amused, felt obliged to say that she had +not meant to ask so much about his affairs, and he must excuse her if she +had seemed to do so. She had her own belief that Mavering would +understand, but she did not mind that. She said that, of course, till his +own family had been consulted, it must not be considered seriously--that +Mr. Pasmer insisted upon that point; and when Dan vehemently asserted the +acquiescence of his family beforehand, and urged his father's admiration +for Alice in proof, she reminded him that his mother was to be considered, +and put Mr. Pasmer's scruples forward as her own reason for obduracy. In +her husband's presence she attributed to him, with his silent assent, all +sorts of reluctances and delicate compunctions; she gave him the +importance which would have been naturally a husband's due in such an +affair, and ingratiated herself more and more with the young man. She +ignored Mr. Pasmer's withdrawal when it took place, after a certain lapse +of time, and as the moment had come for that, she began to let herself go. +She especially approved of the idea of going abroad and confessed her +disappointment with her present experiment of America, where it appeared +there was no leisure class of men sufficiently large to satisfy the social +needs of Mr. Pasmer's nature, and she told Dan that he might expect them +in Europe before long. Perhaps they might all three meet him there. At +this he betrayed so clearly that he now intended his going to Europe +merely as a sequel to his marrying Alice, while he affected to fall in +with all Mrs. Pasmer said, that she grew fonder than ever of him for his +ardour and his futile duplicity. If it had been in Dan's mind to take +part in the rite, Mrs. Pasmer was quite ready at this point to embrace him +with motherly tenderness. Her tough little heart was really in her throat +with sympathy when she made an errand for the photograph of an English +vicarage, which they had hired the summer of the year before, and she sent +Alice back with it alone. + +It seemed so long since they had met that the change in Alice did not +strike him as strange or as too rapidly operated. They met with the +fervour natural after such a separation, and she did not so much assume as +resume possession of him. It was charming to have her do it, to have her +act as if they had always been engaged, to have her try to press down the +cowlick that started capriciously across his crown, and to straighten his +necktie, and then to drop beside him on the sofa; it thrilled and awed +him; and he silently worshipped the superior composure which her sex has +in such matters. Whatever was the provisional interpretation which her +father and mother pretended to put upon the affair, she apparently had no +reservations, and they talked of their future as a thing assured. The +Dark Ages, as they agreed to call the period of despair for ever closed +that morning, had matured their love till now it was a rapture of pure +trust. They talked as if nothing could prevent its fulfilment, and they +did not even affect to consider the question of his family's liking it or +not liking it. She said that she thought his father was delightful, and +he told her that his father had taken the greatest fancy to her at the +beginning, and knew that Dan was in love with her. She asked him about +his mother, and she said just what he could have wished her to say about +his mother's sufferings, and the way she bore them. They talked about +Alice's going to see her. + +"Of course your father will bring your sisters to see me first." + +"Is that the way?" he asked: "You may depend upon his doing the right +thing, whatever it is." + +"Well, that's the right thing," she said. "I've thought it out; and that +reminds me of a duty of ours, Dan!" + +"A duty?"" he repeated, with a note of reluctance for its untimeliness. + +"Yes. Can't you think what?" + +"No; I didn't know there was a duty left in the world." + +"It's full of them." + +"Oh, don't say that, Alice!" He did not like this mood so well as that of +the morning, but his dislike was only a vague discomfort--nothing +formulated or distinct. + +"Yes," she persisted; "and we must do them. You must go to those ladies +you disappointed so this morning, and apologise--explain." + +Dan laughed. "Why, it wasn't such a very ironclad engagement as all that, +Alice. They said they were going to drive out to Cambridge over the +Milldam, and I said I was going out there to get some of my traps +together, and they could pick me up at the Art Museum if they liked. +Besides, how could I explain?" + +She laughed consciously with him. "Of course. But," she added ruefully, +"I wish you hadn't disappointed them." + +"Oh, they'll get over it. If I hadn't disappointed them, I shouldn't be +here, and I shouldn't like that. Should you?" + +"No; but I wish it hadn't happened. It's a blot, and I didn't want a blot +on this day." + +"Oh, well, it isn't very much of a blot, and I can easily wipe it off. +I'll tell you what, Alice! I can write to Mrs. Frobisher, when our +engagement comes out, and tell her how it was. She'll enjoy the joke, and +so will Miss Wrayne. They're jolly and easygoing; they won't mind." + +"How long have you known them?" + +"I met them on Class Day, and then I saw them--the day after I left +Campobello." Dan laughed a little. + +"How, saw them?" + +"Well, I went to a yacht race with them. I happened to meet them in the +street, and they wanted me to go; and I was all broken up, and--I Went." + +"Oh!" said Alice. "The day after I--you left Campobello?" + +"Well--yes." + +"And I was thinking of you all that day as--And I couldn't bear to look at +anybody that day, or speak!" + +"Well, the fact is, I--I was distracted, and I didn't know what I was +doing. I was desperate; I didn't care." + +"How did you find out about the yacht race?" + +"Boardman told me. Boardman was there." + +"Did he know the ladies? Did he go too?" + +"No. He was there to report the race for the Events. He went on the +press boat." + +"Oh!" said Alice. "Was there a large party?" + +"No, no. Not very. Just ourselves, in fact. They were awfully kind. +And they made me go home to dinner with them." + +"They must have been rather peculiar people," said Alice. "And I don't +see how--so soon--" She could not realise that Mavering was then a +rejected man, on whom she had voluntarily renounced all claim. A +retroactive resentment which she could not control possessed her with the +wish to punish those bold women for being agreeable to one who had since +become everything to her, though then he was ostensibly nothing. + +In a vague way, Dan felt her displeasure with that passage of his history, +but no man could have fully imagined it. + +"I couldn't tell half the time what I was saying or eating. I talked at +random and ate at random. I guess they thought something was wrong; they +asked me who was at Campobello." + +"Indeed!" + +"But you may be sure I didn't give myself away. I was awfully broken up," +he concluded inconsequently. + +She liked his being broken up, but she did not like the rest. She would +not press the question further now. She only said rather gravely, "If +it's such a short acquaintance, can you write to them in that familiar +way?" + +"Oh yes! Mrs. Frobisher is one of that kind." + +Alice was silent a moment before she said, "I think you'd better not +write. Let it go," she sighed. + +"Yes, that's what I think," said Dan. "Better let it go. I guess it will +explain itself in the course of time. But I don't want any blots around." +He leaned over and looked her smilingly in the face. + +"Oh no," she murmured; and then suddenly she caught him round the neck, +crying and sobbing. "It's only--because I wanted it to be--perfect. Oh, +I wonder if I've done right? Perhaps I oughtn't to have taken you, after +all; but I do love you--dearly, dearly! And I was so unhappy when I'd +lost you. And now I'm afraid I shall be a trial to you--nothing but a +trial." + +The first tears that a young man sees a woman shed for love of him are +inexpressibly sweeter than her smiles. Dan choked with tender pride and +pity. When he found his voice, he raved out with incoherent endearments +that she only made him more and more happy by her wish to have the affair +perfect, and that he wished her always to be exacting with him, for that +would give him a chance to do something for her, and all that he desired, +as long as he lived, was to do just what she wished. + +At the end of his vows and entreaties, she lifted her face radiantly, and +bent a smile upon him as sunny as that with which the sky after a summer +storm denies that there has ever been rain in the world. + +"Ah! you--" He could say no more. He could not be more enraptured than +he was. He could only pass from surprise to surprise, from delight to +delight. It was her love of him which wrought these miracles. It was all +a miracle, and no part more wonderful than another. That she, who had +seemed as distant as a star, and divinely sacred from human touch, should +be there in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, where his kiss could +reach her lips, not only unforbidden, but eagerly welcome, was impossible, +and yet it was true.. But it was no more impossible and no truer, than +that a being so poised, so perfectly self-centred as she, should already +be so helplessly dependent upon him for her happiness. In the depths of +his soul he invoked awful penalties upon himself if ever he should betray +her trust, if ever he should grieve that tender heart in the slightest +thing, if from that moment he did not make his whole life a sacrifice and +an expiation. + +He uttered some of these exalted thoughts, and they did not seem to appear +crazy to her. She said yes, they must make their separate lives offerings +to each other, and their joint lives an offering to God. The tears came +into his eyes at these words of hers: they were so beautiful and holy and +wise. He agreed that one ought always to go to church, and that now he +should never miss a service. He owned that he had been culpable in the +past. He drew her closer to him--if that were possible--and sealed his +words with a kiss. + +But he could not realise his happiness then, or afterward, when he walked +the streets under the thinly misted moon of that Indian summer night. + +He went down to the Events office when he left Alice, and found Boardman, +and told him that he was engaged, and tried to work Boardman up to some +sense of the greatness of the fact. Boardman shoved his fine white teeth +under his spare moustache, and made acceptable jokes, but he did not ask +indiscreet questions, and Dan's statement of the fact did not seem to give +it any more verity than it had before. He tried to get Boardman to come +and walk with him and talk it over; but Boardman said he had just been +detailed to go and work up the case of a Chinaman who had suicided a +little earlier in the evening. + +"Very well, then; I'll go with you," said Mavering. "How can you live in +such a den as this?" he asked, looking about the little room before +Boardman turned down his incandescent electric. "There isn't anything big +enough to hold me but all outdoors." + +In the street he linked his arm through his friend's, and said he felt +that he had a right to know all about the happy ending of the affair, +since he had been told of that miserable phase of it at Portland. But +when he came to the facts he found himself unable to give them with the +fulness he had promised. He only imparted a succinct statement as to the +where and when of the whole matter, leaving the how of it untold. + +The sketch was apparently enough for Boardman. For all comment, he +reminded Mavering that he had told him at Portland it would come out all +right. + +"Yes, you did, Boardman; that's a fact," said Dan; and he conceived a +higher respect for the penetration of Boardman than he had before. + +They stopped at a door in a poor court which they had somehow reached +without Mavering's privity. "Will you come in?" asked Boardman. + +"What for?" + +"Chinaman." + +"Chinaman?" Then Mavering remembered. "Good heavens! no. What have I +got to do with him?" + +"Both mortal," suggested the reporter. + +The absurdity of this idea, though a little grisly, struck Dan as a good +joke. He hit the companionable Boardman on the shoulder, and then gave +him a little hug, and remounted his path of air, and walked off in it. + + + + +XXVII. + +Mavering first woke in the morning with the mechanical recurrence of that +shame and grief which each day had brought him since Alice refused him. +Then with a leap of the heart came the recollection of all that had +happened yesterday. Yet lurking within his rapture was a mystery of +regret: a reasonless sense of loss, as if the old feeling had been +something he would have kept. Then this faded, and he had only the +longing to see her, to realise in her presence and with her help the fact +that she was his. An unspeakable pride filled him, and a joy in her love. +He tried to see some outward vision of his bliss in the glass; but, like +the mirror which had refused to interpret his tragedy in the Portland +restaurant, it gave back no image of his transport: his face looked as it +always did, and he and the refection laughed at each other: + +He asked himself how soon he could go and see her. It was now seven +o'clock: eight would be too early, of course--it would be ridiculous; and +nine--he wondered if he might go to see her at nine. Would they have done +breakfast? Had he any right to call before ten? He was miserable at the +thought of waiting till ten: it would be three hours. He thought of +pretexts--of inviting her to go somewhere, but that was absurd, for he +could see her at home all day if he liked; of carrying her a book, but +there could be no such haste about a book; of going to ask if he had left +his cane, but why should he be in such a hurry for his cane? All at once +he thought he could take her some flowers--a bouquet to lay beside her +plate at breakfast. He dramatised himself charging the servant who should +take it from him at the door not to say who left it; but Alice would know, +of course, and they would all know; it would be very pretty. He made Mrs. +Pasmer say some flattering things of him; and he made Alice blush +deliciously to hear them. He could not manage Mr. Pasmer very well, and +he left him out of the scene: he imagined him shaving in another room; +then he remembered his wearing a full beard. + +He dressed himself as quickly as he could, and went down into the hotel +vestibule, where he had noticed people selling flowers the evening before, +but there was no one there with them now, and none of the florists' shops +on the street were open yet. He could not find anything till he went to +the Providence Depot, and the man there had to take some of his +yesterday's flowers out of the refrigerator where he kept them; he was not +sure they would be very fresh; but the heavy rosebuds had fallen open, and +they were superb. Dan took all there were, and when they had been +sprinkled with water, and wrapped in cotton batting, and tied round with +paper, it was still only quarter of eight, and he left them with the man +till he could get his breakfast at the Depot restaurant. There it had a +consoling effect of not being so early; many people were already +breakfasting, and when Dan said, with his order, "Hurry it up, please," he +knew that he was taken for a passenger just arrived or departing. By a +fantastic impulse he ordered eggs and bacon again; he felt, it a fine +derision of the past and a seal of triumph upon the present to have the +same breakfast after his acceptance as he had ordered after his rejection; +he would tell Alice about it, and it would amuse her. He imagined how he +would say it, and she would laugh; but she would be full of a ravishing +compassion for his past suffering. They were long bringing the breakfast; +when it came he despatched it so quickly that it was only half after eight +when he paid his check at the counter. He tried to be five minutes more +getting his flowers, but the man had them all ready for him, and it did +not take him ten seconds. He had said he would carry them at half-past +nine; but thinking it over on a bench in the Garden, he decided that he +had better go sooner; they might breakfast earlier, and there would be no +fun if Alice did not find the roses beside her plate: that was the whole +idea. It was not till he stood at the door of the Pasmer apartment that. +he reflected that he was not accomplishing his wish to see Alice by +leaving her those flowers; he was a fool, for now he would have to +postpone coming a little, because he had already come. + +The girl who answered the bell did not understand the charge he gave her +about the roses, and he repeated his words. Some one passing through the +room beyond seemed to hesitate and pause at the sound of his voice. Could +it be Alice? Then he should see her, after all! The girl looked over her +shoulder, and said, "Mrs. Pasmer." + +Mrs. Pasmer came forward, and he fell into a complicated explanation and +apology. At the end she said, "You had better give them yourself. She +will be here directly." They were in the room now, and Mrs. Pasmer made +the time pass in rapid talk; but Dan felt that he ought to apologise from +time to time. "No!" she said, letting herself go. "Stay and breakfast +with us, Mr. Mavering. We shall be so glad to have you." + +At last Alice came in, and they decorously shook hands. Mrs. Pasmer +turned away a smile at their decorum. "I will see that there's a place +for you," she said, leaving them. + +They were instantly in each other's arms. It seemed to him that all this +had happened because he had so strongly wished it. + +"What is it, Dan?" What did you come for?" she asked. + +"To see if it was really true, Alice. I couldn't believe it." + +"Well--let me go--you mustn't--it's too silly. Of course it's true." She +pulled herself free. "Is my hair tumbled? You oughtn't to have come; +it's ridiculous; but I'm glad you came. I've been thinking it all over, +and I've got a great many things to say to you. But come to breakfast +now." + +She had a business-like way of treating the situation that was more +intoxicating than sentiment would have been, and gave it more actuality. + +Mrs. Pasmer was alone at the table, and explained that Alice's father +never breakfasted with them, or very seldom. "Where are your flowers?" +she asked Alice. + +"Flowers? What flowers?" + +"That Mr. Mavering brought." + +They all looked at one another. Dan ran out and brought in his roses. + +"They were trying to get away in the excitement, I guess, Mrs. Pasmer; I +found them behind the door." He had flung them there, without knowing it, +when Mrs. Pasmer left him with Alice. + +He expected her to join him and her mother in being amused at this, but he +was as well pleased to have her touched at his having brought them, and to +turn their gaiety off in praise of the roses. She got a vase for them, +and set it on the table. He noticed for the first time the pretty house- +dress she had on, with its barred corsage and under-skirt, and the heavy +silken rope knotted round it at the waist, and dropping in heavy tufts or +balls in front. + +The breakfast was Continental in its simplicity, and Mrs. Pasmer said that +they had always kept up their Paris habit of a light breakfast, even in +London, where it was not so easy to follow foreign customs as it was in +America. She was afraid he might find it too light. Then he told all +about his morning's adventure, ending with his breakfast at the Providence +Depot. Mrs. Pasmer entered into the fun of it, but she said it was for +only once in a way, and he must not expect to be let in if he came at that +hour another morning. He said no; he understood what an extraordinary +piece of luck it was for him to be there; and he was there to be bidden to +do whatever they wished. He said so much in recognition of their +goodness, that he became abashed by it. Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of +the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted +from him by an insuperable moral distance. A warm flush seemed to rise +from his heart into his throat and stifle him. He wished to shed tears. +His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he +would not have any more coffee. "Then," she said, "we will go into the +drawing-room;" but she allowed him and Alice to go alone. + +He was still in that illusion of awe and of distance, and he submitted to +the interposition of another table between their chairs. + +"I wish to talk with you," she said, so seriously that he was frightened, +and said to himself: "Now she is going to break it off. She has thought +it over, and she finds she can't endure me." + +"Well?" he said huskily. + +You oughtn't to have come here, you know, this morning." + +"I know it," he vaguely conceded. "But I didn't expect to get in." + +"Well, now you're here, we may as well talk. You must tell your family at +once." + +"Yes; I'm going to write to them as soon as I get back to my room. I +couldn't last night." + +"But you mustn't write; you must go--and prepare their minds." + +"Go?" he echoed. "Oh, that isn't necessary! My father knew about it from +the beginning, and I guess they've all talked it over. Their minds are +prepared." The sense of his immeasurable superiority to any one's +opposition began to dissipate Dan's unnatural awe; at the pleading face +which Alice put on, resting one cheek against the back of one of her +clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be +teased by that silken rope round her waist. + +"But you don't understand, dear," she said; and she said "dear" as if they +were old married people. "You must go to see them, and tell them; and +then some of them must come to see me--your father and sisters." + +"Why, of course." His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy silken +balls. + +"And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn't we?" + +"It'll be very nice of you--yes. You know she can't come to you." + +"Yes, that's what I thought, and--What are you looking at?" she drew +herself back from the table and followed the direction of his eye with a +woman's instinctive apprehension of disarray. + +He was ashamed to tell. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking." + +"What?" + +"Well, I don't know. That it seems so strange any one else should have +any to do with it--my family and yours. But I suppose they must. Yes, +it's all right." + +"Why, of course. If your family didn't like it--" + +"It wouldn't make any difference to me," said Dan resolutely. + +"It would to me," she retorted, with tender reproach. "Do you suppose it +would be pleasant to go into a family that didn't like yon? Suppose papa +and mamma didn't like you?" + +"But I thought they did," said Mavering, with his mind still partly on the +rope and the fluffy ball, but keeping his eyes away. + +"Yes, they do," said Alice. "But your family don't know me at all; and +your father's only seen me once. Can't you understand? I'm afraid we +don't look at it seriously enough--earnestly--and oh, I do wish to have +everything done as it should be! Sometimes, when I think of it, it makes +me tremble. I've been thinking about it all the morning, and--and-- +praying." + +Dan wanted to fall on his knees to her. The idea of Alice in prayer was +fascinating + +"I wish our life to begin with others, and not with ourselves. If we're +intrusted with so much happiness, doesn't it mean that we're to do good +with it--to give it to others as if it were money?" + +The nobleness of this thought stirred Dan greatly; his eyes wandered back +to the silken rope; but now it seemed to him an emblem of voluntary +suffering and self-sacrifice, like a devotee's hempen girdle. He +perceived that the love of this angelic girl would elevate him and hallow +his whole life if he would let it. He answered her, fervently, that he +would be guided by her in this as in everything; that he knew he was +selfish, and he was afraid he was not very good; but it was not because he +had not wished to be so; it was because he had not had any incentive. He +thought how much nobler and better this was than the talk he had usually +had with girls. He said that of course he would go home and tell his +people; he saw now that it would make them happier if they could hear it +directly from him. He had only thought of writing because he could not +bear to think of letting a day pass without seeing her; but if he took the +early morning train he could get back the same night, and still have three +hours at Ponkwasset Falls, and he would go the next day, if she said so. + +"Go to-day, Dan," she said, and she stretched out her hand impressively +across the table toward him. He seized it with a gush of tenderness, and +they drew together in their resolution to live for others. He said he +would go at once. But the next train did not leave till two o'clock, and +there was plenty of time. In the meanwhile it was in the accomplishment +of their high aims that they sat down on the sofa together and talked of +their future; Alice conditioned it wholly upon his people's approval of +her, which seemed wildly unnecessary to Mavering, and amused him +immensely. + +"Yes," she said, "I know you will think me strange in a great many things; +but I shall never keep anything from you, and I'm going to tell you that I +went to matins this morning." + +"To matins?" echoed Dan. He would not quite have liked her a Catholic; he +remembered with relief that she had said she was not a Roman Catholic; +though when he came to think, he would not have cared a great deal. +Nothing could have changed her from being Alice. + +"Yes, I wished to consecrate the first morning of our engagement; and I'm +always going. I determined that I would go before breakfast--that was +what made breakfast so late. Don't you like it?" she asked timidly. + +"Like it!" he said. "I'm going with you:" + +"Oh no!" she turned upon him. "That wouldn't do." She became grave +again. "I'm glad you approve of it, for I should feel that there was +something wanting to our happiness. If marriage is a sacrament, why +shouldn't an engagement be?" + +"It is," said Dan, and he felt that it was holy; till then he had never +realised that marriage was a sacrament, though he had often heard the +phrase. + +At the end of an hour they took a tender leave of each other, hastened by +the sound of Mrs. Pasmer's voice without. Alice escaped from one door +before her mother entered by the other. Dan remained, trying to look +unconcerned, but he was sensible of succeeding so poorly that he thought +he had better offer his hand to Mrs. Pasmer at once. He told her that he +was going up to Ponkwasset Falls at two o'clock, and asked her to please +remember him to Mr. Pasmer. + +She said she would, and asked him if he were to be gone long. + +"Oh no; just overnight--till I can tell them what's happened." He felt it +a comfort to be trivial with Mrs. Pasmer, after bracing up to Alice's +ideals. "I suppose they'll have to know." + +"What an exemplary son!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "Yes, I suppose they will." + +"I supposed it would be enough if I wrote, but Alice thinks I'd better +report in person." + +"I think you had, indeed! And it will be a good thing for you both to +have the time for clarifying your ideas. Did she tell you she had been at +matins this morning?" A light of laughter trembled in Mrs. Pasmer's eyes, +and Mavering could not keep a responsive gleam out of his own. In an +instant the dedication of his engagement by morning prayer ceased to be a +high and solemn thought, and became deliciously amusing; and this laughing +Alice over with her mother did more to realise the fact that she was his +than anything else had yet done. + +In that dark passage outside he felt two arms go tenderly round his neck; +and a soft shape strain itself to his heart. "I know you have been +laughing about me. But you may. I'm yours now, even to laugh at, if you +want." + +"You are mine to fall down and worship," he vowed, with an instant +revulsion of feeling. + +Alice didn't say anything; he felt her hand fumbling about his coat lapel. +"Where is your breast pocket?" she asked; and he took hold of her hand, +which left a carte-de-visite-shaped something in his. + +"It isn't very good," she murmured, as well as she could, with her lips +against his cheek, "but I thought you'd like to show them some proof of my +existence. I shall have none of yours while you're gone." + +"O Alice! you think of everything!" + +His heart was pierced by the soft reproach implied in her words; he had +not thought to ask her for her photograph, but she had thought to give it; +she must have felt it strange that he had not asked for it, and she had +meant to slip it in his pocket and let him find it there. But even his +pang of self-upbraiding was a part of his transport. He seemed to float +down the stairs; his mind was in a delirious whirl. "I shall go mad," he +said to himself in the excess of his joy--"I shall die!" + + + + +XXVIII. + +The parting scene with Alice persisted in Mavering's thought far on the +way to Ponkwasset Falls. He now succeeded in saying everything to her: +how deeply he felt her giving him her photograph to cheer him in his +separation from her; how much he appreciated her forethought in providing +him with some answer when his mother and sisters should ask him about her +looks. He took out the picture, and pretended to the other passengers to +be looking very closely at it, and so managed to kiss it. He told her +that now he understood what love really was; how powerful; how it did +conquer everything; that it had changed him and made him already a better +man. He made her refuse all merit in the work. + +When he began to formulate the facts for communication to his family, love +did not seem so potent; he found himself ashamed of his passion, or at +least unwilling to let it be its own excuse even; he had a wish to give it +almost any other appearance. Until he came in sight of the station and +the Works, it had not seemed possible for any one to object to Alice. He +had been going home as a matter of form to receive the adhesion of his +family. But now he was forced to see that she might be considered +critically, even reluctantly. This would only be because his family did +not understand how perfect Alice was; but they might not understand. + +With his father there would be no difficulty. His father had seen Alice +and admired her; he would be all right. Dan found himself hoping this +rather anxiously, as if from the instinctive need of his father's support +with his mother and sisters. He stopped at the Works when he left the +train, and found his father in his private office beyond the book-keeper's +picket-fence, which he penetrated, with a nod to the accountant. + +"Hello, Dan!" said his father, looking up; and "Hello, father!" said Dan. +Being alone, the father and son not only shook hands, but kissed each +other, as they used to do in meeting after an absence when Dan was +younger. + +He had closed his father's door with his left hand in giving his right, +and now he said at once, "Father, I've come home to tell you that I'm +engaged to be married." + +Dan had prearranged his father's behaviour at this announcement, but he +now perceived that he would have to modify the scene if it were to +represent the facts. His father did not brighten all over and demand, +"Miss Pasmer, of course?" he contrived to hide whatever start the news had +given him, and was some time in asking, with his soft lisp, "Isn't that +rather sudden, Dan?" + +"Well, not for me," said Dan, laughing uneasily. It's--you know her, +father--Miss Pasmer." + +"Oh yes," said his father, certainly not with displeasure, and yet not +with enthusiasm. + +"I've had ever since Class Day to think it over, and it--came to a climax +yesterday." + +"And then you stopped thinking," said his father--to gain time, it +appeared to Dan. + +"Yes, sir," said Dan. "I haven't thought since." + +"Well," said his father, with an amusement which was not unfriendly. He +added, after a moment, "But I thought that had been broken off," and Dan's +instinct penetrated to the lurking fact that his father must have talked +the rupture over with his mother, and not wholly regretted it. + +"There was a kind of--hitch at one time," he admitted; "but it's all right +now." + +"Well, well," said his father, "this is great news--great news," and he +seemed to be shaping himself to the new posture of affairs, while giving +it a conditional recognition. "She's a beautiful creature." + +"Isn't she?" cried Dan, with a little break in his voice, for he had found +his father's manner rather trying. "And she's good too. I assure you +that she is--she is simply perfect every way." + +"Well," said the elder Mavering, rising and pulling down the rolling top +of his desk, "I'm glad to hear it, for your sake, Dan. Have you been up +at the house yet?" + +"No; I'm just off the train." + +"How is her mother--how is Mrs. Pasmer? All well?" + +"Yes, sir," said Dan; "they're all very well. You don't know Mr. Pasmer, +I believe, sir, do you?" + +"Not since college. What sort of person is he?" + +"He's very refined and quiet. Very handsome. Very courteous. Very nice +indeed." + +"Ah! that's good," said Elbridge Mavering, with the effect of not having +been very attentive to his son's answer. + +They walked up the long slope of the hillside on which the house stood, +overlooking the valley where the Works were, and fronting the plateau +across the river where the village of operatives' houses was scattered. +The paling light of what had been a very red sunset flushed them, and +brought out the picturesqueness which the architect, who designed them for +a particular effect in the view from the owner's mansion, had intended. + +A good carriage road followed the easiest line of ascent towards this +edifice, and reached a gateway. Within it began to describe a curve +bordered with asphalted footways to the broad verandah of the house, and +then descended again to the gate. The grounds enclosed were planted with +deciduous shrubs, which had now mostly dropped their leaves, and clumps of +firs darkening in the evening light with the gleam of some garden statues +shivering about the lawn next the house. The breeze grew colder and +stiffer as the father and son mounted toward the mansion which Dan used to +believe was like a chateau, with its Mansard-roof and dormer windows and +chimneys. It now blocked its space sharply out of the thin pink of the +western sky, and its lights sparkled with a wintry keenness which had +often thrilled Dan when he climbed the hill from the station in former +homecomings. Their brilliancy gave him a strange sinking of the heart for +no reason. He and his father had kept up a sort of desultory talk about +Alice, and he could not have said that his father had seemed indifferent; +he had touched the affair only too acquiescently; it was painfully like +everything else. When they came in full sight of the house, Dan left the +subject, as he realised presently, from a reasonless fear of being +overheard. + +"It seems much later here, sir, than it does in Boston," he said, glancing +round at the maples, which stood ragged, with half their leaves blown from +them. + +"Yes; we're in the hills, and we're further north," answered his father. +"There's Minnie." + +Dan had seen his sister on the verandah, pausing at sight of him, and +puzzled to make out who was with her father. He had an impulse to hail +her with a shout, but he could not. In his last walk with her he had told +her that he should never marry, and they had planned to live together. It +was a joke; but now he felt as if he had come to rob her of something, and +he walked soberly on with his father. + +"Why, Dan, you good-for-nothing fellow!" she called out when he came near +enough to be unmistakable, and ran down the steps to kiss him. "What in +the world are you doing here? When did you come? Why didn't you hollo, +instead of letting me stand here guessing? You're not sick, are you?" + +The father got himself indoors unnoticed in the excitement of the +brother's arrival. This would have been the best moment for Dan to tell +his sister of his engagement; he knew it, but he parried her curiosity +about his coming; and then his sister Eunice came out, and he could not +speak. They all went together into the house flaming with naphtha gas, +and with the steam heat already on, and Dan said he would take his bag to +his room, and then come down again. He knew that he had left them to +think that there was something very mysterious in his coming, and while he +washed away the grime of his journey he was planning how to appear +perfectly natural when he should get back to his sisters. He recollected +that he had not asked either them or his father how his mother was, but it +was certainly not because his mind was not full of her. Alice now seemed +very remote from him, further even than his gun, or his boyish collection +of moths and butterflies, on which his eye fell in roving about his room. +For a bitter instant it seemed to him as if they were all alike toys, and +in a sudden despair he asked himself what had become of his happiness. It +was scarcely half a day since he had parted in transport from Alice. + +He made pretexts to keep from returning at once to his sisters, and it was +nearly half an hour before he went down to them. By that time his father +was with them in the library, and they were waiting tea for him. + + + + +XXIX. + +A family of rich people in the country, apart from intellectual interests, +is apt to gormandise; and the Maverings always sat down to a luxurious +table, which was most abundant and tempting at the meal they called tea, +when the invention of the Portuguese man-cook was taxed to supply the +demands of appetites at once eager and fastidious. They prolonged the +meal as much as possible in winter, and Dan used to like to get home just +in time for tea when he came up from Harvard; it was always very jolly, +and he brought a boy's hunger to its abundance. The dining-room, full of +shining light, and treated from the low-down grate, was a pleasant place. +But now his spirits failed to rise with the physical cheer; he was almost +bashfully silent; he sat cowed in the presence of his sisters, and +careworn in the place where he used to be so gay and bold. They were +waiting to have him begin about himself, as he always did when he had been +away, and were ready to sympathise with his egotism, whatever new turn it +took. He mystified them by asking about them and their affairs, and by +dealing in futile generalities, instead of launching out with any business +that he happened at the time to be full of. But he did not attend to +their answers to his questions; he was absent-minded, and only knew that +his face was flushed, and that he was obviously ill at ease. + +His younger sister turned from him impatiently at last. "Father, what is +the matter with Dan?" + +Her bold recognition of their common constraint broke it down. Dan looked +at his father with helpless consent, and his father said quietly, "He +tells me he's engaged." + +"What nonsense!" said his sister Eunice. + +"Why, Dan!" cried Minnie; and he felt a reproach in her words which the +words did not express. A silence followed, in which the father along went +on with his supper. The girls sat staring at Dan with incredulous eyes. +He became suddenly angry. + +"I don't know what's so very extraordinary about it, or why there should +be such a pother," he began; and he knew that he was insolently ignoring +abundant reasons for pother, if there had been any pother. "Yes, I'm +engaged." + +He expected now that they would believe him, and ask whom he was engaged +to; but apparently they were still unable to realise it. He was obliged +to go on. "I'm engaged to Miss Pasmer." + +"To Miss Pasmer!" repeated Eunice. + +"But I thought--" Minnie began, and then stopped. + +Dan commanded his temper by a strong effort, and condescended to explain. +"There was a misunderstanding, but it's all right now; I only met her +yesterday, and--it's all right." He had to keep on ignoring what had +passed between him and his sisters during the month he spent at home after +his return from Campobello. He did not wish to do so; he would have been +glad to laugh over that epoch of ill-concealed heart-break with them; but +the way they had taken the fact of his engagement made it impossible. He +was forced to keep them at a distance; they forced him. "I'm glad," he +added bitterly, "that the news seems to be so agreeable to my family. +Thank you for your cordial congratulations." He swallowed a large cup of +tea, and kept looking down. + +"How silly!" said Eunice, who was much the oldest of the three. "Did you +expect us to fall upon your neck before we could believe it wasn't a hoax +of father's?" + +"A hoax!" Dan burst out. + +"I suppose," said Minnie, with mock meekness, "that if we're to be +devoured, it's no use saying we didn't roil the brook. I'm sure I +congratulate you, Dan, with all my heart," she added, with a trembling +voice. + +"I congratulate Miss Pasmer," said Eunice, "on securing such a very +reasonable husband." + +When Eunice first became a young lady she was so much older than Dan that +in his mother's absence she sometimes authorised herself to box his ears, +till she was finally overthrown in battle by the growing boy. She still +felt herself so much his tutelary genius that she could not let the idea +of his engagement awe her, or keep her from giving him a needed lesson. +Dan jumped to his feet, and passionately threw his napkin on his chair. + +"There, that will do, Eunice!" interposed the father. "Sit down, Dan, and +don't be an ass, if you are engaged. Do you expect to come up here with a +bombshell in your pocket, and explode it among us without causing any +commotion? We all desire your happiness, and we are glad if you think +you've found it, but we want to have time to realise it. We had only +adjusted our minds to the apparent fact that you hadn't found it when you +were here before." His father began very severely, but when he ended with +this recognition of what they had all blinked till then, they laughed +together. + +"My pillow isn't dry yet, with the tears I shed for you, Dan," said Minnie +demurely. + +"I shall have to countermand my mourning," said Eunice, "and wear louder +colours than ever. Unless," she added, "Miss Pasmer changes her mind +again." + +This divination of the past gave them all a chance for another laugh, and +Dan's sisters began to reconcile themselves to the fact of his engagement, +if not to Miss Pasmer. In what was abstractly so disagreeable there was +the comfort that they could joke about his happiness; they had not felt +free to make light of his misery when he was at home before. They began +to ask all the questions they could think of as to how and when, and they +assimilated the fact more and more in acquiring these particulars and +making a mock of them and him. + +"Of course you haven't got her photograph," suggested Eunice. "You know +we've never had the pleasure of meeting the young lady yet." + +"Yes," Dan owned, blushing, "I have. She thought I might like to show it +to mother: But it isn't--" + +"A very good one--they never are," said Minnie. + +"And it was taken several years ago--they always are," said Eunice. + +"And she doesn't photograph well, anyway." + +"And this one was just after a long fit of sickness." + +Dan drew it out of his pocket, after some fumbling for it, while he +tolerated their gibes. + +Eunice put her nose to it. "I hope it's your cigarettes it smells of," +she said. + +"Yes; she doesn't use the weed," answered Dan. + +"Oh, I didn't mean that, exactly," returned his sister, holding the +picture off at arm's length, and viewing it critically with contracted +eyes. + +Dan could not help laughing. "I don't think it's been near any other +cigar-case," he answered tranquilly. + +Minnie looked at it very near to, covering all but the face with her hand. +"Dan, she's lovely!" she cried, and Dan's heart leaped into his throat As +he gratefully met his sister's eyes. + +"You'll like her, Min." + +Eunice took the photograph from her for a second scrutiny. "She's +certainly very stylish. Rather a beak of a nose, and a little too bird-- +like on the whole. But she isn't so bad. Is it like her?" she asked with +a glance at her father. + +"I might say--after looking," he replied. + +"True! I didn't know but Dan had shown it to you as soon as you met. He +seemed to be in such a hurry to let us all know." + +The father said, "I don't think it flatters her," and he looked at it more +carefully. "Not much of her mother there?" he suggested to Dan. + +"No, sir; she's more like her father." + +"Well, after all this excitement, I believe I'll have another cup of tea, +and take something to eat, if Miss Pasmer's photograph doesn't object," +said Eunice, and she replenished her cup and plate. + +"What coloured hair and eyes has she, Dan?" asked Minnie. + +He had to think so as to be exact. "Well, you might say they were black, +her eyebrows are so dark. But I believe they're a sort of greyish-blue." + +"Not an uncommon colour for eyes," said Eunice, "but rather peculiar for +hair." + +They got to making fun of the picture, and Dan told them about Alice and +her family; the father left them at the table, and then came back with +word from Dan's mother that she was ready to see him. + + + + +XXX. + +By eight o'clock in the evening the pain with which every day began for +Mrs. Mavering was lulled, and her jarred nerves were stayed by the opiates +till she fell asleep about midnight. In this interval the family gathered +into her room, and brought her their news and the cheer of their health. +The girls chattered on one side of her bed, and their father sat with his +newspaper on the other, and read aloud the passages which he thought would +interest her, while she lay propped among her pillows, brilliantly eager +for the world opening this glimpse of itself to her shining eyes. That +was on her good nights, when the drugs did their work, but there were +times when they failed, and the day's agony prolonged itself through the +evening, and the sleep won at last was a heavy stupor. Then the +sufferer's temper gave way under the stress; she became the torment she +suffered, and tore the hearts she loved. Most of all, she afflicted the +man who had been so faithful to her misery, and maddened him to reprisals, +of which he afterward abjectly repented. Her tongue was sharpened by +pain, and pitilessly skilled to inculpate and to punish; it pierced and +burned like fire but when a good day came again she made it up to the +victims by the angelic sweetness and sanity which they felt was her real +self; the cruelty was only the mask of her suffering. + +When she was better they brought to her room anybody who was staying with +them, and she liked them to be jolly in the spacious chamber. The +pleasantest things of the house were assembled, and all its comforts +concentrated, in the place which she and they knew she should quit but +once. It was made gay with flowers and pictures; it was the salon for +those fortunate hours when she became the lightest and blithest of the +company in it, and made the youngest guest forget that there was sickness +or pain in the world by the spirit with which she ignored her own. Her +laugh became young again; she joked; she entered into what they were doing +and reading and thinking, and sent them away full of the sympathy which in +this mood of hers she had for every mood in others. Girls sighed out +their wonder and envy to her daughters when they left her; the young men +whom she captivated with her divination of their passions or ambitions +went away celebrating her supernatural knowledge of human nature. The +next evening after some night of rare and happy excitement, the family saw +her nurse carrying the pictures and flowers and vases out of her room, in +sign of her renunciation of them all, and assembled silently, shrinkingly, +in her chamber, to take each their portion of her anguish, of the blame +and the penalty. The household adjusted itself to her humours, for she +was supreme in it. + +When Dan used to come home from Harvard she put on a pretty cap for him, +and distinguished him as company by certain laces hiding her wasted frame, +and giving their pathetic coquetry to her transparent wrists. He was her +favourite, and the girls acknowledged him so, and made their fun of her +for spoiling him. He found out as he grew up that her broken health dated +from his birth, and at first this deeply affected him; but his young life +soon lost the keenness of the impression, and he loved his mother because +she loved him, and not because she had been dying for him so many years. + +As he now came into her room, and the waiting-woman went out of it with +her usual, "Well, Mr. Dan!" the tenderness which filled him at sight of +his mother was mixed with that sense of guilt which had tormented him at +times ever since he met his sisters. He was going to take himself from +her; he realised that. + +"Well, Dan!" she called, so gaily that he said to himself, "No, father +hasn't told her anything about it," and was instantly able to answer her +as cheerfully, "Well, mother!" + +He bent over her to kiss her, and the odour of the clean linen mingling +with that of the opium, and the cologne with which she had tried to banish +its scent, opened to him one of those vast reaches of associations which +perfumes can unlock, and he saw her lying there through those years of +pain, as many as half his life, and suddenly the tears gushed into his +eyes, and he fell on his knees, and hid his face in the bed-clothes and +sobbed. + +She kept smoothing his head, which shook under her thin hand, and saying, +"Poor Dan! poor Dan!" but did not question him. He knew that she knew +what he had come to tell her, and that his tears, which had not been meant +for that, had made interest with her for him and his cause, and that she +was already on his side. + +He tried boyishly to dignify the situation when he lifted his face, and he +said, "I didn't mean to come boohooing to you in this way, and I'm ashamed +of myself." + +"I know, Dan; but you've been wrought up, and I don't wonder. You mustn't +mind your father and your sisters. Of course, they're rather surprised, +and they don't like your taking yourself from them--we, none of us do." + + +At these honest words Dan tried to become honest too. At least he dropped +his pretence of dignity, and became as a little child in his simple greed +for sympathy. "But it isn't necessarily that; is it, mother?" + +"Yes, it's all that, Dan; and it's all right, because it's that. We don't +like it, but our not liking it has nothing to do with its being right or +wrong." + +"I supposed that father would have been pleased, anyway; for he has seen +her, and--and. Of course the girls haven't, but I think they might have +trusted my judgment a little. I'm not quite a fool." + +His mother smiled. "Oh, it isn't a question of the wisdom of your choice; +it's the unexpectedness. We all saw that you were very unhappy when you +were here before, and we supposed it had gone wrong." + +"It had, mother," said Dan. "She refused me at Campobello. But it was a +misunderstanding, and as soon as we met--" + +"I knew you had met again, and what you had come home for, and I told your +father so, when he came to say you were here." + +"Did you, mother?" he asked, charmed at her having guessed that. + +"Yes. She must be a good girl to send you straight home to tell us." + +"You knew I wouldn't have thought of that myself," said Dan joyously. "I +wanted to write; I thought that would do just as well. I hated to leave +her, but she made me come. She is the best, and the wisest, and the most +unselfish--O mother, I can't tell you about her! You must see her. You +can't realise her till you see her, mother. You'll like each other, I'm +sure of that. You're just alike." It seemed to Dan that they were +exactly alike. + +"Then perhaps we sha'n't," suggested his mother. "Let me see her +picture." + +"How did you know I had it? If it hadn't been for her, I shouldn't have +brought any. She put it into my pocket just as I was leaving. She said +you would all want to see what she looked like." + +He had taken it out of his pocket, and he held it, smiling fondly upon it. +Alice seemed to smile back at him. He had lost her in the reluctance of +his father and sisters; and now his mother--it was his mother who had +given her to him again. He thought how tenderly he loved his mother. + +When he could yield her the photograph, she looked long and silently at +it. "She has a great deal of character, Dan." + +"There you've hit it, mother! I'd rather you would have said that than +anything else. But don't you think she's beautiful? She's the gentlest +creature, when you come to know her! I was awfully afraid of her at +first. I thought she was very haughty. But she isn't at all. She's +really very self-depreciatory; she thinks she isn't good enough for me. +You ought to hear her talk, mother, as I have. She's full of the noblest +ideals--of being of some use in the world, of being self-devoted, and--all +that kind of thing. And you can see that she's capable of it. Her aunt's +in a Protestant sisterhood," he said, with a solemnity which did not seem +to communicate itself to his mother, for Mrs. Mavering smiled. Dan smiled +too, and said: "But I can't tell you about Alice, mother. She's perfect." +His heart overflowed with proud delight in her, and he was fool enough to +add, "She's so affectionate!" + +His mother kept herself from laughing. "I dare say she is, Dan--with +you." Then she hid all but her eyes with the photograph, and gave way. + +"What a donkey!" said Dan, meaning himself. "If I go on, I shall disgust +you with her. What I mean is that she isn't at all proud, as I used to +think she was." + +"No girl is, under the circumstances. She has all she can do to be proud +of you." + +"Do you think so, mother?" he said, enraptured with the notion. "I've +done my best--or my worst--not to give her any reason to be so." + +"She doesn't 'want any--the less the better. You silly boy! Don't you +suppose she wants to make you out of whole cloth just as you do with her? +She doesn't want any facts to start with; they'd be in the way. Well, +now, I can make out, with your help, what the young lady is; but what are +the father and mother? They're rather important in these cases." + +"Oh, they're the nicest kind of people," said Dan, in optimistic +generalisation. "You'd like Mrs. Pasmer. She's awfully nice." + +"Do you say that because you think I wouldn't?" asked his mother. "Isn't +she rather sly and hum-bugging?" + +"Well, yes, she is, to a certain extent," Dan admitted, with a laugh. +"But she doesn't mean any harm by it. She's extremely kind-hearted." + +"To you? I dare say. And Mr. Pasmer is rather under her thumb?" + +"Well, yes, you might say thumb," Dan consented, feeling it useless to +defend the Pasmers against this analysis. + +"We won't say heel," returned his mother; "we're too polite. And your +father says he had the reputation in college of being one of the most +selfish fellows in the world. He's never done anything since but lose +most of his money. He's been absolutely idle and useless all his days." +She turned her vivid blue eyes suddenly upon her son's. + +Dan winced. "You know how hard father is upon people who haven't done +anything. It's a mania of his. Of course Mr. Pasmer doesn't show to +advantage where there's no--no leisure class." + +"Poor man!" + +Dan was going to say, "He's very amiable, though," but he was afraid of +his mother's retorting, "To you?" and he held his peace, looking +chapfallen. + +Whether his mother took pity on him or not, her next sally was consoling. +"But your Alice may not take after either of them. Her father is the +worst of his breed, it seems; the rest are useful people, from what your +father knows, and there's a great deal to be hoped for collaterally. She +had an uncle in college at the same time who was everything that her +father was not." + +"One of her aunts is in one of those Protestant religious houses in +England," repeated Dan. + +"Oh!" said his mother shortly, "I don't know that I like that +particularly. But probably she isn't useless there. Is Alice very +religious?" + +"Well, I suppose," said Dan, with a smile for the devotions that came into +his thought, "she's what would be called 'Piscopal pious." + +Mrs. Mavering referred to the photograph, which she still held in her +hand. "Well, she's pure and good, at any rate. I suppose you look +forward to a long engagement?" + +Dan was somewhat taken aback at a supposition so very contrary to what was +in his mind. "Well, I don't know. Why?" + +"It might be said that you are very young. How old is Agnes--Alice, I +mean?" + +"Twenty-one. But now, look here, mother! It's no use considering such a +thing in the abstract, is it?" + +"No," said his mother, with a smile for what might be coming. + +"This is the way I've been viewing it; I may say it's the way Alice has +been viewing it--or Mrs. Pasmer, rather." + +"Decidedly Mrs. Pasmer, rather. Better be honest, Dan." + +"I'll do my best. I was thinking, hoping, that is, that as I'm going +right into the business--have gone into it already, in fact--and could +begin life at once, that perhaps there wouldn't be much sense in waiting a +great while." + +"Yes?" + +"That's all. That is, if you and father are agreed." He reflected upon +this provision, and added, with a laugh of confusion and pleasure: "It +seems to be so very much more of a family affair than I used to think it +was." + +"You thought it concerned just you and her?" said his mother, with arch +sympathy. + +"Well, yes." + +"Poor fellow! She knew better than that, you may be sure. At any rate, +her mother did." + +"What Mrs. Pasmer doesn't know isn't probably worth knowing," said Dan, +with an amused sense of her omniscience. + +"I thought so," sighed his mother, smiling too. "And now you begin to +find out that it concerns the families in all their branches on both +sides." + +"Oh, if it stopped at the families and their ramifications! But it seems +to take in society and the general public." + +"So it does--more than you can realise. You can't get married to yourself +alone, as young people think; and if you don't marry happily, you sin +against the peace and comfort of the whole community." + +"Yes, that's what I'm chiefly looking out for now. I don't want any of +those people in Central Africa to suffer. That's the reason I want to +marry Alice at the earliest opportunity. But I suppose there'll have to +be a Mavering embassy to the high contracting powers of the other part +now?" + +"Your father and one of the girls had better go down." + +"Yes?" + +"And invite Mr. and Mrs. Pasmer and their daughter to come up here." + +"All on probation?" + +"Oh no. If you're pleased, Dan--" + +I am, mother--measurably." They both laughed at this mild way of putting +it. + +"Why, then it's to be supposed that we're all pleased. You needn't bring +the whole Pasmer family home to live with you, if you do marry them all." + +"No," said Dan, and suddenly be became very distraught. It flashed +through him that his mother was expecting him to come home with Alice to +live, and that she would not be at all pleased with his scheme of a +European sojourn, which Mrs. Pasmer had so cordially adopted. He was +amazed that he had not thought of that, but he refused to see any +difficulty which his happiness could not cope with. + +"No, there's that view of it," he said jollily; and he buried his +momentary anxiety out of sight, and, as it were, danced upon its grave. +Nevertheless, he had a desire to get quickly away from the spot. "I hope +the Mavering embassy won't be a great while getting ready to go," he said. +"Of course it's all right; but I shouldn't want an appearance of +reluctance exactly, you know, mother; and if there should be much of an +interval between my getting back and their coming on, don't you know, why, +the cat might let herself out of the bag." + +"What cat?" asked his mother demurely. + +"Well, you know, you haven't received my engagement with unmingled +enthusiasm, and--and I suppose they would find it out from me--from my +manner; and--and I wish they'd come along pretty soon, mother." + +"Poor boy! I'm afraid the cat got out of the bag when Mrs. Pasmer came to +the years of discretion. But you sha'n't be left a prey to her. They +shall go back with you. Ring the bell, and let's talk it over with them +now." + +Dan joyfully obeyed. He could see that his mother was all on fire with +interest in his affair, and that the idea of somehow circumventing Mrs. +Pasmer by prompt action was fascinating her. + +His sisters came up at once, and his father followed a moment later. They +all took their cue from the mother's gaiety, and began talking and +laughing, except the father, who sat looking on with a smile at their +lively spirits and the jokes of which Dan became the victim. Each family +has its own fantastic medium, in which it gets affairs to relieve them of +their concrete seriousness, and the Maverings now did this with Dan's +engagement, and played with it as an airy abstraction. They debated the +character of the embassy which was to be sent down to Boston on their +behalf, and it was decided that Eunice had better go with her father, as +representing more fully the age and respectability of the family: at first +glance the Pasmers would take her for Dan's mother, and this would be a +tremendous advantage. + +"And if I like the ridiculous little chit," said Eunice, "I think I shall +let Dan marry her at once. I see no reason why he shouldn't and I +couldn't stand a long engagement; I should break it off." + +"I guess there are others who will have something to say about that," +retorted the younger sister. "I've always wanted a long engagement in +this family, and as there seems to be no chance for it with the ladies, I +wish to make the most of Dan's. I always like it where the hero gets sick +and the heroine nurses him. I want Dan to get sick, and have Alice come +here and take care of him." + +"No; this marriage must take place at once. What do you say, father?" +asked Eunice. + +Her father sat, enjoying the talk, at the foot of the bed, with a tendency +to doze. "You might ask Dan," he said, with a lazy cast of his eye toward +his son. + +"Dan has nothing to do with it." + +"Dan shall not be consulted." + +The two girls stormed upon their father with their different reasons. + +"Now I will tell you Girls, be still!" their mother broke in. "Listen +to me: I have an idea." + +"Listen to her: she has an idea!" echoed Eunice, in recitative. + +"Will you be quiet?" demanded the mother. + +"We will be du-u-mb!" + +When they became so, at the verge of their mother's patience, of which +they knew the limits, she went on: "I think Dan had better get married at +once." + +"There, Minnie!" + +"But what does Dan say?" + +"I will--make the sacrifice," said Dan meekly. + +"Noble boy! That's exactly what Washington said to his mother when she +asked him not to go to sea," said Minnie. + +"And then he went into the militia, and made it all right with himself +that way," said Eunice. "Dan can't play his filial piety on this family. +Go on, mother." + +"I want him to bring his wife home, and live with us," continued his +mother. + +"In the L part!" cried Minnie, clasping her hands in rapture. "I've +always said what a perfect little apartment it was by itself." + +"Well, don't say it again, then," returned her sister. "Always is often +enough. Well, in the L part Go on, mother! Don't ask where you were, +when it's so exciting." + +"I don't care whether it's in the L part or not. There's plenty of room +in the great barn of a place everywhere." + +"But what about his taking care of the business in Boston?" suggested +Eunice, looking at her father. + +"There's no hurry about that." + +"And about the excursion to aesthetic centres abroad?" Minnie added. + +"That could be managed," said her father, with the same ironical smile. + +The mother and the girls went on wildly planning Dan's future for him. It +was all in a strain of extravagant burlesque. But he could not take his +part in it with his usual zest. He laughed and joked too, but at the +bottom of his heart was an uneasy remembrance of the different future he +had talked over with Mrs. Pasmer so confidently. But he said to himself +buoyantly at last that it would come out all right. His mother would give +in, or else Alice could reconcile her mother to whatever seemed really +best. + +He parted from his mother with fond gaiety. His sisters came out of the +room with him. + +"I'm perfectly sore with laughing," said Minnie. "It seems like old +times--doesn't it, Dan?--such a gale with mother." + + + + +XXXI. + +An engagement must always be a little incredible at first to the families +of the betrothed, and especially to the family of the young man; in the +girl's, the mother, at least, will have a more realising sense of the +situation. If there are elder sisters who have been accustomed to regard +their brother as very young, he will seem all the younger because in such +a matter he has treated himself as if he were a man; and Eunice Mavering +said, after seeing the Pasmers, "Well, Dan, it's all well enough, I +suppose, but it seems too ridiculous." + +"What's ridiculous about it, I should like to know?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I don't know. Who'll look after you when you're married? Oh, I +forgot Ma'am Pasmer!" + +"I guess we shall be able to look after ourselves," said Dan; a little +sulkily. + +"Yes, if you'll be allowed to," insinuated his sister. + +They spoke at the end of a talk in which he had fretted at the reticence +of both his sister and his father concerning the Pasmers, whom they had +just been to see. He was vexed with his father, because he felt that he +had been influenced by Eunice, and had somehow gone back on him. He was +vexed and he was grieved because his father had left them at the door of +the hotel without saying anything in praise of Alice, beyond the +generalities that would not carry favour with Eunice; and he was depressed +with a certain sense of Alice's father and mother, which seemed to have +imparted itself to him from the others, and to be the Mavering opinion of +them. He could no longer see Mrs. Pasmer harmless if trivial, and good- +hearted if inveterately scheming; he could not see the dignity and +refinement which he had believed in Mr. Pasmer; they had both suffered a +sort of shrinkage or collapse, from which he could not rehabilitate them. +But this would have been nothing if his sister's and his father's eyes, +through which he seemed to have been looking, had not shown him Alice in a +light in which she appeared strange and queer almost to eccentricity. He +was hurt at this effect from their want of sympathy, his pride was +touched, and he said to himself that he should not fish for Eunice's +praise; but he found himself saying, without surprise, "I suppose you will +do what you can to prejudice mother and Min." + +"Isn't that a little previous?" asked Eunice. "Have I said anything +against Miss Pasmer?" + +"You haven't because you couldn't," said Dan, with foolish bitterness. + +"Oh, I don't know about that. She's a human being, I suppose--at least +that was the impression I got from her parentage." + +"What have you got to say against her parents?" demanded Dan savagely. + +"Oh, nothing. I didn't come down to Boston to denounce the Pasmer +family." + +"I suppose you didn't like their being in a flat; you'd have liked to find +them in a house on Commonwealth Avenue or Beacon Street." + +"I'll own I'm a snob," said Eunice, with maddening meekness. "So's +father." + +"They are connected with the best families in the city, and they are in +the best society. They do what they please, and they live where they +like. They have been so long in Europe that they don't care for those +silly distinctions. But what you say doesn't harm them. It's simply +disgraceful to you; that's all," said Dan furiously. + +"I'm glad it's no worse, Dan," said his sister, with a tranquil smile. +"And if you'll stop prancing up and down the room, and take a seat, and +behave yourself in a Christian manner, I'll talk with you; and if you +don't, I won't. Do you suppose I'm going to be bullied into liking them?" + +"You can like them or not, as you please," said Dan sullenly; but he sat +down, and waited decently for his sister to speak. "But you can't abuse +them--at least in my presence." + +"I didn't know men lost their heads as well as their hearts," said Eunice. +"Perhaps it's only an exchange, though, and it's Miss Pasmer's head." Dan +started, but did not say anything, and Eunice smoothly continued: "No, I +don't believe it is. She looked like a sensible girl, and she talked +sensibly. I should think she had a very good head. She has good manners, +and she's extremely pretty, and very graceful. I'm surprised she should +be in love with such a simpleton." + +"Oh, go on! Abuse me as much as you like," said Dan. He was at once +soothed by her praise of Alice. + +"No, it isn't necessary to go on; the case is a little too obvious. But I +think she will do very well. I hope you're not marrying the whole family, +though. I suppose that it's always a question of which shall be scooped +up. They will want to scoop you up, and we shall want to scoop her up. I +dare say Ma'am Pasmer has her little plan; what is it?" + +Dan started at this touch on the quick, but he controlled himself, and +said, with dignity, "I have my own plans." + +"Well, you know what mother's are," returned Eunice easily. "You seem so +cheerful that I suppose yours are quite the same, and you're just keeping +them for a surprise." She laughed provokingly, and Dan burst forth again-- + +"You seem to live to give people pain. You take a fiendish delight in +torturing others. But if you think you can influence me in the slightest +degree, you're very much mistaken." + +"Well, well, there! It sha'n't be teased any more, so it sha'n't! It +shall have its own way, it shall, and nobody shall say a word against its +little girly's mother." Eunice rose from her chair, and patted Dan on the +head as she passed to the adjoining room. He caught her hand, and flung +it violently away; she shrieked with delight in his childish resentment, +and left him sulking. She was gone two or three minutes, and when she +came back it was in quite a different mood, as often happens with women in +a little lapse of time. + +"Dan, I think Miss Pasmer is a beautiful girl, and I know we shall all +like her, if you don't set us against her by your arrogance. Of course we +don't know anything about her yet, and you don't, really; but she seems a +very lovable little thing, and if she's rather silent and undemonstrative, +why, she'll be all the better for you: you've got demonstration enough for +twenty. And I think the family are well enough. Mrs. Pasmer is +thoroughly harmless; and Mr. Pasmer is a most dignified personage; his +eyebrows alone are worth the price of admission." Dan could not help +smiling. "All that there is about it is, you mustn't expect to drive +people into raptures about them, and expect them to go grovelling round on +their knees because you do." + +"Oh, I know I'm an infernal idiot," said Dan, yielding to the mingled +sarcasm and flattery. "It's because I'm so anxious; and you all seem so +confoundedly provisional about it. Eunice, what do you suppose father +really thinks?" + +Eunice seemed tempted to a relapse into her teasing, but she did not +yield. "Oh, father's all right--from your point of view. He's been +ridiculous from the first; perhaps that's the reason he doesn't feel +obliged to expatiate and expand a great deal at present." + +"Do you think so?" cried Dan, instantly adopting her as an ally. + +"Well, if I sad so, oughtn't it to be enough?" + +"It depends upon what else you say. Look here, now, Eunice!" Dan said, +with a laughing mixture of fun and earnest, "what are you going to say to +mother? It's no use, being disagreeable, is it? Of course, I don't +contend for ideal perfection anywhere, and I don't expect it. But there +isn't anything experimental about this thing, and don't you think we had +better all make the best of it?" + +"That sounds very impartial." + +"It is impartial. I'm a purely disinterested spectator." + +"Oh, quite." + +"And don't you suppose I understand Mr. and Mrs. Pasmer quite as well as +you do? All I say is that Alice is simply the noblest girl that ever +breathed, and--" + +"Now you're talking sense, Dan!" + +"Well, what are you going to say when you get home, Eunice? Come!" + +"That we had better make the best of it." + +"And what else?" + +"That you're hopelessly infatuated; and that she will twist you round her +finger." + +"Well?" + +"But that you've had your own way so much, it will do you good to have +somebody else's a while." + +"I guess you're pretty solid," said Dan, after thinking it over for a +moment. "I don't believe you're going to make it hard for me, and I know +you can make it just what you please. But I want you to be frank with +mother. Of course I wish you felt about the whole affair just as I do, +but if you're right on the main question, I don't care for the rest. I'd +rather mother would know just how you feel about it," said Dan, with a +sigh for the honesty which he felt to be not immediately attainable in his +own case. + +"Well, I'll see what can be done," Eunice finally assented. + +Whatever her feelings were in regard to the matter, she must have +satisfied herself that the situation was not to be changed by her +disliking it, and she began to talk so sympathetically with Dan that she +soon had the whole story of his love out of him. They laughed a good deal +together at it, but it convinced her that he had not been hoodwinked into +the engagement. It is always the belief of a young man's family, +especially his mother and sisters, that unfair means have been used to win +him, if the family of his betrothed are unknown to them; and it was a +relief, if not exactly a comfort, for Eunice Mavering to find that Alice +was as great a simpleton as Dan, and perhaps a sincerer simpleton. + + + + +XXXII. + +A week later, in fulfilment of the arrangement made by Mrs. Pasmer and +Eunice Mavering, Alice and her mother returned the formal visit of Dan's +people. + +While Alice stood before the mirror in one of the sumptuously furnished +rooms assigned them, arranging a ribbon for the effect upon Dan's mother +after dinner, and regarding its relation to her serious beauty, Mrs. +Pasmer came out of her chamber adjoining, and began to inspect the formal +splendour of the place. + +"What a perfect man's house!" she said, peering about. "You can see that +everything has been done to order. They have their own taste; they're +artistic enough for that--or the father is--and they've given orders to +have things done so and so, and the New York upholsterer has come up and +taken the measure of the rooms and done it. But it isn't like New York, +and it isn't individual. The whole house is just like those girls' +tailor-made costumes in character. They were made in New York, but they +don't wear them with the New York style; there's no more atmosphere about +them than if they were young men dressed up. There isn't a thing lacking +in the house here; there's an awful completeness; but even the ornaments +seem laid on, like the hot and cold water. I never saw a handsomer, more +uninviting room than that drawing room. I suppose the etching will come +some time after supper. What do you think of it all, Alice?" + +"Oh, I don't know. They must be very rich," said the girl indifferently. + +"You can't tell. Country people of a certain kind are apt to put +everything on their backs and their walls and floors. Of course such a +house here doesn't mean what it would in town." She examined the texture +of the carpet more critically, and the curtains; she had no shame about a +curiosity that made her daughter shrink. + +"Don't, mamma!" pleaded the girl. "What if they should come?" + +"They won't come," said Mrs. Pasmer; and her notice being called to Alice, +she made her take off the ribbon. "You're better without it." + +"I'm so nervous I don't know what I'm doing," said Alice, removing it, +with a whimper. + +"Well, I can't have you breaking down!" cried her mother warningly: she +really wished to shake her, as a culmination of her own conflicting +emotions. "Alice, stop this instant! Stop it, I say!" + +"But if I don't like her?" whimpered Alice. + +"You're not going to marry her. Now stop! Here, bathe your eyes; they're +all red. Though I don't know that it matters. Yes, they'll expect you to +have been crying," said Mrs. Pasmer, seeing the situation more and more +clearly. "It's perfectly natural." But she took some cologne on a +handkerchief, and recomposed Alice's countenance for her. "There, the +colour becomes you, and I never saw your eyes look so bright." + +There was a pathos in their brilliancy which of course betrayed her to the +Mavering girls. It softened Eunice, and encouraged Minnie, who had been a +little afraid of the Pasmers. They both kissed Alice with sisterly +affection. Their father merely saw how handsome she looked, and Dan's +heart seemed to melt in his breast with tenderness. + +In recognition of the different habits of their guests, they had dinner +instead of tea. The Portuguese cook had outdone himself, and course +followed course in triumphal succession. Mrs. Pasmer praised it all with +a sincerity that took away a little of the zest she felt in making +flattering speeches. + +Everything about the table was perfect, but in a man's fashion, like the +rest of the house. It lacked the atmospheric charm, the otherwise +indefinable grace, which a woman's taste gives. It was in fact Elbridge +Mavering's taste which had characterised the whole; the daughters simply +accepted and approved. + +"Yes," said Eunice, "we haven't much else to do; so we eat. And Joe does +his best to spoil us." + +"Joe?" + +"Joe's the cook. All Portuguese cooks are Joe." + +"How very amusing!" said Mrs. Pasmer. "You must let me speak of your +grapes. I never saw anything so--well!--except your roses." + +"There you touched father in two tender spots. He cultivates both." + +"Really? Alice, did you ever see anything like these roses?" + +Alice looked away from Dan a moment, and blushed to find that she had been +looking so long at him. + +"Ah, I have," said Mavering gallantly. + +"Does he often do it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer, in an obvious aside to Eunice. + +Dan answered for him. "He never had such a chance before." + +Between coffee, which they drank at table, and tea, which they were to +take in Mrs. Mavering's room, they acted upon a suggestion from Eunice +that her father should show Mrs. Pasmer his rose-house. At one end of the +dining-room was a little apse of glass full of flowering plants growing +out of the ground, and with a delicate fountain tinkling in their midst. +Dan ran before the rest, and opened two glass doors in the further side of +this half-bubble, and at the same time with a touch flashed up a +succession of brilliant lights in some space beyond, from which there +gushed in a wave of hothouse fragrance, warm, heavy, humid. It was a +pretty little effect for guests new to the house, and was part of Elbridge +Mavering's pleasure in this feature of his place. Mrs. Pasmer responded +with generous sympathy, for if she really liked anything with her whole +heart, it was an effect, and she traversed the half-bubble by its pebbled +path, showering praises right and left with a fulness and accuracy that +missed no detail, while Alice followed silently, her hand in Minnie +Mavering's, and cold with suppressed excitement. The rose-house was +divided by a wall, pierced with frequent doorways, over which the trees +were trained and the roses hung; and on either side were ranks of rare and +costly kinds, weighed down with bud and bloom. The air was thick with +their breath and the pungent odours of the rich soil from which they grew, +and the glass roof was misted with the mingled exhalations. + +Mr. Mavering walked beside Alice, modestly explaining the difficulties of +rose culture, and his method of dealing with the red spider. He had a +stout knife in his hand, and he cropped long, heavy-laden stems of roses +from the walls and the beds, casually giving her their different names, +and laying them along his arm in a massive sheaf. + +Mrs. Pasmer and Eunice had gone forward with Dan, and were waiting for +them at the thither end of the rose-house. + +"Alice! just imagine: the grapery is beyond this," cried the girl's +mother. + +"It's a cold grapery," said Mr. Mavering. "I hope you'll see it to- +morrow." + +"Oh, why not to-night?" shouted Dan. + +"Because it's a cold grapery," said Eunice; "and after this rose-house, +it's an Arctic grapery. You're crazy, Dan." + +"Well, I want Alice to see it anyway," he persisted wilfully. "There's +nothing like a cold grapery by starlight. I'll get some wraps." They all +knew that he wished to be alone with her a moment, and the three women, +consenting with their hearts, protested with their tongues, following him +in his flight with their chorus, and greeting his return. He muffled her +to the chin in a fur-lined overcoat, which he had laid hands on the first +thing; and her mother, still protesting, helped to tie a scarf over her +hair so as not to disarrange it. "Here," he pointed, "we can run through +it, and it's worth seeing. Better come," he said to the others as he +opened the door, and hurried Alice down the path under the keen sparkle of +the crystal roof, blotched with the leaves and bunches of the vines. +Coming out of the dense, sensuous, vaporous air of the rose-house into +this clear, thin atmosphere, delicately penetrated with the fragrance, +pure and cold, of the fruit, it was as if they had entered another world. +His arm crept round her in the odorous obscurity. + +"Look up! See the stars through the vines! But when she lifted her face +he bent his upon it for a wild kiss. + +"Don't! don't!" she murmured. "I want to think; I don't know what I'm +doing." + +"Neither do I. I feel as if I were a blessed ghost." + +Perhaps it is only in these ecstasies of the senses that the soul ever +reaches self-consciousness on earth; and it seems to be only the man-soul +which finds itself even in this abandon. The woman-soul has always +something else to think of. + +"What shall we do," said the girl, "if we--Oh, I dread to meet your +mother! Is she like either of your sisters?" + +"No," he cried joyously; "she's like me. If you're not afraid of me, and +you don't seem to be--" + +"You're all I have--you're all I have in the world. Do you think she'll +like me? Oh, do you love me, Dan?" + +"You darling! you divine--" The rest was a mad embrace. "If you're not +afraid of me, you won't mind mother. I wanted you here alone for just a +last word, to tell you you needn't be afraid; to tell you to--But I +needn't tell you how to act. You mustn't treat her as an invalid--you +must treat her like any one else; that's what she likes. But you'll know +what's best, Alice. Be yourself, and she'll like you well enough. I'm +not afraid." + + + + +XXXIII: + +When she entered Mrs. Mavering's room Alice first saw the pictures, the +bric-a-brac, the flowers, the dazzle of lights, and then the invalid +propped among her pillows, and vividly expectant of her. She seemed all +eager eyes to the girl, aware next of the strong resemblance to Dan in her +features, and of the careful toilet the sick woman had made for her. To +youth all forms of suffering are abhorrent, and Alice had to hide a +repugnance at sight of this spectre of what had once been a pretty woman. +Through the egotism with which so many years of flattering subjection in +her little world had armed her, Mrs. Mavering probably did not feel the +girl's shrinking, or, if she did, took it for the natural embarrassment +which she would feel. She had satisfied herself that she was looking her +best, and that her cap and the lace jacket she wore were very becoming, +and softened her worst points; the hangings of her bed and the richly +embroidered crimson silk coverlet were part of the coquetry of her +costume, from which habit had taken all sense of ghastliness; she was +proud of them, and she was not aware of the scent of drugs that insisted +through the odour of the flowers. + +She lifted herself on her elbow as Dan approached with Alice, and the girl +felt as if an intense light had been thrown upon her from head to foot in +the moment of searching scrutiny that followed. The invalid's set look +broke into a smile, and she put out her hand, neither hot nor cold, but of +a dry neutral, spiritual temperature, and pulled Alice down and kissed +her. + +"Why, child, your hand's like ice!" she exclaimed without preamble. "We +used to say that came from a warm heart." + +"I guess it comes from a cold grapery in this case, mother," said Dan, +with his laugh. "I've just been running Alice through it. And perhaps a +little excitement--" + +"Excitement?" echoed his mother. "Cold grapery, I dare say, and very +silly of you, Dan; but there's no occasion for excitement, as if we were +strangers. Sit down in that chair, my dear. And, Dan, you go round to +the other side of the bed; I want Alice all to myself. I saw your +photograph a week ago, and I've thought about you for ages since, and +wondered whether you would approve of your old friend." + +"Oh yes," whispered the girl, suppressing a tremor; and Dan's eyes were +suffused with grateful tears at his mother's graciousness. + +Alice's reticence seemed to please the invalid. "I hope you'll like all +your old friends here; you've begun with the worst among us, but perhaps +you like him the best because he is the worst; I do." + +"You may believe just half of that, Alice," cried Dan. + +"Then believe the best half, or the half you like best," said Mrs. +Mavering. "There must be something good in him if you like him. Have +they welcomed you home, my dear?" + +We've all made a stagger at it," said Dan, while Alice was faltering over +the words which were so slow to come. + +"Don't try to answer my formal stupidities. You are welcome, and that's +enough, and more than enough of speeches. Did you have a comfortable +journey up?" + +"Oh, very." + +"Was it cold?" + +"Not at all. The cars were very hot." + +"Have you had any snow yet at Boston?" + +"No, none at all yet." + +"Now I feel that we're talking sense. I hope you found everything in your +room?" I can't look after things as I would like, and so I inquire." + +"There's everything," said Alice. "We're very comfortable." + +"I'm very glad. I had Dan look, he's my housekeeper; he understands me +better than my girls; he's like me, more. That's what makes us so fond of +each other; it's a kind of personal vanity. But he has his good points, +Dan has. He's very amiable, and I was too, at his age--and till I came +here. But I'm not going to tell you of his good points; I dare say you've +found them out. I'll tell you about his bad ones. He says you're very +serious. Are you?" She pressed the girl's hand, which she had kept in +hers, and regarded her keenly. + +Alice dropped her eyes at the odd question. "I don't know," she faltered. +"Sometimes." + +"Well, that's good. Dan's frivolous." + +"Oh, sometimes--only sometimes!" he interposed. + +"He's frivolous, and he's very light-minded; but he's none the worse for +that." + +"Oh, thank you," said Dan; and Alice, still puzzled, laughed +provisionally. + +"No; I want you to understand that. He's light-hearted too, and that's a +great thing in this world. If you're serious you'll be apt to be +heavyhearted, and then you'll find Dan of use. And I hope he'll know how, +to turn your seriousness to account too. he needs something to keep him +down--to keep him from blowing away. "Yes, it's very well for people to +be opposites. Only they must understand each other, If they do that, then +they get along. Light-heartedness or heavy-heartedness comes to the same +thing if they know how to use it for each other. You see, I've got to be +a great philosopher lying here; nobody dares contradict me or interrupt me +when I'm constructing my theories, and so I get them perfect." + +"I wish I could hear them all," said Alice, with sincerity that made Mrs. +Mavering laugh as light-heartedly as Dan himself, and that seemed to +suggest the nest thing to her. + +"You can for the asking, almost any time. Are you a very truthful person, +my dear? Don't take the trouble to deny it if you are," she added, at +Alice's stare. "You see, I'm not at all conventional and you needn't be. +Come! tell the truth for once, at any rate. Are you habitually truthful?" + +"Yes, I think I am," said Alice, still staring. + +"Dan's not," said his mother quietly. + +"Oh, see here, now, mother! Don't give me away!" + +"He'll tell the truth in extremity, of course, and he'll tell it if it's +pleasant, always; but if you don't expect much more of him you won't be +disappointed; and you can make him of great use." + +"You see where I got it, anyway, Alice," said Dan, laughing across the bed +at her. + +"Yes, you got it from me: I own it. A great part of my life was made up +of making life pleasant to others by fibbing. I stopped it when I came +here." + +"Oh, not altogether, mother!" urged her son. "You mustn't be too hard on +yourself." + +She ignored his interruption: "You'll find Dan a great convenience with +that agreeable habit of his. You can get him to make all your verbal +excuses for you (he'll, do it beautifully), and dictate all the thousand +and one little lying notes you'll have to write; he won't mind it in the +least, and it will save you a great wear-and-tear of conscience." + +"Go on, mother, go on," said Dan, with delighted eyes, that asked of Alice +if it were not all perfectly charming. + +"And you can come in with your habitual truthfulness where Dan wouldn't +know what to do, poor fellow. You'll have the moral courage to come right +to the point when he would like to shillyshally, and you can be frank +while he's trying to think how to make y-e-s spell no." + +"Any other little compliments, mother?" suggested Dan. + +"No," said Mrs. Mavering; "that's all. I thought I'd better have it off +my mind; I knew you'd never get it off yours, and Alice had better know +the worst. It is the worst, my dear, and if I talked of him till doomsday +I couldn't say any more harm of him. I needn't tell you how sweet he is; +you know that, I'm sure; but you can't know yet how gentle and forbearing +he is, how patient, how full of kindness to every living soul, how +unselfish, how--" + +She lost her voice. "Oh, come now, mother," Dan protested huskily. + +Alice did not say anything; she bent over, without repugnance, and +gathered the shadowy shape into her strong young arms, and kissed the +wasted face whose unearthly coolness was like the leaf of a flower against +her lips. "He never gave me a moment's trouble," said the mother, "and +I'm sure he'll make you happy. How kind of you not to be afraid of me--" + +"Afraid!" cried the girl, with passionate solemnity. "I shall never feel +safe away from you!" + +The door opened upon the sound of voices, and the others came in. + +Mrs. Pasmer did not wait for an introduction, but with an affectation of +impulse which she felt Mrs. Mavering would penetrate and respect, she went +up to the bed and presented herself. Dan's mother smiled hospitably upon +her, and they had some playful words about their children. Mrs. Pasmer +neatly conveyed the regrets of her husband, who had hoped up to the last +moment that the heavy cold he had taken would let him come with her; and +the invalid made her guest sit down on the right hand of her bed, which +seemed to be the place of honour, while her husband took Dan's place on +the left, and admired his wife's skill in fence. At the end of her +encounter with Mrs. Pasmer she called out with her strong voice, "Why +don't you get your banjo, Molly, and play something?" + +"A banjo? Oh, do!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "It's so picturesque and +interesting! I heard that young ladies had taken it up, and I should so +like to hear it!" She had turned to Mrs. Mavering again, and she now +beamed winningly upon her. + +Alice regarded the girl with a puzzled frown as she brought her banjo in +from another room and sat down with it. She relaxed the severity of her +stare a little as Molly played one wild air after another, singing some of +them with an evidence of training in her naive effectiveness. There were +some Mexican songs which she had learned in a late visit to their country, +and some Creole melodies caught up in a winter's sojourn to Louisiana. +The elder sister accompanied her on the piano, not with the hard, resolute +proficiency which one might have expected of Eunice Mavering, but with a +sympathy which was perhaps the expression of her share of the family +kindliness. + +"Your children seem to have been everywhere," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a +sigh of flattering envy. "Oh, you're not going to stop!" she pleaded, +turning from Mrs. Mavering to Molly. + +"I think Dan had better do the rheumatic uncle now," said Eunice, from the +piano. + +"Oh yes! the rheumatic uncle--do," said Mrs. Pasmer. "We know the +rheumatic uncle," she added, with a glance at Alice. Dan looked at her +too, as if doubtful of her approval; and then he told in character a +Yankee story which he had worked up from the talk of his friend the +foreman. It made them all laugh. + +Mrs. Pasmer was the gayest; she let herself go, and throughout the evening +she flattered right and left, and said, in her good-night to Mrs. +Mavering, that she had never imagined so delightful a time. "O Mrs. +Mavering, I don't wonder your children love their home. It's a +revelation." + + + + +XXXIV. + +"She's a cat, Dan," said his mother quietly, and not without liking, when +he looked in for his goodnight kiss after the rest were gone; "a perfect +tabby. But your Alice is sublime." + +"O mother--" + +"She's a little too sublime for me. But you're young, and you can stand +it." + +Dan laughed with delight. "Yes, I think I can, mother. All I ask is the +chance." + +"Oh, you're very much in love, both of you; there's no doubt about that. +What I mean is that she's very high strung, very intense. She has ideals- +-any one can see that." + +Dan took it all for praise. "Yes," he said eagerly, "that's what I told +you. And that will be the best thing about it for me. I have no ideals." + +"Well, you must find out what hers are, and live up to them." + +"Oh, there won't be any trouble about that," said Dan buoyantly. + +"You must help her to find them out too." He looked puzzled. "You +mustn't expect the child to be too definite at first, nor to be always +right, even when she's full of ideals. You must be very patient with her, +Dan." + +"Oh, I will, mother! You know that. How could I ever be impatient with +Alice?" + +"Very forbearing, and very kind, and indefatigably forgiving. Ask your +father how to behave." + +Dan promised to do so, with a laugh at the joke. It had never occurred to +him that his father was particularly exemplary in these things, or that +his mother idolised him for what seemed to Dan simply a matter-of-course +endurance of her sick whims and freaks and moods. He broke forth into a +vehement protest of his good intentions, to which his mother did not seem +very attentive. After a while she asked-- + +"Is she always so silent, Dan?" + +"Well, not with me, mother. Of course she was a little embarrassed; she +didn't know exactly what to say, I suppose--" + +"Oh, I rather liked that. At least she isn't a rattle-pate. And we shall +get acquainted; we shall like each other. She will understand me when you +bring her home here to live with us, and--" + +"Yes," said Dan, rising rather hastily, and stooping over to his mother. +"I'm not going to let you talk any more now, or we shall have to suffer +for it to-morrow night." + +He got gaily away before his mother could amplify a suggestion which +spoiled a little of his pleasure in the praises--he thought they were +unqualified and enthusiastic praises--she had been heaping upon Alice. He +wished to go to bed with them all sweet and unalloyed in his thought, to +sleep, to dream upon his perfect triumph. + +Mrs. Pasmer was a long time in undressing, and in calming down after the +demands which the different events of the evening had made upon her +resources. + +"It has certainly been a very mixed evening, Alice," she said, as she took +the pins out of her back hair and let it fall; and she continued to talk +as she went back and forth between their rooms. "What do you think of +banjo-playing for young ladies? Isn't it rather rowdy? Decidedly rowdy, +I think. And Dan's Yankee story! I expected to see the old gentleman get +up and perform some trick." + +"I suppose they do it to amuse Mrs. Mavering," said Alice, with cold +displeasure. + +"Oh, it's quite right," tittered Mrs. Pasmer. "It would be as much as +their lives are worth if they didn't. You can see that she rules them +with a rod of iron. What a will! I'm glad you're not going to come under +her sway; I really think you couldn't be safe from her in the same +hemisphere; it's well you're going abroad at once. They're a very self- +concentrated family, don't you think--very self-satisfied? Of course +that's the danger of living off by themselves as they do: they get to +thinking there's nobody else in the world. You would simply be absorbed +by them: it's a hair-breadth escape. + +"How splendidly Dan contrasts with the others! Oh, he's delightful; he's a +man of the world. Give me the world, after all! And he's so considerate +of their rustic conceit! What a house! It's perfectly baronial--and +ridiculous. In any other country it would mean something--society, +entertainments, troops of guests; but here it doesn't mean anything but +money. Not that money isn't a very good thing; I wish we had more of it. +But now you see how very little it can do by itself. You looked very +well, Alice, and behaved with great dignity; perhaps too much. You ought +to enter a little more into the spirit of things, even if you don't +respect them. That oldest girl isn't particularly pleased, I fancy, +though it doesn't matter really." + +Alice replied to her mother from time to time with absent Yeses and Noes; +she sat by the window looking out on the hillside lawn before the house; +the moon had risen, and poured a flood of snowy light over it, in which +the cold statues dimly shone, and the firs, in clumps and singly, +blackened with an inky solidity. Beyond wandered the hills, their bare +pasturage broken here and there by blotches of woodland. + +After her mother had gone to bed she turned her light down and resumed her +seat by the window, pressing her hot forehead against the pane, and losing +all sense of the scene without in the whirl of her thoughts. + +After this, evening of gay welcome in Dan's family, and those moments of +tenderness with him, her heart was troubled. She now realised her +engagement as something exterior to herself and her own family, and +confronted for the first time its responsibilities, its ties, and its +claims. It was not enough to be everything to Dan; she could not be that +unless she were something to his family. She did not realise this +vividly, but with the remoteness which all verities except those of +sensation have for youth. + +Her uneasiness was full of exultation, of triumph; she knew she had been +admired by Dan's family, and she experienced the sweetness of having +pleased them for his sake; his happy eyes shone before her; but she was +touched in her self-love by what her mother had coarsely characterised in +them. They had regarded her liking them as a matter of course; his mother +had ignored her even in pretending to decry Dan to her. But again this +was very remote, very momentary. It was no nearer, no more lasting on the +surface of her happiness, than the flying whiff's of thin cloud that +chased across the moon and lost themselves in the vast blue around it. + + + + +XXXV. + +People came to the first of Mrs. James Bellingham's receptions with the +expectation of pleasure which the earlier receptions of the season awaken +even in the oldest and wisest. But they tried to dissemble their +eagerness in a fashionable tardiness. "We get later and later," said Mrs. +Brinkley to John Munt, as she sat watching the slow gathering of the +crowd. By half-past eleven it had not yet hidden Mrs. Bellingham, where +she stood near the middle of the room, from the pleasant corner they had +found after accidentally arriving together. Mr. Brinkley had not come; he +said he might not be too old for receptions, but he was too good; in +either case he preferred to stay at home. "We used to come at nine +o'clock, and now we come at I'm getting into a quotation from Mother +Goose, I think." + +"I thought it was Browning," said Munt, with his witticism manner. +Neither he nor Mrs. Brinkley was particularly glad to be together, but at +Mrs. James Bellingham's it was well not to fling any companionship away +till you were sure of something else. Besides, Mrs. Brinkley was indolent +and good-natured, and Munt was active and good-natured, and they were well +fitted to get on for ten or fifteen minutes. While they talked she kept +an eye out for other acquaintance, and he stood alert to escape at the +first chance. "How is it we are here so early--or rather you are?" she +pursued irrelevantly. + +"Oh, I don't know," said Munt, accepting the implication of his superior +fashion with pleasure. "I never mind being among the first. It's rather +interesting to see people come in--don't you think?" + +"That depends a good deal on the people. I don't find a great variety in +their smirks and smiles to Mrs. Bellingham; I seem to be doing them all +myself. And there's a monotony about their apprehension and helplessness +when they're turned adrift that's altogether too much like my own. No, +Mr. Munt, I can't agree with you that it's interesting to see people come +in. It's altogether too autobiographical. What else have you to +suggest?" + +"I'm afraid I'm at the end of my string," said Munt. "I suppose we shall +see the Pasmers and young Mavering here to-night." + +Mrs. Brinkley turned and looked sharply at him. + +"You've heard of the engagement?" he asked. + +"No, decidedly, I haven't. And after his flight from Campobello it's the +last thing I expected to hear of. When did it come out?" + +"Only within a few days. They've been keeping it rather quiet. Mrs. +Pasmer told me herself." + +Mrs. Brinkley gave herself a moment for reflection. "Well, if he can +stand it, I suppose I can." + +"That isn't exactly what people are saying to Mrs. Pasmer, Mrs. Brinkley," +suggested Munt, with his humorous manner. + +"I dare say they're trying to make her believe that her daughter is +sacrificed. That's the way. But she knows better." + +"There's no doubt but she's informed herself. She put me through my +catechism about the Maverings the day of the picnic down there." + +"Do you know them?" + +"Bridge Mavering and I were at Harvard together." + +"Tell me about them." Mrs. Brinkley listened to Munt's praises of his old +friend with an attention superficially divided with the people to whom she +bowed and smiled. The room was filling up. "Well," she said at the end, +"he's a sweet young fellow. I hope he likes his Pasmers." + +"I guess there's no doubt about his liking one of them--the principal +one." + +"Yes, if she is the principal one." There was an implication in +everything she said that Dan Mavering had been hoodwinked by Mrs. Pasmer. +Mature ladies always like to imply something of the sort in these cases. +They like to ignore the prime agency of youth and love, and pretend that +marriage is a game that parents play at with us, as if we were in an old +comedy; it is a tradition. "Will he take her home to live?" + +"No. I heard that they're all going abroad--for a year, or two at least." + +"Ah! I thought so," cried Mrs. Brinkley. She looked up with whimsical +pleasure in the uncertainty of an old gentleman who is staring hard at her +through his glasses. "Well," she said with a pleasant sharpness, "do you +make me out?" + +"As nearly as my belief in your wisdom will allow," said the old +gentleman, as distinctly as his long white moustache and an apparent +absence of teeth behind it would let him. John Munt had eagerly abandoned +the seat he was keeping at Mrs. Brinkley's side, and had launched himself +into the thickening crowd. The old gentleman, who was lank and tall, +folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquilly as if seated quite +alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that his voice, with the senile +crow in it, made itself heard by others. "I'm always surprised to find +sensible people at these things of Jane's. They're most extraordinary +things. Jane's idea of society is to turn a herd of human beings loose in +her house, and see what will come of it. She has no more sense of +hospitality or responsibility than the Elements or Divine Providence. You +may come here and have a good time--if you can get it; she won't object; +or you may die of solitude and inanition; she'd never know it. I don't +know but it's rather sublime in her. It's like the indifference of fate; +but it's rather rough on those who don't understand it. She likes to see +her rooms filled with pretty dresses, but she has no social instincts and +no social inspiration whatever. She lights and heats and feeds her +guests, and then she leaves them to themselves. She's a kind woman--Jane +is a very good-natured woman, and I really think she'd be grieved if she +thought any one went away unhappy, but she does nothing to make them at +home in her house--absolutely nothing." + +"Perhaps she does all they deserve for them. I don't know that any one +acquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it's impossible to be +personally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd." + +Yes, I've sometimes taken that view of it. And yet if you ask a stranger +to your house, you establish a tacit understanding with him that you won't +forget him after you have him there. I like to go about and note the +mystification of strangers who've come here with some notion of a little +attention. It's delightfully poignant; I suffer with them; it's a cheap +luxury of woe; I follow them through all the turns and windings of their +experience. Of course the theory is that, being turned loose here with +the rest, they may speak to anybody; but the fact is, they can't. +Sometimes I should like to hail some of these unfriended spirits, but I +haven't the courage. I'm not individually bashful, but I have a thousand +years of Anglo-Saxon civilisation behind me. There ought to be policemen, +to show strangers about and be kind to them. I've just seen two pretty +women cast away in a corner, and clinging to a small water-colour on the +wall with a show of interest that would melt a heart of stone. Why do you +come, Mrs. Brinkley? I should like to know. You're not obliged to." + +"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, lowering her voice instinctively, as if to bring +his down. "I suppose I come from force of habit I've been coming a long +time, you know. Why do you come?" + +"Because I can't sleep. If I could sleep, I should be at home in bed." A +weariness came into his thin face and dim eyes that was pathetic, and +passed into a whimsical sarcasm. "I'm not one of the great leisure class, +you know, that voluntarily turns night into day. Do you know what I go +about saying now?" + +"Something amusing, I suppose." + +"You'd better not be so sure of that. I've discovered a fact, or rather +I've formulated an old one. I've always been troubled how to classify +people here, there are so many exceptions; and I've ended by broadly +generalising them as women and men." + +Mrs. Brinkley was certainly amused at this. "It seems to me that there +you've been anticipated by nature--not to mention art." + +"Oh, not in my particular view. The women in America represent the +aristocracy which exists everywhere else in both sexes. You are born to +the patrician leisure; you have the accomplishments and the clothes and +manners and ideals; and we men are a natural commonalty, born to business, +to newspapers, to cigars, and horses. This natural female aristocracy of +ours establishes the forms, usages, places, and times of society. The +epicene aristocracies of other countries turn night into day in their +social pleasures, and our noblesse sympathetically follows their example. +You ladies, who can lie till noon next day, come to Jane's reception at +eleven o'clock, and you drag along with you a herd of us brokers, bankers, +merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who must be at our offices and counting- +rooms before nine in the morning. The hours of us work-people are +regulated by the wholesome industries of the great democracy which we're a +part of; and the hours of our wives and daughters by the deleterious +pleasures of the Old World aristocracy. That's the reason we're not all +at home in bed." + +"I thought you were not at home in bed because you couldn't sleep." + +"I know it. And you've no idea how horrible a bed is that you can't sleep +in." The old man's voice broke in a tremor. "Ah, it's a bed of torture! +I spend many a wicked hour in mine, envying St. Lawrence his gridiron. +But what do you think of my theory?" + +"It's a very pretty theory. My only objection to it is that it's too +flattering. You know I rather prefer to abuse my sex; and to be set up as +a natural aristocracy--I don't know that I can quite agree to that, even +to account satisfactorily for being at your sister-in-law's reception." + +"You're too modest, Mrs. Brinkley." + +"No, really. There ought to be some men among us--men without morrows. +Now, why don't you and my husband set an example to your sex? Why don't +you relax your severe sense of duty? Why need you insist upon being at +your offices every morning at nine? Why don't you fling off these habits +of lifelong industry, and be gracefully indolent in the interest of the +higher civilisation?" + +Bromfield Corey looked round at her with a smile of relish for her satire. +Her husband was a notoriously lazy man, who had chosen to live +restrictedly upon an inherited property rather than increase it by the +smallest exertion. + +"Do you think we could get Andy Pasmer to join us?" + +"No, I can't encourage you with that idea. You must get on without Mr. +Pasmer; he's going back to Europe with his son-in-law." + +"Do you mean that their girl's married?" + +"No-engaged. It's just out." + +"Well, I must say Mrs. Pasmer has made use of her time." He too liked to +imply that it was all an effect of her manoeuvring, and that the young +people had nothing to do with it; this survival from European fiction dies +hard. "Who is the young man?" + +Mrs. Brinkley gave him an account of Dan Mavering as she had seen him at +Campobello, and of his family as she just heard of them. "Mr. Munt was +telling me about them as you came up." + +"Why, was that John Munt?" + +"Yes; didn't you know him?" + +"No," said Corey sadly. "I don't know anybody nowadays. I seem to be +going to pieces every way. I don't call sixty-nine such a very great +age." + +"Not at all!" cried Mrs. Brinkley. "I'm fifty-four myself, and Brinkley's +sixty." + +"But I feel a thousand years old. I don't see people, and when I do I +don't know 'em. My head's in a cloud." He let it hang heavily; then he +lifted it, and said: "He's a nice, comfortable fellow, Munt is. Why +didn't he stop and talk a bit?" + +"Well, Munt's modest, you know; and I suppose he thought he might be the +third that makes company a crowd. Besides, nobody stops and talks a bit +at these things. They're afraid of boring or being bored." + +"Yes, they're all in as unnatural a mood as if they were posing for a +photograph. I wonder who invented this sort of thing? Do you know," said +the old man, "that I think it's rather worse with us than with any other +people? We're a simple, sincere folk, domestic in our instincts, not +gregarious or frivolous in any way; and when we're wrenched away from our +firesides, and packed in our best clothes into Jane's gilded saloons, we +feel vindictive; we feel wicked. When the Boston being abandons himself-- +or herself--to fashion, she suffers a depravation into something quite +lurid. She has a bad conscience, and she hardens her heart with talk +that's tremendously cynical. It's amusing," said Corey, staring round him +purblindly at the groups and files of people surging and eddying past the +corner where he sat with Mrs. Brinkley. + +"No; it's shocking," said his companion. "At any rate, you mustn't say +such things, even if you think them. I can't let you go too far, you +know. These young people think it heavenly, here." + +She took with him the tone that elderly people use with those older than +themselves who have begun to break; there were authority and patronage in +it. At the bottom of her heart she thought that Bromfield Corey should +not have been allowed to come; but she determined to keep him safe and +harmless as far as she could. + +From time to time the crowd was a stationary mass in front of them; then +it dissolved and flowed away, to gather anew; there were moments when the +floor near them was quite vacant; then it was inundated again with silken +trains. From another part of the house came the sound of music, and most +of the young people who passed went two and two, as if they were partners +in the dance, and had come out of the ball-room between dances. There was +a good deal of nervous talk, politely subdued among them; but it was not +the note of unearthly rapture which Mrs. Brinkley's conventional claim had +implied; it was self-interested, eager, anxious; and was probably not +different from the voice of good society anywhere. + + + + +XXXVI. + +"Why, there's Dan Mavering now!" said Mrs. Brinkley, rather to herself +than to her companion. "And alone!" + +Dan's face showed above most of the heads and shoulders about him; it was +flushed, and looked troubled and excited. He caught sight of Mrs. +Brinkley, and his eyes brightened joyfully. He slipped quickly through +the crowd, and bowed over her hand, while he stammered out, without giving +her a chance for reply till the end: "O Mrs. Brinkley, I'm so glad to see +you! I'm going--I want to ask a great favour of you, Mrs. Brinkley. I +want to bring--I want to introduce some friends of mine to you--some +ladies, Mrs. Brinkley; very nice people I met last summer at Portland. +Their father--General Wrayne--has been building some railroads down East, +and they're very nice people; but they don't know any one--any ladies--and +they've been looking at the pictures ever since they came. They're very +good pictures; but it isn't an exhibition!" He broke down with a laugh. + +"Why, of course, Mr. Mavering; I shall be delighted," said Mrs. Brinkley, +with a hospitality rendered reckless by her sympathy with the young +fellow. "By all means!" + +"Oh; thanks!--thank you aver so much!" said Dan. "I'll bring them to you +--they'll understand!" He slipped into the crowd again. + +Corey made an offer of going. Mrs. Brinkley stopped him with her fan. +"No--stay, Mr. Corey. Unless you wish to go. I fancy it's the people you +were talking about, and you must help me through with them." + +"I ask nothing better," said the old man, unresentful of Dan's having not +even seemed to see him, in his generous preoccupation. "I should like to +see how you'll get on, and perhaps I can be of use." + +"Of course you can--the greatest." + +"But why hasn't he introduced them to his Pasmers? What? Eh? Oh!" +Corey made these utterances in response to a sharper pressure of Mrs. +Brinkley's fan on his arm. + +Dan was opening a way through the crowd before them for two ladies, whom +he now introduced. "Mrs. Frobisher, Mrs. Brinkley; and Miss Wrayne." + +Mrs. Brinkley cordially gave her hand to the ladies, and said, "May I +introduce Mr. Corey? Mr. Mavering, let me introduce you to Mr. Corey." +The old man rose and stood with the little group. + +Dan's face shone with flattered pride and joyous triumph. He bubbled out +some happy incoherencies about the honour and pleasure, while at the same +time he beamed with tender gratitude upon Mrs. Brinkley, who was behaving +with a gracious, humorous kindliness to the aliens cast upon her mercies. +Mrs. Frobisher, after a half-hour of Boston society, was not that presence +of easy gaiety which crossed Dan's path on the Portland pavement the +morning of his arrival from Campobello; but she was still a handsome, +effective woman, of whom you would have hesitated to say whether she was +showy or distinguished. Perhaps she was a little of both, with an air of +command bred of supremacy in frontier garrisons; her sister was like her +in the way that a young girl may be like a young matron. They blossomed +alike in the genial atmosphere of Mrs. Brinkley and of Mr. Corey. He +began at once to make bantering speeches with them both. The friendliness +of an old man and a stout elderly woman might not have been their ideal of +success at an evening party, used as they were to the unstinted homage of +young captains and lieutenants, but a brief experience of Mrs. +Bellingham's hospitality must have taught them humility; and when a stout, +elderly gentleman, whose baldness was still trying to be blond, joined the +group, the spectacle was not without its points of resemblance to a social +ovation. Perhaps it was a Boston social ovation. + +"Hallo, Corey!" said this stout gentleman, whom Mrs. Brinkley at once +introduced as Mr. Bellingham, and whose salutation Corey returned with +"Hallo, Charles!" of equal intimacy. + +Mr. Bellingham caught at the name of Frobisher. "Mrs. Major Dick +Frobisher?" + +"Mrs. Colonel now, but Dick always," said the lady, with immediate +comradery. "Do you know my husband?" + +"I should think so!" said Bellingham; and a talk of common interest and +mutual reminiscence sprang up between them. Bellingham graphically +depicted his meeting with Colonel Frobisher the last time he was out on +the Plains, and Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne discovered to their great +satisfaction that he was the brother of Mrs. Stephen Blake, of Omaba, who +had come out to the fort once with her husband, and captured the garrison, +as they said. Mrs. Frobisher accounted for her present separation from +her husband, and said she had come on for a while to be with her father +and sister, who both needed more looking after than the Indians. Her +father had left the army, and was building railroads. + +Miss Wrayne, when she was not appealed to for confirmation or recollection +by her sister, was having a lively talk with Corey and Mrs. Brinkley; she +seemed to enter into their humour; and no one paid much attention to Dan +Mavering. He hung upon the outskirts of the little group; proffering +unrequited sympathy and applause; and at last he murmured something about +having to go back to some friends, and took himself off. Mrs. Frobisher +and Miss Wrayne let him go with a certain shade--the lightest, and yet +evident--of not wholly satisfied pique: women know how to accept a +reparation on account, and without giving a receipt in full. + +Mrs. Brinkley gave him her hand with an effect of compassionate +intelligence and appreciation of the sacrifice he must have made in +leaving Alice. "May I congratulate you?" she murmured. + +"Oh yes, indeed; thank you, Mrs. Brinkley," he gushed tremulously; and he +pressed her hand hard, and clung to it, as if he would like to take her +with him. + +Neither of the older men noticed his going. They were both taken in their +elderly way with these two handsome young women, and they professed regret +--Bellingham that his mother was not there, and Corey that neither his +wife nor daughters had come, whom they might otherwise have introduced. +They did not offer to share their acquaintance with any one else, but they +made the most of it themselves, as if knowing a good thing when they had +it. Their devotion to Mrs. Frobisher and her sister heightened the +curiosity of such people as noticed it, but it would be wrong to say that +it moved any in that self-limited company with a strong wish to know the +ladies. The time comes to every man, no matter how great a power he may +be in society, when the general social opinion retires him for senility, +and this time had come for Bromfield Corey. He could no longer make or +mar any success; and Charles Bellingham was so notoriously amiable, so +deeply compromised by his inveterate habit of liking nearly every one, +that his notice could not distinguish or advantage a newcomer. + +He and Corey took the ladies down to supper. Mrs. Brinkley saw them there +together, and a little later she saw old Corey wander off; forgetful of +Miss Wrayne. She saw Dan Mavering, but not the Pasmers, and then, when +Corey forgot Miss Wrayne, she saw Dan, forlorn and bewildered looking, +approach the girl, and offer her his arm for the return to the drawing- +room; she took it with a bright, cold smile, making white rings of +ironical deprecation around the pupils of her eyes. + +"What is that poor boy doing, I wonder?" said Mrs. Brinkley to herself. + + + + +XXXVII. + +The next morning Dan Mavering knocked at Boardman's door before the +reporter was up. This might have been any time before one o'clock, but it +was really at half-past nine. Boardman wanted to know who was there, and +when Mavering had said it was he, Boardman seemed to ponder the fact +awhile before Mavering heard him getting out of bed and coming barefooted +to the door. He unlocked it, and got back into bed; then he called out, +"Come in," and Mavering pushed the door open impatiently. But he stood +blank and silent, looking helplessly at his friend. A strong glare of +winter light came in through the naked sash--for Boardman apparently not +only did not close his window-blinds, but did not pull down his curtains, +when he went to bed--and shone upon his gay, shrewd face where he lay, +showing his pop-corn teeth in a smile at Mavering. + +"Prefer to stand?" he asked by and by, after Mavering had remained +standing in silence, with no signs of proposing to sit down or speak. +Mavering glanced at the only chair in the room: Boardman's clothes dripped +and dangled over it. "Throw 'em on the bed," he said, following +Mavering's glance. + +"I'll take the bed myself," said Mavering; and he sat down on the side of +it, and was again suggestively silent. + +Boardman moved his head on the pillow, as he watched Mavering's face, with +the agreeable sense of personal security which we all feel in viewing +trouble from the outside: "You seem balled up about something." + +Mavering sighed heavily. "Balled up? It's no word for it. Boardman, I'm +done for. Yesterday I was the happiest fellow in the world, and now--Yes, +it's all over with me, and it's my own fault, as usual. Look; at that!" +He jerked Boardman a note which he had been holding fast in his band, and +got up and went to look himself at the wide range of chimney-pots and +slated roofs which Boardman's dormer-window commanded. + +"Want me to read it?" Boardman asked; and Mavering nodded without glancing +round. It dispersed through the air of Boardman's room, as he unfolded +it, a thin, elect perfume, like a feminine presence, refined and strict; +and Boardman involuntarily passed his hand over his rumpled hair, as if to +make himself a little more personable before reading the letter. + +"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--I enclose the ring you gave me the other day, and I +release you from the promise you gave with it. I am convinced that you +wronged yourself in offering either without your whole heart, and I care +too much for your happiness to let you persist in your sacrifice. + +"In begging that you will not uselessly attempt to see me, but that you +will consider this note final, I know you will do me the justice not to +attribute an ungenerous motive to me. I shall rejoice to hear of any good +that may befall you; and I shall try not to envy any one through whom it +comes.--Yours sincerely," "ALICE PASMER." + +"P.S.--I say nothing of circumstances or of persons; I feel that any +comment of mine upon them would be idle." + + +Mavering looked up at the sound Boardman made in refolding the letter. +Boardman grinned, with sparkling eyes. "Pretty neat," he said. + +"Pretty infernally neat," roared Mavering. + +"Do you suppose she means business?" + +"Of course she means business. Why shouldn't she?" + +"I don't know. Why should she?" + +"Well, I'll tell you, Boardman. I suppose I shall have to tell you if I'm +going to get any good out of you; but it's a dose." He came away from +the window, and swept Boardman's clothes off the chair preparatory to +taking it. + +Boardman lifted his head nervously from the pillow. + +"Oh; I'll put them on the bed, if you're so punctilious!" cried Mavering. + +"I don't mind the clothes," said Boardman. "I thought I heard my watch +knock on the floor in my vest pocket. Just take it out, will you, and see +if you've stopped it?" + +"Oh, confound your old Waterbury! All the world's stopped; why shouldn't +your watch stop too?" Mavering tugged it out of the pocket, and then +shoved it back disdainfully. "You couldn't stop that thing with anything +short of a sledgehammer; it's rattling away like a mowing-machine. You +know those Portland women--those ladies I spent the day with when you were +down there at the regatta--the day I came from Campobello--Mrs. Frobisher +and her sister?" He agglutinated one query to another till he saw a light +of intelligence dawn in Boardman's eye. "Well, they're at the bottom of +it, I suppose. I was introduced to them on Class Day, and I ought to have +shown them some attention there; but the moment I saw Alice--Miss Pasmer-- +I forgot all about 'em. But they didn't seem to have noticed it much, and +I made it all right with 'em that day at Portland; and they came up in the +fall, and I made an appointment with them to drive out to Cambridge and +show them the place. They were to take me up at the Art Museum; but that +was the day I met Miss Pasmer, and I--I forgot about those women again." + +Boardman was one of those who seldom laugh; but his grin expressed all +the malicious enjoyment he felt. He said nothing in the impressive +silence which Mavering let follow at this point. + +"Oh, you think it was funny?" cried Mavering. "I thought it was funny +too; but Alice herself opened my eyes to what I'd done, and I always +intended to make it all right with them when I got the chance. I supposed +she wished me too." + +Boardman grinned afresh. + +"She told me I must; though she seemed to dislike my having been with them +the day after she'd thrown me over. But if"--Mavering interrupted himself +to say, as the grin widened on Boardman's face--"if you think it was any +case of vulgar jealousy, you're very much mistaken, Boardman. She isn't +capable of it, and she was so magnanimous about it that I made up my mind +to do all I could to retrieve myself. I felt that it was my duty to her. +Well, last night at Mrs. Jim Bellingham's reception--" + +A look of professional interest replaced the derision in Boardman's eyes. +"Any particular occasion for the reception? Given in honour of anybody?" + +"I'll contribute to your society notes some other time, Boardman," said +Mavering haughtily. "I'm speaking to a friend, not an interviewer. Well, +whom should I see after the first waltz--I'd been dancing with Alice, and +we were taking a turn through the drawing-room, and she hanging on my arm, +and I knew everybody saw how it was, and I was feeling well--whom should I +see but these women. They were in a corner by themselves, looking at a +picture, and trying to look as if they were doing it voluntarily. But I +could see at a glance that they didn't know anybody; and I knew they had +better be in the heart of the Sahara without acquaintances than where they +were; and when they bowed forlornly across the room to me, my heart was in +my mouth, I felt so sorry for them; and I told Alice who they were; and I +supposed she'd want to rush right over to them with me--" + +"And did she rush?" asked Boardman, filling up a pause which Mavering made +in wiping his face. + +"How infernally hot you have it in here!" He went to the window and threw +it up; and then did not sit down again, but continued to walk back and +forth as he talked. "She didn't seem to know who they were at first, and +when I made her understand she hung back, and said, 'Those showy things?' +and I must say I think she was wrong; they were dressed as quietly as +nine-tenths of the people there; only they are rather large, handsome +women. I said I thought we ought to go and speak to them, they seemed +stranded there; but she didn't seem to see it; and, when I persisted, she +said, 'Well, you go if you think best; but take me to mamma.' And I +supposed it was all right; and I told Mrs. Pasmer I'd be back in a minute, +and then I went off to those women. And after I'd talked with them a +while I saw Mrs. Brinkley sitting with old Bromfield Corey in another +corner, and I got them across and introduced them; after I'd explained to +Mrs. Brinkley who they were; and they began to have a good time, and I-- +didn't." + +"Just so," said Boardman. + +"I thought I hadn't been gone any while at all from Alice; but the weather +had changed by the time I had got back. Alice was pretty serious, and she +was engaged two or three dances deep; and I could see her looking over the +fellows' shoulders, as she went round and round, pretty pale. I hung +about till she was free; but then she couldn't dance with me; she said her +head ached, and she made her mother take her home before supper; and I +mooned round like my own ghost a while, and then I went home. And as if +that wasn't enough, I could see by the looks of those other women--old +Corey forgot Miss Wrayne in the supper-room, and I had to take her back-- +that I hadn't made it right with them, even; they were as hard and smooth +as glass. I'd ruined myself, and ruined myself for nothing." + +Mavering flung Boardman's chair over, and seated himself on its rungs. + +"I went to bed, and waited for the next thing to happen. I found my +thunderbolt waiting for me when I woke up. I didn't know what it was +going to be, but when I felt a ring through the envelope of that note I +knew what it was. I mind-read that note before I opened it." + +"Give it to the Society for Psychical Research," suggested Boardman. +"Been to breakfast?" + +"Breakfast!" echoed Mavering. "Well, now, Boardman, what use do you +suppose I've got for breakfast under the circumstances?" + +"Well, not very much; but your story's made me pretty hungry. Would you +mind turning your back, or going out and sitting on the top step of the +stairs' landing, or something, while I get up and dress?" + +"Oh, I can go, if you want to get rid of me," said Mavering, with +unresentful sadness. "But I hoped you might have something to suggest, +Boardy.' + +"Well, I've suggested two things, and you don't like either. Why not go +round and ask to see the old lady?" + +"Mrs. Pasmer?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I thought of that. But I didn't like to mention it, for fear you'd +sit on it. When would you go?" + +"Well, about as quick as I could get there. It's early for a call, but +it's a peculiar occasion, and it'll show your interest in the thing. You +can't very well let it cool on your hands, unless you mean to accept the +situation." + +"What do you mean?" demanded Mavering, getting up and standing over +Boardman. "Do you think I could accept the situation, as you call it, and +live?" + +"You did once," said Boardman. "You couldn't, unless you could fix it up +with Mrs. Frobisher's sister." + +Mavering blushed. "It was a different thing altogether then. I could +have broken off then, but I tell you it would kill me now. I've got in +too deep. My whole life's set on that girl. You can't understand, +Boardman, because you've never been there; but I couldn't give her up." + +"All right. Better go and see the old lady without loss of time; or the +old man, if you prefer." + +Mavering sat down on the edge of the bed again. "Look here, Boardman, +what do you mean?" + +"By what?" + +"By being so confoundedly heartless. Did you suppose that I wanted to pay +those women any attention last night from an interested motive?" + +"Seems to have been Miss Pasmer's impression." + +"Well, you're mistaken. She had no such impression. She would have too +much self-respect, too much pride--magnanimity. She would know that after +such a girl as she is I couldn't think of any other woman; the thing is +simply impossible." + +"That's the theory." + +"Theory? It's the practice!" + +"Certain exceptions." + +"There's no exception in my case. No, sir! I tell you this thing is for +all time--for eternity. It makes me or it mars me, once for all. She may +listen to me or she may not listen, but as long as she lives there's no +other woman alive for me." + +"Better go and tell her so. You're wasting your arguments on me." + +"Why?" + +"Because I'm convinced already. Because people always marry their first +and only loves. Because people never marry twice for love. Because I've +never seen you hit before, and I know you never could be again. Now go +and convince Miss Pasmer. She'll believe you, because she'll know that +she can never care for any one but you, and you naturally can't care for +anybody but her. It's a perfectly clear case. All you've got to do is to +set it before her." + +"If I were you, I wouldn't try to work that cynical racket, Boardman," +said Mavering. He rose, but he sighed drearily, and regarded Boardman's +grin with lack-lustre absence. But he went away without saying anything +more; and walked mechanically toward the Cavendish. As he rang at the +door of Mrs. Pasmer's apartments he recalled another early visit he had +paid there; he thought how joyful and exuberant he was then, and how +crushed and desperate now. He was not without youthful satisfaction in +the disparity of his different moods; it seemed to stamp him as a man of +large and varied experience. + + + + +XXXVIII. + +Mrs. Pasmer was genuinely surprised to see Mavering, and he pursued his +advantage--if it was an advantage--by coming directly to the point. He +took it for granted that she knew all about the matter, and he threw +himself upon her mercy without delay. + +"Mrs. Pasmer, you must help me about this business with Alice," he broke +out at once. "I don't know what to make of it; but I know I can explain +it. Of course," he added, smiling ruefully, "the two statements don't +hang together; but what I mean is that if I can find out what the trouble +is, I can make it all right, because there's nothing wrong about it; don't +you see?" + +Mrs. Pasmer tried to keep the mystification out of her eye; but she could +not even succeed in seeming to do so, which she would have liked almost as +well. + +"Don't you know what I mean?" asked Dan. + +Mrs. Pasmer chanced it. "That Alice was a little out of sorts last +night?" she queried leadingly. + +"Yes," said Mavering fervently. "And about her--her writing to me." + +"Writing to you?" Mrs. Pasmer was going to ask, when Dan gave her the +letter. + +"I don't know whether I ought to show it, but I must. I must have your +help, and I can't, unless you understand the case." + +Mrs. Pasmer had begun to read the note. It explained what the girl +herself had refused to give any satisfactory reason for--her early +retirement from the reception, her mysterious disappearance into her own +room on reaching home, and her resolute silence on the way. Mrs. Pasmer +had known that there must be some trouble with Dan, and she had suspected +that Alice was vexed with him on account of those women; but it was beyond +her cheerful imagination that she should go to such lengths in her +resentment. She could conceive of her wishing to punish him, to retaliate +her suffering on him; but to renounce him for it was another thing; and +she did not attribute to her daughter any other motive than she would have +felt herself. It was always this way with Mrs. Pasmer: she followed her +daughter accurately up to a certain point; beyond that she did not believe +the girl knew herself what she meant; and perhaps she was not altogether +wrong. Girlhood is often a turmoil of wild impulses, ignorant +exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really represent no intelligent +purpose, and come from disordered nerves, ill-advised reading, and the +erroneous perspective of inexperience. Mrs. Pasmer felt this, and she was +tempted to break into a laugh over Alice's heroics; but she preferred to +keep a serious countenance, partly because she did not feel the least +seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish +anything more than Dan's temporary abasement, and she would have preferred +to shorten this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she +was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She +would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell +him that she had no idea of Alice's writing him that nonsensical letter, +and he was not to pay the least attention to it; for of course it meant +nothing; but another principle of her complex nature came into play, and +she silently folded the note and returned it to Dan, trembling before her. + +"Well?" he quavered. + +"Well," returned Mrs. Pasmer judicially, while she enjoyed his tremor, +whose needlessness inwardly amused her--"well, of course, Alice was--" + +"Annoyed, I know. And it was all my fault--or my misfortune. But I +assure you, Mrs. Pasmer, that I thought I was doing something that would +please her--in the highest and noblest way. Now don't you know I did?" + +Mrs. Pasmer again wished to laugh, but in the face of Dan's tragedy she +had to forbear. She contented herself with saying: "Of course. But +perhaps it wasn't the best time for pleasing her just in that way." + +"It was then or never. I can see now--why, I could see all the time--just +how it might look; but I supposed Alice wouldn't care for that, and if I +hadn't tried to make some reparation then to Mrs. Frobisher and her +sister, I never could. Don't you see?" + +"Yes, certainly. But--" + +"And Alice herself told me to go and look after them," interposed +Mavering. He suppressed, a little uncandidly, the fact of her first +reluctance. + +"But you know it was the first time you had been out together?" + +"Yes." + +"And naturally she would wish to have you a good deal to herself, or at +least not seeming to run after other people." + +"Yes, yes; I know that." + +"And no one ever likes to be taken at their word in a thing like that." + +"I ought to have thought of that, but I didn't. I wish I had gone to you +first, Mrs. Pasmer. Somehow it seems to me as if I were very young and +inexperienced; I didn't use to feel so. I wish you were always on hand to +advise me, Mrs. Pasmer." Dan hung his head, and his face, usually so gay, +was blotted with gloom. + +"Will you take my advice now?" asked Mrs. Pasmer. + +"Indeed I will!" cried the young fellow, lifting his head. "What is it?" + +"See Alice about this." + +Dan jumped to his feet, and the sunshine broke out over his face again. +"Mrs. Pasmer, I promised to take your advice, and I'll do it. I will see +her. But how? Where? Let me have your advice on that point too." + +They began to laugh together, and Dan was at once inexpressibly happy. +Those two light natures thoroughly comprehended each other. + +Mrs. Pasmer had proposed his seeing Alice with due seriousness, but now +she had a longing to let herself go; she felt all the pleasure that other +people felt in doing Dan Mavering a pleasure, and something more, because +he was so perfectly intelligible to her. She let herself go. + +"You might stay to breakfast." + +"Mrs. Pasmer, I will--I will do that too. I'm awfully hungry, and I put +myself in your hands." + +"Let me see," said Mrs. Pasmer thoughtfully, "how it can be contrived." + +"Yes;" said Mavering, ready for a panic. "How? She wouldn't stand a +surprise?" + +"No; I had thought of that." + +"No behind-a-screen or next-room business?" + +"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a light sigh. "Alice is peculiar. I'm +afraid she wouldn't like it." + +"Isn't there any little ruse she would like?" + +"I can't think of any. Perhaps I'd better go and tell her you're here and +wish to see her." + +"Do you think you'd better?" asked Dan doubtfully. "Perhaps she won't +come." + +"She will come," said Mrs. Pasmer confidently. + +She did not say that she thought Alice would be curious to know why he had +come, and that she was too just to condemn him unheard. + +But she was right about the main point. Alice came, and Dan could see +with his own weary eyes that she had not slept either. + +She stopped just inside the portiere, and waited for him to speak. But he +could not, though a smile from his sense of the absurdity of their +seriousness hovered about his lips. His first impulse was to rush upon +her and catch her in his arms, and perhaps this might have been well, but +the moment for it passed, and then it became impossible. + +"Well?" she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with +impassioned solemnity. "You wished to see me? I hoped you wouldn't. It +would have spared me something. But perhaps I had no right to your +forbearance." + +"Alice, how can you say such things to me?" asked the young fellow, deeply +hurt. + +She responded to his tone. "I'm sorry if it wounds you. But I only mean +what I say." + +"You've a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my--my life; +to everything that I am," cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at the +sight of her and the sound of her voice. "Alice, why did you write me +that letter?--why did you send me back my ring?" + +"Because," she said, looking him seriously in the face--"because I wished +you to be free, to be happy." + +"Well, you've gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you; +I never can be happy without you." + +"I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness. +Don't think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn't +sleep--" + +"Neither did I," interposed Dan. + +"And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly happy +with me--" + +"I'll take the chances," he interrupted. "Alice, you don't suppose I +cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you? I +don't suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you hadn't +seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought you'd be +pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could." + +"I know your motive was good--the noblest. Don't think that I did you +injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them." + +"You sent me." + +"Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a +crime, for me to think we could he anything to each other when our love +began with a wrong to some one else." + +"With a wrong to some one else?" + +"You neglected them on Class Day after you saw me." + +"Why, of course I did. How could I help it?" + +A flush of pleasure came into the girl's pale face; but she banished it, +and continued gravely, "Then at Portland you were with them all day." + +"You'd given me up--you'd thrown me over, Alice," he pleaded. + +"I know that; I don't blame you. But you made them believe that you were +very much interested in them." + +"I don't know what I did. I was perfectly desperate." + +"Yes; it was my fault. And then, when they came to meet you at the +Museum, I had made you forget them; I'd made you wound them and insult +them again. No. I've thought it all out, and we never could be happy. +Don't think that I do it from any resentful motive." + +"Alice? how could I think that?--Of you!" + +"I have tried--prayed--to be purified from that, and I believe that I have +been." + +"You never had a selfish thought." + +"And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did last +night. At first I was wounded." + +"Oh, did I wound you, Alice?" he grieved. + +"But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me, and--and +I give you up to them. Yes, freely, fully." + +Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in the +spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach +nearer. He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried out: +"But which, Alice? There are two of them." + +"Two?" she repeated vaguely. + +"Yes; Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne. You can't give me up to both of +them." + +"Both?" she repeated again. She could not condescend to specify; it would +be ridiculous, and as it was, she felt her dignity hopelessly shaken. The +tears came into her eyes. + +"Yes. And neither of them wants me--they haven't got any use for me. +Mrs. Frobisher is married already, and Miss Wrayne took the trouble last +night to let me feel that, so far as she was concerned, I hadn't made it +all right, and couldn't. I thought I had rather a cold parting with you, +Alice, but it was quite tropical to what you left me to." A faint smile, +mingled with a blush of relenting, stole into her face, and he hurried on. +"I don't suppose I tried very hard to thaw her out. I wasn't much +interested. If you must give me up, you must give me up to some one else, +for they don't want me, and I don't want them." Alice's head dropped +lover, and he could come nearer now without her seeming to know it. "But +why need you give me up? There's really no occasion for it, I assure +you." + +"I wished," she explained, "to show you that I loved you for something +above yourself and myself--far above either--" + +She stopped and dropped the hand which she had raised to fend him off; and +he profited by the little pause she made to take her in his arms without +seeming to do so. "Well," he said, "I don't believe I was formed to be +loved on a very high plane. But I'm not too proud to be loved for my own +sake; and I don't think there's anything above you, Alice." + +"Oh yes, there is! I don't deserve to be happy, and that's the reason why +I'm not allowed to be happy in any noble way. I can't bear to give you +up; you know I can't; but you ought to give me up--indeed you ought. I +have ideals, but I can't live up to them. You ought to go. You ought to +leave me." She accented each little sentence by vividly pressing herself +to his heart, and he had the wisdom or the instinct to treat their +reconciliation as nothing settled, but merely provisional in its nature. + +"Well, we'll see about that. I don't want to go till after breakfast, +anyway; your mother says I may stay, and I'm awfully hungry. If I see +anything particularly base in you, perhaps I sha'n't come back to lunch." + +Dan would have liked to turn it alt off into a joke, now that the worst +was apparently over; but Alice freed herself from him, and held him off +with her hand set against his breast. "Does mamma know about it?" she +demanded sternly. + +"Well, she knows there's been some misunderstanding," said Dan, with a +laugh that was anxious, in view of the clouds possibly gathering again. + +"How much?" + +"Well, I can't say exactly." He would not say that he did not know, but +he felt that he could truly say that he could not say. + +She dropped her hand, and consented to be deceived. Dan caught her again +to his breast; but he had an odd, vague sense of doing it carefully, of +using a little of the caution with which one seizes the stem of a rose +between the thorns. + +"I can bear to be ridiculous with you," she whispered, with an implication +which he understood. + +"You haven't been ridiculous, dearest," he said; and his tension gave way +in a convulsive laugh, which partially expressed his feeling of restored +security, and partly his amusement in realising how the situation would +have pleased Mrs. Pasmer if she could have known it. + +Mrs. Pasmer was seated behind her coffee biggin at the breakfast-table +when he came into the room with Alice, and she lifted an eye from its +glass bulb long enough to catch his flying glance of exultation and +admonition. Then, while she regarded the chemical struggle in the bulb, +with the rapt eye of a magician reading fate in his crystal ball, she +questioned herself how much she should know, and how much she should +ignore. It was a great moment for Mrs. Pasmer, full of delicious choice. +"Do you understand this process, Mr. Mavering?" she said, glancing up at +him warily for farther instruction. + +"I've seen it done," said Dan, "but I never knew how it was managed. I +always thought it was going to blow up; but it seemed to me that if you +were good and true and very meek, and had a conscience void of offence, it +wouldn't." + +"Yes, that's what it seems to depend upon," said Mrs. Pasmer, keeping her +eye on the bulb. She dodged suddenly forward, and put out the spirit- +lamp. "Now have your coffee!" she cried, with a great air of relief. "You +must need it by this time," she said with a low cynical laugh--" both of +you!" + +"Did you always make coffee with a biggin in France, Mrs. Pasmer?" asked +Dan; and he laughed out the last burden that lurked in his heart. + +Mrs. Pasmer joined him. "No, Mr. Mavering. In France you don't need a +biggin. I set mine up when we went to England." + +Alice looked darkly from one of these light spirits to the other, and then +they all shrieked together. + +They went on talking volubly from that, and they talked as far away from +what they were thinking about as possible. They talked of Europe, and +Mrs. Pasmer said where they would live and what they would do when they +all got back there together. Dan abetted her, and said that they must +cross in June. Mrs. Pasmer said that she thought June was a good month. +He asked if it were not the month of the marriages too, and she answered +that he must ask Alice about that. Alice blushed and laughed her sweet +reluctant laugh, and said she did not know; she had never been married. + +It was silly, but it was delicious; it made them really one family. Deep +in his consciousness a compunction pierced and teased Dan. But he said to +himself that it was all a joke about their European plans, or else his +people would consent to it if he really wished it. + + + + +XXXIX. + +A period of entire harmony and tenderness followed the episode which +seemed to threaten the lovers with the loss of each other. Mavering +forbore to make Alice feel that in attempting a sacrifice which consulted +only his good and ignored his happiness, and then failing in it so +promptly, she had played rather a silly part. After one or two tentative +jokes in that direction he found the ground unsafe, and with the instinct +which served him in place of more premeditated piety he withdrew, and was +able to treat the affair with something like religious awe. He was +obliged, in fact, to steady Alice's own faith in it, and to keep her from +falling under dangerous self-condemnation in that and other excesses of +uninstructed self-devotion. This brought no fatigue to his robust +affection, whatever it might have done to a heart more tried in such +exercises. Love acquaints youth with many things in character and +temperament which are none the less interesting because it never explains +them; and Dan was of such a make that its revelations of Alice were +charming to him because they were novel. He had thought her a person of +such serene and flawless wisdom that it was rather a relief to find her +subject to gusts of imprudence, to unexpected passions and resentments, to +foibles and errors, like other people. Her power of cold reticence; which +she could employ at will, was something that fascinated him almost as much +as that habit of impulsive concession which seemed to came neither from +her will nor her reason. He was a person himself who was so eager to give +other people pleasure that he quivered with impatience to see them happy +through his words or acts; he could not bear to think that any one to whom +he was speaking was not perfectly comfortable in regard to him; and it was +for this reason perhaps that he admired a girl who could prescribe herself +a line of social conduct, and follow it out regardless of individual +pangs--who could act from ideals and principles, and not from emotions and +sympathies. He knew that she had the emotions and sympathies, for there +were times when she lavished them on him; and that she could seem without +them was another proof of that depth of nature which he liked to imagine +had first attracted him to her. Dan Mavering had never been able to snub +any one in his life; it gave him a great respect for Alice that it seemed +not to cost her an effort or a regret, and it charmed him to think that +her severity was part of the unconscious sham which imposed her upon the +world for a person of inflexible design and invariable constancy to it. +He was not long in seeing that she shared this illusion, if it was an +illusion, and that perhaps the only person besides himself who was in the +joke was her mother. Mrs. Pasmer and he grew more and more into each +other's confidence in talking Alice over, and he admired the intrepidity +of this lady, who was not afraid of her daughter even in the girl's most +topping moments of self-abasement. For his own part, these moods of hers +never failed to cause him confusion and anxiety. They commonly intimated +themselves parenthetically in the midst of some blissful talk they were +having, and overcast his clear sky with retrospective ideals of conduct or +presentimental plans for contingencies that might never occur. He found +himself suddenly under condemnation for not having reproved her at a given +time when she forced him to admit she had seemed unkind or cold to others; +she made him promise that even at the risk of alienating her affections he +would make up for her deficiencies of behaviour in such matters whenever +he noticed them. She now praised him for what he had done for Mrs. +Frobisher and her sister at Mrs. Bellingham's reception; she said it was +generous, heroic. But Mavering rested satisfied with his achievement in +that instance, and did not attempt anything else of the kind. He did not +reason from cause to effect in regard to it: a man's love is such that +while it lasts he cannot project its object far enough from him to judge +it reasonable or unreasonable; but Dan's instincts had been disciplined +and his perceptions sharpened by that experience. Besides, in bidding him +take this impartial and even admonitory course toward her, she stipulated +that they should maintain to the world a perfect harmony of conduct which +should be an outward image of the union of their lives. She said that +anything less than a continued self-sacrifice of one to the other was not +worthy of the name of love, and that she should not be happy unless he +required this of her. She said that they ought each to find out what was +the most distasteful thing which they could mutually require, and then do +it; she asked him to try to think what she most hated, and let her do that +for him; as for her, she only asked to ask nothing of him. + +Mavering could not worship enough this nobility of soul in her, and he +celebrated it to Boardman with the passionate need of imparting his +rapture which a lover feel. Boardman acquiesced in silence, with a glance +of reserved sarcasm, or contented himself with laconic satire of his +friend's general condition, and avoided any comment that might +specifically apply to the points Dan made. Alice allowed him to have this +confidant, and did not demand of him a report of all he said to Boardman. +A main fact of their love, she said, must be their utter faith in each +other. She had her own confidante, and the disparity of years between her +and Miss Cotton counted for nothing in the friendship which their exchange +of trust and sympathy cemented. Miss Cotton, in the freshness of her +sympathy and the ideality of her inexperience, was in fact younger than +Alice, at whose feet, in the things of soul and character, she loved to +sit. She never said to her what she believed: that a girl of her +exemplary principles, a nature conscious of such noble ideals, so superior +to other girls, who in her place would be given up to the happiness of the +moment, and indifferent to the sense of duty to herself and to others, was +sacrificed to a person of Mavering's gay, bright nature and trivial +conception of life. She did not deny his sweetness; that was perhaps the +one saving thing about him; and she confessed that he simply adored Alice; +that counted for everything, and it was everything in his favour that he +could appreciate such a girl. She hoped, she prayed, that Alice might +never realise how little depth he had; that she might go through life and +never suspect it. If she did so, then they might be happy together to the +end, or at least Alice might never know she was unhappy. + +Miss Cotton never said these things in so many words; it is doubtful if +she ever said them in any form of words; with her sensitive anxiety not to +do injustice to any one, she took Dan's part against those who viewed the +engagement as she allowed it to appear only to her secret heart. She +defended him the more eagerly because she felt that it was for Alice's +sake, and that everything must be done to keep her from knowing how people +looked at the affair, even to changing people's minds. She said to all +who spoke to her of it that of course Alice was superior to him, but he +was devoted to her, and he would grow into an equality with her. He was +naturally very refined, she said, and, if he was not a very serious +person, he was amiable beyond anything. She alleged many little incidents +of their acquaintance at Campobello in proof of her theory that he had an +instinctive appreciation of Alice, and she was sure that no one could +value her nobleness of character more than he. She had seen them a good +deal together since their engagement, and it was beautiful to see his +manner with her. They were opposites, but she counted a good deal upon +that very difference in their temperaments to draw them to each other. + +It was an easy matter to see Dan and Alice together. Their engagement +came out in the usual way: it had been announced to a few of their nearest +friends, and intelligence of it soon spread from their own set through +society generally; it had been published in the Sunday papers while it was +still in the tender condition of a rumour, and had been denied by some of +their acquaintance and believed by all. + +The Pasmer cousinship had been just in the performance of the duties of +blood toward Alice since the return of her family from Europe, and now did +what was proper in the circumstances. All who were connected with her +called upon her and congratulated her; they knew Dan, the younger of them, +much better than they knew her; and though he had shrunk from the nebulous +bulk of social potentiality which every young man is to that much smaller +nucleus to which definite betrothal reduces him, they could be perfectly +sincere in calling him the sweetest fellow that ever was, and too lovely +to live. + +In such a matter Mr. Pasmer was naturally nothing; he could not be less +than he was at other times, but he was not more; and it was Mrs. Pasmer +who shared fully with her daughter the momentary interest which the +engagement gave Alice with all her kindred. They believed, of course, +that they recognised in it an effect of her skill in managing; they agreed +to suppose that she had got Mavering for Alice, and to ignore the beauty +and passion of youth as factors in the case. The closest of the kindred, +with the romantic delicacy of Americans in such things, approached the +question of Dan's position and prospects, and heard with satisfaction the +good accounts which Mrs. Pasmer was able to give of his father's +prosperity. There had always been more or less apprehension among them of +a time when a family subscription would be necessary for Bob Pasmer, and +in the relief which the new situation gave them some of them tried to +remember having known Dan's father in College, but it finally came to +their guessing that they must have heard John Munt speak of him. + +Mrs. Pasmer had a supreme control in the affair. She believed with the +rest--so deeply is this delusion seated--that she had made the match; but +knowing herself to have used no dishonest magic in the process, she was +able to enjoy it with a clean conscience. She grew fonder of Dan; they +understood each other; she was his refuge from Alice's ideals, and helped +him laugh off his perplexity with them. They were none the less sincere +because they were not in the least frank with each other. She let Dan +beat about the bush to his heart's content, and waited for him at the +point which she knew he was coming to, with an unconsciousness which he +knew was factitious; neither of them got tired of this, or failed freshly +to admire the other's strategy. + + + + +XL. + +It cannot be pretended that Alice was quite pleased with the way her +friends took her engagement, or rather the way in which they spoke of Dan. +It seemed to her that she alone, or she chiefly, ought to feel that +sweetness and loveliness of which every one told her, as if she could not +have known it. If he was sweet and lovely to every one, how was he +different to her except in degree? Ought he not to be different in kind? +She put the case to Miss Cotton, whom it puzzled, while she assured Alice +that he was different in kind to her, though he might not seem so; the +very fact that he was different in degree proved that he was different in +kind. This logic sufficed for the moment of its expression, but it did +not prevent Alice from putting the case to Dan himself. At one of those +little times when she sat beside him alone and rearranged his necktie, or +played with his watch chain, or passed a critical hand over his cowlick, +she asked him if he did not think they ought to have an ideal in their +engagement. "What ideal?" he asked. He thought it was all solid ideal +through and through. "Oh," she said, "be more and more to each other." +He said he did not see how that could be; if there was anything more of +him, she was welcome to it, but he rather thought she had it all. She +explained that she meant being less to others; and he asked her to explain +that. + +"Well, when we're anywhere together, don't you think we ought to show how +different we are to each other from what we are to any one else." + +Dan laughed. "I'm afraid we do, Alice; I always supposed one ought to +hide that little preference as much as possible. You don't want me to be +dangling after you every moment?" + +"No-o-o. But not--dangle after others." + +Dan sighed a little--a little impatiently. "Do I dangle after others?" + +"Of course not. But show that we're thoroughly united in all our tastes +and feelings, and--like and dislike the same persons." + +"I don't think that will be difficult," said Dan. + +She was silent a moment, and then she said; "You don't like to have me +bring up such things?" + +"Oh yes, I do. I wish to be and do just what you wish." + +"But I can see, I can understand, that you would sooner pass the time +without talking of them. You like to be perfectly happy, and not to have +any cares when--when you're with me this way?" + +"Well, yes, I suppose I do," said Dan, laughing again. "I suppose I +rather do like to keep pleasure and duty apart. But there's nothing you +can wish, Alice, that isn't a pleasure to me." + +"I'm very different," said the girl. "I can't be at peace unless I know +that I have a right to be so. But now, after this, I'm going to do your +way. If it's your way, it'll be the right way--for me." She looked +sublimely resolved, with a grand lift of the eyes, and Dan caught her to +him in a rapture, breaking into laughter. + +"Oh, don't! Mine's a bad way--the worst kind of a way," he cried. + +"It makes everybody like you, and mine makes nobody like me." + +"It makes me like you, and that's quite enough. I don't want other people +to like you!" + +"Yes, that's what I mean!" cried Alice; and now she flung herself on his +neck, and the tears came. "Do you suppose it can be very pleasant to have +everybody talking of you as if everybody loved you as much--as much as I +do?" She clutched him tighter and sobbed. + +"O Alice! Alice! Alice! Nobody could ever be what you are to me!" He +soothed and comforted her with endearing words and touches; but before he +could have believed her half consoled she pulled away from him, and asked, +with shining eyes, "Do you think Mr. Boardman is a good influence in your +life?" + +"Boardman!" cried Mavering, in astonishment. "Why, I thought you liked +Boardman?" + +"I do; and I respect him very much. But that isn't the question. Don't +you think we ought to ask ourselves how others influence us?" + +"Well, I don't see much of Boardy nowadays; but I like to drop down and +touch earth in Boardy once in a while--I'm in the air so much. Board has +more common-sense, more solid chunk-wisdom, than anybody I know. He's +kept me from making a fool of myself more times--" + +"Wasn't he with you that day with--with those women in Portland?" + +Dan winced a little, and then laughed. "No, he wasn't. That was the +trouble. Boardman was off on the press boat. I thought I told you. But +if you object to Boardman--" + +"I don't. You mustn't think I object to people when I ask you about them. +All that I wished was that you should think yourself what sort of +influence he was. I think he's a very good influence." + +"He's a splendid fellow, Boardman is, Alice!" cried Dan. "You ought to +have seen how he fought his way through college on such a little money, +and never skulked or felt mean. He wasn't appreciated for it; the men +don't notice these things much; but he didn't want to have it noticed; +always acted as if it was neither here nor there; and now I guess he sends +out home whatever he has left after keeping soul and body together every +week." + +He spoke, perhaps, with too great an effect of relief. Alice listened, as +it seemed, to his tone rather than his words, and said absently-- + +"Yes, that's grand. But I don't want you to act as if you were afraid of +me in such things." + +" Afraid?" Dan echoed. + +"I don't mean actually afraid, but as if you thought I couldn't be +reasonable; as if you supposed I didn't expect you to make mistakes or to +be imperfect." + +"Yes, I know you're very reasonable, and you're more patient with me than +I deserve; I know all that, and it's only my wish to come up to your +standard, I suppose, that gives me that apprehensive appearance." + +"That was what vexed me with you there at Campobello, when you--asked me--" + +"Yes, I know." + +"You ought to have understood me better. You ought to know now that I +don't wish you to do anything on my account, but because it's something we +owe to others." + +"Oh, excuse me! I'd much rather do it for you," cried Dan; but Alice +looked so grave, so hurt, that he hastened on: "How in the world does it +concern others whether we are devoted or not, whether we're harmonious and +two-souls-with-but-a-single-thought, and all that?" He could not help +being light about it. + +"How?" Alice repeated. "Won't it give them an idea of what--what--of how +much--how truly--if we care for each other--how people ought to care? We +don't do it for ourselves. That would be selfish and disgusting. We do +it because it's something that we owe to the idea of being engaged--of +having devoted our lives to each other, and would show--would teach--" + +"Oh yes! I know what you mean," said Dan, and he gave way in a sputtering +laugh. "But they wouldn't understand. They'd only think we were spoons +on each other; and if they noticed that I cooled off toward people I'd +liked, and warmed up toward those you liked, they'd say you made me." + +"Should you care?" asked Alice sublimely, withdrawing a little from his +arm. + +"Oh no! only on your account," he answered, checking his laugh. + +"You needn't on my account," she returned. "If we sacrifice some little +preferences to each other, isn't that right? I shall be glad to sacrifice +all of mine to you. Isn't our--marriage to be full of such sacrifices? I +expect to give up everything to you." She looked at him with a sad +severity. + +He began to laugh again. "Oh no, Alice! Don't do that! I couldn't stand +it. I want some little chance at the renunciations myself." + +She withdrew still further from his side, and said, with a cold anger, +"It's that detestable Mrs. Brinkley." + +"Mrs. Brinkley!" shouted Dan. + +"Yes; with her pessimism. I have heard her talk. She influences you. +Nothing is sacred to her. It was she who took up with those army women +that night." + +"Well, Alice, I must say you can give things as ugly names as the next +one. I haven't seen Mrs. Brinkley the whole winter, except in your +company. But she has more sense than all the other women I know." + +"Oh, thank you!" + +"You know I don't mean you," he pushed on. "And she isn't a pessimist. +She's very kindhearted, and that night she was very polite and good to +those army women, as you call them, when you had refused to say a word or +do anything for them." + +"I knew it had been rankling in your mind all along," said the girl "I +expected it to coma out sooner or later. And you talk about renunciation! +You never forget nor forgive the slightest thing. But I don't ask your +forgiveness." + +"Alice!" + +"No. You are as hard as iron. You have that pleasant outside manner that +makes people think you're very gentle and yielding, but all the time +you're like adamant. I would rather die than ask your forgiveness for +anything, and you'd rather let me than give it." + +"Well, then, I ask your forgiveness, Alice, and I'm sure you won't let me +die without it." + +They regarded each other a moment. Then the tenderness gushed up in their +hearts, a passionate tide, and swept them into each other's arms. + +"O Dan," she cried, "how sweet you are! how good! how lovely! Oh, how +wonderful it is! I wanted to hate you, but I couldn't. I couldn't do +anything but love you. Yes, now I understand what love is, and how it can +do everything, and last for ever." + + + + +XLI. + +Mavering came to lunch the next day, and had a word with Mrs. Pasmer +before Alice came in. Mr. Pasmer usually lunched at the club. + +"We don't see much of Mrs. Saintsbury nowadays," he suggested. + +"No; it's a great way to Cambridge," said Mrs. Pasmer, stifling, in a +little sigh of apparent regret for the separation, the curiosity she felt +as to Dan's motive in mentioning Mrs. Saintsbury. She was very patient +with him when he went on. + +"Yes, it is a great way. And a strange thing about it is that when you're +living here it's a good deal further from Boston to Cambridge than it is +from Cambridge to Boston." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer; "every one notices that." + +Dan sat absently silent for a time before he said, "Yes, I guess I must go +out and see Mrs. Saintsbury." + +"Yes, you ought. She's very fond of you. You and Alice ought both to +go." + +"Does Mrs. Saintsbury like me?" asked Dan. "Well, she's awfully nice. +Don't you think she's awfully fond of formulating people?" + +"Oh, everybody in Cambridge does that. They don't gossip; they merely +accumulate materials for the formulation of character." + +"And they get there just the same!" cried Dan. "Mrs. Saintsbury used to +think she had got me down pretty fine," he suggested. + +"Yes!" said Mrs. Pasmer, with an indifference which they both knew she did +not feel. + +"Yes. She used to accuse me of preferring to tack, even in a fair wind." + +He looked inquiringly at Mrs. Pasmer; and she said, "How ridiculous!" + +"Yes, it was. Well, I suppose I am rather circuitous about some things." + +"Oh, not at all!" + +"And I suppose I'm rather a trial to Alice in that way." + +He looked at Mrs. Pasmer again, and she said: "I don't believe you are, +in the least. You can't tell what is trying to a girl." + +"No," said Dan pensively, "I can't." Mrs. Pasmer tried to render the +interest in her face less vivid. "I can't tell where she's going to bring +up. Talk about tacking!" + +"Do you mean the abstract girl; or Alice?" + +"Oh, the abstract girl," said Dan, and they laughed together. "You think +Alice is very straightforward, don't you?" + +"Very," said Mrs. Pasmer, looking down with a smile--"for a girl." + +"Yes, that's what I mean. And don't you think the most circuitous kind of +fellow would be pretty direct compared with the straight-forwardest kind +of girl?" + +There was a rueful defeat and bewilderment in Dan's face that made Mrs. +Pasmer laugh. "What has she been doing now?" she asked. + +"Mrs. Pasmer," said Dan, "you and I are the only frank and open people I +know. Well, she began to talk last night about influence--the influence +of other people on us; and she killed off nearly all the people I like +before I knew what she was up to, and she finished with Mrs. Brinkley. +I'm glad she didn't happen to think of you, Mrs. Pasmer, or I shouldn't be +associating with you at the present moment." This idea seemed to give +Mrs. Pasmer inexpressible pleasure. Dan went on: "Do you quite see the +connection between our being entirely devoted to each other and my +dropping Mrs. Brinkley?" + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Alice doesn't like satirical people." + +"Well, of course not. But Mrs. Brinkley is such an admirer of hers." + +"I dare say she tells you so." + +"Oh, but she is!" + +"I don't deny it," said Mrs. Pasmer. "But if Alice feels something +inimical--antipatico--in her atmosphere, it's no use talking." + +"Oh no, it's no use talking, and I don't know that I want to talk." After +a pause, Mavering asked, "Mrs. Pasmer, don't you think that where two +people are going to be entirely devoted to each other, and self- +sacrificing to each other, they ought to divide, and one do all the +devotion, and the other all the self-sacrifice?" + +Mrs. Pasmer was amused by the droll look in Dan's eyes. "I think they +ought to be willing to share evenly," she said. + +"Yes; that's what I say--share and share alike. I'm not selfish about +those little things." He blew off a long sighing breath. "Mrs. Pasmer, +don't you think we ought to have an ideal of conduct?" + +Mrs. Pasmer abandoned herself to laughter. "O Dan! Dan! You will be the +death of me." + +"We will die together, then, Mrs. Pasmer. Alice will kill me." He +regarded her with a sad sympathy in his eye as she laughed and laughed +with delicious intelligence of the case. The intelligence was perfect, +from their point of view; but whether it fathomed the girl's whole +intention or aspiration is another matter. Perhaps this was not very +clear to herself. At any rate, Mavering did not go any more to see Mrs. +Brinkley, whose house he had liked to drop into. Alice went several +times, to show, she said, that she had no feeling in the matter; and Mrs. +Brinkley, when she met Dan, forbore to embarrass him with questions or +reproaches; she only praised Alice to him. + +There were not many other influences that Alice cut him off from; she even +exposed him to some influences that might have been thought deleterious. +She made him go and call alone upon certain young ladies whom she +specified, and she praised several others to him, though she did not +praise them for the same things that he did. One of them was a girl to +whom Alice had taken a great fancy, such as often buds into a romantic +passion between women; she was very gentle and mild, and she had none of +that strength of will which she admired in Alice. One night there was a +sleighing party to a hotel in the suburbs, where they had dancing and then +supper. After the supper they danced "Little Sally Waters" for a finale, +instead of the Virginia Reel, and Alice would not go on the floor with +Dan; she said she disliked that dance; but she told him to dance with Miss +Langham. It became a gale of fun, and in the height of it Dan slipped and +fell with his partner. They laughed it off, with the rest, but after a +while the girl began to cry; she had received a painful bruise. All the +way home, while the others laughed and sang and chattered, Dan was +troubled about this poor girl; his anxiety became a joke with the whole +sleighful of people. + +When he parted with Alice at her door, he said, "I'm afraid I hurt Miss +Langham; I feel awfully about it." + +"Yes; there's no doubt of that. Good night!" + +She left him to go off to his lodging, hot and tingling with indignation +at her injustice. But kindlier thoughts came to him before he slept, and +he fell asleep with a smile of tenderness for her on his lips. He could +see how he was wrong to go out with any one else when Alice said she +disliked the dance; he ought not to have taken advantage of her generosity +in appointing him a partner; it was trying for her to see him make that +ludicrous tumble, of course; and perhaps he had overdone the attentive +sympathy on the way home. It flattered him that she could not help +showing her jealousy--that is flattering, at first; and Dan was able to go +and confess all but this to Alice. She received his submission +magnanimously, and said that she was glad it had happened, because his +saying this showed that now they understood each other perfectly. Then +she fixed her eyes on his, and said, "I've just been round to see Lilly, +and she's as well as ever; it was only a nervous shock." + +Whether Mavering was really indifferent to Miss Langham's condition, or +whether the education of his perceptions had gone so far that he +consciously ignored her, he answered, "That was splendid of you, Alice." + +"No," she said; "it's you that are splendid; and you always are. Oh, I +wonder if I can ever be worthy of you!" + +Their mutual forgiveness was very sweet to them, and they went on praising +each other. Alice suddenly broke away from this weakening exchange of +worship, and said, with that air of coming to business which he lad +learned to recognise and dread a little, "Dan, don't you think I ought to +write to your mother?" + +"Write to my mother?" Why, you have written to her. You wrote as soon as +you got back, and she answered you." + +"Yes; but write regularly?--Show that I think of her all the time?" When +I really think I'm going to take you from her, I seem so cruel and +heartless!" + +"Oh, I don't look at it in that light, Alice." + +"Don't joke! And when I think that we're going away to leave her, for +several years, perhaps, as soon as we're married, I can't make it seem +right. I know how she depends upon your being near her, and seeing her +every now and then; and to go off to Europe for years, perhaps--Of course +you can be of use to your father there; but do you think it's right toward +your mother? I want you to think." + +Dan thought, but his thinking was mainly to the effect that he did not +know what she was driving at. Had she got any inkling of that plan of his +mother's for them to come and stay a year or two at the Falls after their +marriage? He always expected to be able to reconcile that plan with the +Pasmer plan of going at once; to his optimism the two were not really +incompatible; but he did not wish them prematurely confronted in Alice's +mind. Was this her way of letting him know that she knew what his mother +wished, and that she was willing to make the sacrifice? Or was it just +some vague longing to please him by a show of affection toward his family, +an unmeditated impulse of reparation? He had an impulse himself to be +frank with Alice, to take her at her word, and to allow that he did not +like the notion of going abroad. This was Dan's notion of being frank; he +could still reserve the fact that he had given his mother a tacit promise +to bring Alice home to live, but he postponed even this. He said: "Oh, I +guess that'll be all right, Alice. At any rate, there's no need to think +about it yet awhile. That can be arranged." + +"Yes," said Alice; "but don't you think I'd better get into the habit of +writing regularly to your mother now, so that there needn't be any break +when we go abroad?" He could see now that she had no idea of giving that +plan up, and he was glad that he had not said anything. "I think," she +continued, "that I shall write to her once a week, and give her a full +account of our life from day to day; it'll be more like a diary; and then, +when we get over there, I can keep it up without any effort, and she won't +feel so much that you've gone." + +She seemed to refer the plan to him, and he said it was capital. In fact, +he did like the notion of a diary; that sort of historical view would +involve less danger of precipitating a discussion of the two schemes of +life for the future. "It's awfully kind of you, Alice, to propose such a +thing, and you mustn't make it a burden. Any sort of little sketchy +record will do; mother can read between the lines, you know." + +"It won't be a burden," said the girl tenderly. "I shall seem to be doing +it for your mother, but I know I shall be doing it for you. I do +everything for you. Do you think it's right?" + +"Oh; it must be," said Dan, laughing. "It's so pleasant." + +"Oh," said the girl gloomily; "that's what makes me doubt it." + + + + +XLII. + +Eunice Mavering acknowledged Alice's first letter. She said that her +mother read it aloud to them all, and had been delighted with the good +account she gave of Dan, and fascinated with all the story of their daily +doings and sayings. She wished Eunice to tell Alice how fully she +appreciated her thoughtfulness of a sick old woman, and that she was going +to write herself and thank her. But Eunice added that Alice must not be +surprised if her mother was not very prompt in this, and she sent messages +from all the family, affectionate for Alice, and polite for her father and +mother. + +Alice showed Dan the letter, and he seemed to find nothing noticeable in +it. "She says your mother will write later," Alice suggested. + +"Yes. You ought to feel very much complimented by that. Mother's +autographs are pretty uncommon," he said, smiling. + +"Why, doesn't she write? Can't she? Does it tire her?" asked Alice. + +"Oh yes, she can write, but she hates to. She gets Eunice or Minnie to +write usually." + +"Dan," cried Alice intensely, "why didn't you tell me?" + +"Why, I thought you knew it," he explained easily. "She likes to read, +and likes to talk, but it bores her to write. I don't suppose I get more +than two or three pencil scratches from her in the course of a year. She +makes the girls write. But you needn't mind her not writing. You may be +sure she's glad of your letters." + +"It makes me seem very presumptuous to be writing to her when there's no +chance of her answering," Alice grieved. "It's as if I had passed over +your sisters' heads. I ought to have written to them." + +"Oh, well, you can do that now," said Dan soothingly. + +"No. No, I can't do it now. It would be ridiculous." She was silent, +and presently she asked, "Is there anything else about your mother that I +ought to know?" She looked at him with a sort of impending discipline in +her eyes which he had learned to dread; it meant such a long course of +things, such a very great variety of atonement and expiation for him, that +he could not bring himself to confront it steadily. + +His heart gave a feeble leap; he would have gladly told her all that was +in it, and he meant to do so at the right time, but this did not seem the +moment. "I can't say that there is," he answered coldly. + +In that need of consecrating her happiness which Alice felt, she went a +great deal to church in those days. Sometimes she felt the need almost of +defence against her happiness, and a vague apprehension mixed with it. +Could it be right to let it claim her whole being, as it seemed to do? +Than was the question which she once asked Dan, and it made him laugh, and +catch her to him in a rapture that served for the time, and then left her +to more morbid doubts. Evidently he could not follow her in them; he +could not even imagine them; and while he was with her they seemed to have +no verity or value. But she talked them over very hypothetically and +impersonally with Miss Cotton, in whose sympathy they resumed all their +import, and gained something more. In the idealisation which the girl +underwent in this atmosphere all her thoughts and purposes had a +significance which she would not of herself, perhaps, have attached to +them. They discussed them and analysed them with a satisfaction in the +result which could not be represented without an effect of caricature. +They measured Alice's romance together, and evolved from it a sublimation +of responsibility, of duty, of devotion, which Alice found it impossible +to submit to Dan when he came with his simple-hearted, single-minded +purpose of getting Mrs. Pasmer out of the room, and sitting down with his +arm around Alice's waist. When he had accomplished this it seemed +sufficient in itself, and she had to think, to struggle to recall things +beyond it, above it. He could not be made to see at such times how their +lives could be more in unison than they were. When she proposed doing +something for him which he knew was disagreeable to her, he would not let +her; and when she hinted at anything she wished him to do for her because +she knew it was disagreeable to him, he consented so promptly, so +joyously, that she perceived he could not have given the least thought to +it. + +She felt every day that they were alien in their tastes and aims; their +pleasures were not the same, and though it was sweet, though it was +charming, to have him give up so willingly all his preferences, she felt, +without knowing that the time must come when this could not be so, that it +was all wrong. + +"But these very differences, these antagonisms, if you wish to call them +so," suggested Miss Cotton, in talking Alice's misgivings over with her, +"aren't they just what will draw you together more and more? Isn't it +what attracted you to each other? The very fact that you are such perfect +counterparts--" + +"Yes," the girl assented, "that's what we're taught to believe." She +meant by the novels, to which we all trust our instruction in such +matters, and her doubt doubly rankled after she had put it to silence. + +She kept on writing to Dan's mother, though more and more perfunctorily; +and now Eunice and now Minnie Mavering acknowledged her letters. She knew +that they must think she was silly, but having entered by Dan's connivance +upon her folly, she was too proud to abandon it. + +At last, after she had ceased to expect it, came a letter from his mother, +not a brief note, but a letter which the invalid had evidently tasked +herself to make long and full, in recognition of Alice's kindness in +writing to her so much. The girl opened it, and, after a verifying glance +at the signature, began to read it with a thrill of tender triumph, and +the fond prevision of the greater pleasure of reading it again with Dan. + +But after reading it once through, she did not wait for him before reading +it again and again. She did this with bewilderment, intershot with +flashes of conviction, and then doubts of this conviction. When she could +misunderstand no longer, she rose quietly and folded the letter, and put +it carefully back into its envelope and into her writing desk, where she +sat down and wrote, in her clearest and firmest hand, this note to +Mavering-- + +"I wish to see you immediately. + +"ALICE PASMER." + + + + +XLIII + +Dan had learned, with a lover's keenness, to read Alice's moods in the +most colourless wording of her notes. She was rather apt to write him +notes, taking back or reaffirming the effect of something that had just +passed between them. Her note were tempered to varying degrees of heat +and cold, so fine that no one else would have felt the difference, but +sensible to him in their subtlest intention. + +Perhaps a mere witness of the fact would have been alarmed by a note which +began without an address, except that on the envelope, and ended its +peremptory brevity with the writer's name signed in full. Dan read +calamity in it, and he had all the more trouble to pull himself together +to meet it because he had parted with unusual tenderness from Alice the +night before, after an evening in which it seemed to him that their ideals +had been completely reconciled. + +The note came, as her notes were apt to come, while Dan was at breakfast, +which he was rather luxurious about for so young a man, and he felt +formlessly glad afterward that he had drunk his first cup of coffee before +he opened it, for it chilled the second cup, and seemed to take all +character out of the omelet. + +He obeyed it, wondering what the doom menaced in it might be, but knowing +that it was doom, and leaving his breakfast half-finished, with a dull +sense of the tragedy of doing so. + +He would have liked to ask for Mrs. Pasmer first, and interpose a moment +of her cheerful unreality between himself and his interview with Alice, +but he decided that he had better not do this, and they met at once, with +the width of the room between them. Her look was one that made it +impassable to the simple impulse he usually had to take her in his arms +and kiss her. But as she stood holding out a letter to him, with the +apparent intention that he should come and take it, he traversed the +intervening space and took it. + +"Why, it's from mother!" he said joyously, with a glance at the +handwriting. + +"Will you please explain it?" said Alice, and Dan began to read it. + +It began with a good many excuses for not having written before, and went +on with a pretty expression of interest in Alice's letters and gratitude +for them; Mrs. Mavering assured the girl that she could not imagine what a +pleasure they had been to her. She promised herself that they should be +great friends, and she said that she looked forward eagerly to the time, +now drawing near, when Dan should bring her home to them. She said she +knew Alice would find it dull at the Falls except for him, but they would +all do their best, and she would find the place very different from what +she had seen it in the winter. Alice could make believe that she was +there just for the summer, and Mrs. Mavering hoped that before the summer +was gone she would be so sorry for a sick old woman that she would not +even wish to go with it. This part of the letter, which gave Dan away so +hopelessly, as he felt, was phrased so touchingly, that he looked up from +it with moist eyes to the hard cold judgment in the eyes of Alice. + +"Will you please explain it?" she repeated. + +He tried to temporise. "Explain what?" + +Alice was prompt to say, "Had you promised your mother to take me home to +live?" + +Dan did not answer. + +"You promised my mother to go abroad. What else have you promised?" He +continued silent, and she added, "You are a faithless man." They were the +words of Romola, in the romance, to Tito; she had often admired them; and +they seemed to her equally the measure of Dan's offence. + +"Alice--" + +"Here are your letters and remembrances, Mr. Mavering." Dan mechanically +received the packet she had been holding behind her; with a perverse freak +of intelligence he observed that, though much larger now, it was tied up +with the same ribbon which had fastened it when Alice returned his letters +and gifts before. "Good-bye. I wish you every happiness consistent with +your nature." + +She bowed coldly, and was about to leave him, as she had planned; but she +had not arranged that he should be standing in front of the door, and he +was there, with no apparent intention of moving. + +"Will you allow me to pass?" she was forced to ask, however, haughtily. + +"No!" he retorted, with a violence that surprised him. "I will not let +you pass till you have listened to me--till you tell me why you treat me +so. I won't stand it--I've had enough of this kind of thing." + +It surprised Alice too a little, and after a moment's hesitation she said, +"I will listen to you," so much more gently than she had spoken before +that Dan relaxed his imperative tone, and began to laugh. "But," she +added, and her face clouded again, "it will be of no use. My mind is made +up this time. Why should we talk?" + +Why, because mine isn't," said Dan. "What is the matter, Alice? Do you +think I would force you, or even ask you, to go home with me to live +unless you were entirely willing? It could only be a temporary +arrangement anyway." + +"That isn't the question," she retorted. "The question is whether you've +promised your mother one thing and me another." + +"Well, I don't know about promising," said Dan, laughing a little more +uneasily, but still laughing. "As nearly as I can remember, I wasn't +consulted about the matter. Your mother proposed one thing, and my mother +proposed another." + +"And you agreed to both. That is quite enough--quite characteristic!" + +Dan flushed, and stopped laughing. "I don't know what you mean by +characteristic. The thing didn't have to be decided at once, and I didn't +suppose it would be difficult for either side to give way, if it was +judged best. I was sure my mother wouldn't insist." + +"It seems very easy for your family to make sacrifices that are not likely +to be required of them." + +"You mustn't criticise my mother!" cried Dan. + +"I have not criticised her. You insinuate that we would be too selfish to +give up, if it were for the best." + +"I do nothing of the kind, and unless you are determined to quarrel with +me you wouldn't say so." + +"I don't wish a quarrel; none is necessary," said Alice coldly. + +"You accuse me of being treacherous--" + +"I didn't say treacherous!" + +"Faithless, then. It's a mere quibble about words. I want you to take +that back." + +"I can't take it back; it's the truth. Aren't you faithless, if you let +us go on thinking that you're going to Europe, and let your mother think +that we're coming home to live after we're married?" + +"No! I'm simply leaving the question open!" + +"Yes," said the girl--sadly, "you like to leave questions open. That's +your way." + +"Well, I suppose I do till it's necessary to decide them. It saves the +needless effusion of talk," said Dan, with a laugh; and then, as people do +in a quarrel, he went back to his angry mood, and said "Besides, I +supposed you would be glad of the chance to make some sacrifice for me. +You're always asking for it." + +"Thank you, Mr. Mavering," said Alice, "for reminding me of it; nothing is +sacred to you, it seems. I can't say that you have ever sought any +opportunities of self-sacrifice." + +"I wasn't allowed time to do so; they were always presented." + +"Thank you again, Mr. Mavering. All this is quite a revelation. I'm glad +to know how you really felt about things that you seemed so eager for." + +"Alice, you know that I would do anything for you!" cried Dan, rueing his +precipitate words. + +"Yes; that's what you've repeatedly told me. I used to believe it." + +"And I always believed what you said. You said at the picnic that day +that you thought I would like to live at Ponkwasset Falls if my business +was there--" + +"That is not the point!" + +"And now you quarrel with me because my mother wishes me to do so." + +Alice merely said: "I don't know why I stand here allowing you to +intimidate me in my father's house. I demand that you shall stand aside +and let me pass." + +"I'll not oblige you to leave the room," said Dan. "I will go. But if I +go, you will understand that I don't come back." + +"I hope that," said the girl. + +"Very well. Good morning, Miss Pasmer." + +She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment of his bow, and he +whirled out of the room and down the dim narrow passageway into the arms +of Mrs. Pasmer, who had resisted as long as she could her curiosity to +know what the angry voices of himself and Alice meant. + +"O Mr. Mavering, is it you?" she buzzed; and she flung aside one pretence +for another in adding, "Couldn't Alice make you stay to breakfast?" + +Dan felt a rush of tenderness in his heart at the sound of the kind, +humbugging little voice. "No, thank you, Mrs. Pasmer, I couldn't stay, +thank you. I--I thank you very much. I--good-bye, Mrs. Pasmer." He +wrung her hand, and found his way out of the apartment door, leaving her +to clear up the mystery of his flight and his broken words as she could. + +"Alice," she said, as she entered the room, where the girl had remained, +"what have you been doing now?" + +"Oh, nothing," she said, with a remnant of her scorn for Dan qualifying +her tone and manner to her mother. "I've dismissed Mr. Mavering." + +"Then you want him to come to lunch?" asked her mother. "I should advise +him to refuse." + +"I don't think he'd accept," said Alice. Then, as Mrs. Pasmer stood in +the door, preventing her egress, as Dan had done before, she asked meekly +"Will you let me pass, mamma? My head aches." + +Mrs. Pasmer, whose easy triumphs in so many difficult circumstances kept +her nearly always in good temper, let herself go, at these words, in +vexation very uncommon with her. "Indeed I shall not!" she retorted. +"And you will please sit down here and tell me what you mean by dismissing +Mr. Mavering. I'm tired of your whims and caprices." + +"I can't talk," began the girl stubbornly. + +"Yes, I think you can," said her mother. "At any rate, I can. Now what +is it all?" + +"Perhaps this letter, will explain," said Alice, continuing to dignify her +enforced submission with a tone of unabated hauteur; and she gave her +mother Mrs. Mavering's letter, which Dan had mechanically restored to her. + +Mrs. Pasmer read it, not only without indignation, but apparently without +displeasure. But, she understood perfectly what the trouble was, when she +looked up and asked, cheerfully, "Well?" + +"Well!" repeated Alice, with a frown of astonishment. "Don't you see that +he's promised us one thing and her another, and that he's false to both?" + +"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, recovering her good-humour in view of a +situation that she felt herself able to cope with. "Of course he has to +temporise, to manage a little. She's an invalid, and of course she's very +exacting. He has to humour her. How do you know he has promised her? He +hasn't promised us." + +"Hasn't promised us?" Alice gasped. + +"No. He's simply fallen in with what we've said. It's because he's so +sweet and yielding, and can't bear to refuse. I can understand it +perfectly." + +"Then if he hasn't promised us, he's deceived us all the more shamefully, +for he's made us think he had." + +"He hasn't me," said Mrs. Pasmer, smiling at the stormy virtue in her +daughter's face. "And what if you should go home awhile with him--for the +summer, say? It couldn't last longer, much; and it wouldn't hurt us to +wait. I suppose he hoped for something of that kind." + +"Oh, it isn't that," groaned the girl, in a kind of bewilderment. "I +could have gone there with him joyfully, and lived all my days, if he'd +only been frank with me." + +"Oh no, you couldn't," said her mother, with cosy security. "When it comes +to it, you don't like giving up any more than other people. It's very +hard for you to give up; he sees that--he knows it, and he doesn't really +like to ask any sort of sacrifice from you. He's afraid of you." + +"Don't I know that?" demanded Alice desolately: "I've known it from the +first, and I've felt it all the time. It's all a mistake, and has been. +We never could understand each other. We're too different." + +"That needn't prevent you understanding him. It needn't prevent you from +seeing how really kind and good he is--how faithful and constant he is." + +"Oh, you say that--you praise him--because you like him." + +"Of course I do. And can't you?" + +"No. The least grain of deceit--of temporising, you call it--spoils +everything. It's over," said the girl, rising, with a sigh, from the +chair she had dropped into. "We're best apart; we could only have been +wretched and wicked together." + +"What did you say to him, Alice?" asked her mother, unshaken by her +rhetoric. + +"I told him he was a faithless person." + +"Then you were a cruel girl," cried Mrs. Pasmer, with sudden indignation; +"and if you were not my daughter I could be glad he had escaped you. I +don't know where you got all those silly, romantic notions of yours about +these things. You certainly didn't get them from me," she continued, with +undeniable truth, "and I don't believe you get them from your Church, +It's just as Miss Anderson said: your Church makes allowance for human +nature, but you make none." + +"I shouldn't go to Julia Anderson for instruction in such matters," said +the girl, with cold resentment. + +"I wish you would go to her for a little commonsense--or somebody," said +Mrs. Pasmer. "Do you know what talk this will make?" + +"I don't care for the talk. It would be worse than talk to marry a man +whom I couldn't trust--who wanted to please me so much that he had to +deceive me, and was too much afraid of me to tell me the truth." + +"You headstrong girl!" said her mother impartially, admiring at the same +time the girl's haughty beauty. + +There was an argument in reserve in Mrs. Pasmer's mind which perhaps none +but an American mother would have hesitated to urge; but it is so wholly +our tradition to treat the important business of marriage as a romantic +episode that even she could not bring herself to insist that her daughter +should not throw away a chance so advantageous from every worldly point of +view. She could only ask, "If you break this engagement, what do you +expect to do?" + +"The engagement is broken. I shall go into a sisterhood." + +"You will do nothing of the kind, with my consent," said Mrs. Pasmer. +"I will have no such nonsense. Don't flatter yourself that I will. Even +if I approved of such a thing, I should think it wicked to let you do it. +You're always fancying yourself doing something very devoted, but I've +never seen you ready to give up your own will, or your own comfort even, +in the slightest degree. And Dan Mavering, if he were twice as +temporising and circuitous"--the word came to her from her talk with him-- +"would be twice too good for you. I'm going to breakfast." + + + + +XLIV. + +The difficulty in life is to bring experience to the level of expectation, +to match our real emotions in view of any great occasion with the ideal +emotions which we have taught ourselves that we ought to feel. This is +all the truer when the occasion is tragical: we surprise ourselves in a +helplessness to which the great event, death, ruin, lost love, reveals +itself slowly, and at first wears the aspect of an unbroken continuance of +what has been, or at most of another incident in the habitual sequence. + +Dan Mavering came out into the bright winter morning knowing that his +engagement was broken, but feeling it so little that he could not believe +it. He failed to realise it, to seize it for a fact, and he could not let +it remain that dumb and formless wretchedness, without proportion or +dimensions, which it now seemed to be, weighing his life down. To verify +it, to begin to outlive it, he must instantly impart it, he must tell it, +he must see it with others' eyes. This was the necessity of his youth and +of his sympathy, which included himself as well as the rest of the race in +its activity. He had the usual environment of a young man who has money. +He belonged to clubs, and he had a large acquaintance among men of his own +age, who lived a life of greater leisure; or were more absorbed in +business, but whom he met constantly in society. For one reason or +another, or for no other reason than that he was Dan Mavering and liked +every one, he liked them all. He thought himself great friends with them; +he dined and lunched with them; and they knew the Pasmers, and all about +his engagement. But he did not go to any of them now, with the need he +felt to impart his calamity, to get the support of come other's credence +and opinion of it. He went to a friend whom, in the way of his world, he +met very seldom, but whom he always found, as he said, just where he had +left him. + +Boardman never made any sign of suspecting that he was put on and off, +according to Dan's necessity or desire for comfort or congratulation; but +it was part of their joke that Dan's coming to him always meant something +decisive in his experiences. The reporter was at his late breakfast, +which his landlady furnished him in his room, though, as Mrs. Mash said, +she never gave meals, but a cup of coffee and an egg or two, yes. + +"Well?" he said, without looking up. + +"Well, I'm done for!" cried Dan. + +"Again?" asked Boardman. + +"Again! The other time was nothing, Boardman--I knew it wasn't anything; +but this--this is final." + +"Go on," said Boardman, looking about for his individual salt-cellar, +which he found under the edge of his plate; and Mavering laid the whole +case before him. As he made no comment on it for a while, Dan was obliged +to ask him what he thought of it. "Well," he said, with the smile that +showed the evenness of his pretty teeth, "there's a kind of wild justice +in it." He admitted this, with the object of meeting Dan's views in an +opinion. + +"So you think I'm a faithless man too, do you?" demanded Mavering +stormily. + +"Not from your point of view," said Boardman, who kept on quietly eating +and drinking. + +Mavering was too amiable not to feel Boardman's innocence of offence in +his unperturbed behaviour. "There was no faithlessness about it, and you +know it," he went on, half laughing, half crying, in his excitement, and +making Boardman the avenue of an appeal really addressed to Alice. "I was +ready to do what either side decided." + +"Or both," suggested Boardman. + +"Yes, or both," said Dan, boldly accepting the suggestion. "It wouldn't +have cost me a pang to give up if I'd been in the place of either." + +"I guess that's what she could never understand," Boardman mused aloud. + +"And I could never understand how any one could fail to see that that was +what I intended--expected: that it would all come out right of itself-- +naturally." Dan was still addressing Alice in this belated reasoning. +"But to be accused of bad faith--of trying to deceive any one--" + +"Pretty rough," said Boardman. + +"Rough? It's more than I can stand!" + +"Well, you don't seem to be asked to stand it," said Boardman, and +Mavering laughed forlornly with him at his joke, and then walked away and +looked out of Boardman's dormer-window on the roofs below, with their +dirty, smoke-stained February snow. He pulled out his handkerchief, and +wiped his face with it. When he turned round, Boardman looked keenly at +him, and asked, with an air of caution, "And so it's all up?" + +"Yes, it's all up," said Dan hoarsely. + +"No danger of a relapse?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"No danger of having my sympathy handed over later to Miss Pasmer for +examination?" + +"I guess you can speak up freely, Boardman," said Dan, "if that's what you +mean. Miss Pasmer and I are quits." + +"Well, then, I'm glad of it. She wasn't the one for you. She isn't fit +for you." + + What's the reason she isn't?" cried Dan. "She's the most beautiful and +noble girl in the world, and the most conscientious, and the best--if she +is unjust to me." + +"No doubt of that. I'm not attacking her, and I'm not defending you." + +"What are you doing then?"" + +"Simply saying that I don't believe you two would ever understand each +other. You haven't got the same point of view, and you couldn't make it +go. Both out of a scrape." + +"I don't know what you mean by a scrape," said Dan, resenting the word +more than the idea. Boardman tacitly refused to modify or withdraw it, +and Dan said, after a sulky silence, in which he began to dramatise a +meeting with his family: "I'm going home; I can't stand it here. What's +the reason you can't come with me, Boardman?" + +"Do you mean to your rooms?" + +"No; to the Falls." + +"Thanks. Guess not." + +"Why not?" + +"Don't care about being a fifth wheel." + +"Oh, pshaw, now, Boardman! Look here, you must go. I want you to go. +I--I want your support. That's it. I'm all broken up, and I couldn't +stand that three hours' pull alone. They'll be glad to see you--all of +them. Don't you suppose they'll be glad to see you? They're always glad; +and they'll understand." + +"I don't believe you want me to go yourself. You just think you do." + +"No. I really do want you, Boardman. I want to talk it over with you. I +do want you. I'm not fooling." + +"Don't think I could get away." Yet he seemed to be pleased with the +notion of the Falls; it made him smile. + +"Well, see," said Mavering disconsolately. "I'm going round to my rooms +now, and I'll be there till two o'clock; train's at 2.30." He went +towards the door, where he faced about. "And you don't think it would be +of any use?" + +"Any use--what?" + +"Trying to--to--to make it up." + +"How should I know?" + +"No, no; of course you couldn't," said Dan, miserably downcast. All the +resentment which Alice's injustice had roused in him had died out; he was +suffering as helplessly and hopelessly as a child. "Well," he sighed, as +he swung out of the door. + +Boardman found him seated at his writing-desk in his smoking-jacket when +he came to him, rather early, and on the desk were laid out the properties +of the little play which had come to a tragic close. There were some +small bits of jewellery, among the rest a ring of hers which Alice had +been letting him wear; a lock of her hair which he had kept, for the +greater convenience of kissing, in the original parcel, tied with crimson +ribbon; a succession of flowers which she had worn, more and more dry and +brown with age; one of her gloves, which he had found and kept from the +day they first met in Cambridge; a bunch of withered bluebells tied with +sweet-grass, whose odour filled the room, from the picnic at Campobello; +scraps of paper with her writing on them, and cards; several photographs +of her, and piles of notes and letters. + +"Look here," said Dan, knowing it was Boardman without turning round, +"what am I to do about these things?" + +Boardman respectfully examined them over his shoulder. "Don't know what +the usual ceremony is," he said, he ventured to add, referring to the +heaps of letters, "Seems to have been rather epistolary, doesn't she?" + +"Oh, don't talk of her as if she were dead!" cried Dan. "I've been +feeling as if she were." All at once he dropped his head among these +witnesses of his loss, and sobbed. + +Boardman appeared shocked, and yet somewhat amused; he made a soft low +sibilation between his teeth. + +Dan lifted his head. "Boardman, if you ever give me away!" + +"Oh, I don't suppose it's very hilarious," said Boardman, with vague +kindness. "Packed yet?" he asked, getting away from the subject as +something he did not feel himself fitted to deal with consecutively. + +"I'm only going to take a bag," said Mavering, going to get some clothes +down from a closet where his words had a sepulchral reverberation. + +"Can't I help?" asked Boardman, keeping away from the sad memorials of +Dan's love strewn about on the desk, and yet not able to keep his eyes off +them across the room. + +"Well, I don't know," said Dan. He came out with his armful of coats and +trousers, and threw them on the bed. "Are you going?" + +"If I could believe you wanted me to." + +"Good!" cried Mavering, and the fact seemed to brighten him immediately. +"If you want to, stuff these things in, while I'm doing up these other +things." He nodded his head side-wise toward the desk. + +"All right," said Boardman. + +His burst of grief must have relieved Dan greatly. He set about gathering +up the relics on the desk, and getting a suitable piece of paper to wrap +them in. He rejected several pieces as inappropriate. + +"I don't know what kind of paper to do these things up in," he said at +last. + +"Any special kind of paper required?" Boardman asked, pausing in the act +of folding a pair of pantaloons so as not to break the fall over the boot. + +"I didn't know there was, but there seems to be," said Dan. + +"Silver paper seems to be rather more for cake and that sort of thing," +suggested Boardman. "Kind of mourning too, isn't it--silver?" + +"I don't know," said Dan. "But I haven't got any silver paper." + +"Newspaper wouldn't do?" + +"Well, hardly, Boardman," said Dan, with sarcasm. + +"Well," said Boardman, "I should have supposed that nothing could be +simpler than to send back a lot of love-letters; but the question of paper +seems insuperable. Manila paper wouldn't do either. And then comes +string. What kind of string are you going to tie it up with?" + +"Well, we won't start that question till we get to it," answered Dan, +looking about. "If I could find some kind of a box--" + +"Haven't you got a collar box? Be the very thing!" Boardman had gone +back to the coats and trousers, abandoning Dan to the subtler difficulties +in which he was involved. + +"They've all got labels," said Mavering, getting down one marked "The +Tennyson" and another lettered "The Clarion," and looking at them with +cold rejection. + +"Don't see how you're going to send these things back at all, then. Have +to keep them, I guess." Boardman finished his task, and came back to Dan. + +"I guess I've got it now," said Mavering, lifting the lid of his desk, and +taking out a large stiff envelope, in which a set of photographic views +had come. + +"Seems to have been made for it," Boardman exulted, watching the envelope, +as it filled up, expand into a kind of shapely packet. Dan put the things +silently in, and sealed the parcel with his ring. Then he turned it over +to address it, but the writing of Alice's name for this purpose seemed too +much for him, in spite of Boardman's humorous support throughout. + +"Oh, I can't do it," he said, falling back in his chair. + +"Let me," said his friend, cheerfully ignoring his despair. He +philosophised the whole transaction, as he addressed the package, rang for +a messenger, and sent it away, telling him to call a cab for ten minutes +past two. + +"Mighty good thing in life that we move by steps. Now on the stage, or in +a novel, you'd have got those things together and addressed 'em, and +despatched 'em, in just the right kind of paper, with just the right kind +of string round it, at a dash; and then you'd have had time to go up and +lean your head against something and soliloquise, or else think +unutterable things. But here you see how a merciful Providence blocks +your way all along. You've had to fight through all sort of sordid little +details to the grand tragic result of getting off Miss Pasmer's letters, +and when you reach it you don't mind it a bit." + +"Don't I?" demanded Dan, in as hollow a voice as he could. "You'd joke at +a funeral, Boardman." + +"I've seen some pretty cheerful funerals," said Boardman. "And it's this +principle of steps, of degrees, of having to do this little thing, and +that little thing, that keeps funerals from killing the survivors. I +suppose this is worse than a funeral--look at it in the right light. You +mourn as one without hope, don't you? Live through it too, I suppose." + +He made Dan help get the rest of his things into his bag, and with one +little artifice and another prevented him from stagnating in despair. He +dissented from the idea of waiting over another day to see if Alice would +not relent when she got her letters back, and send for Dan to come and see +her. + +"Relent a good deal more when she finds you've gone out of town, if she +sends for you," he argued; and he got Dan into the cab and off to the +station, carefully making him an active partner in the whole undertaking, +even to checking his own bag. + +Before he bought his own ticket he appealed once more to Dan. + +"Look here! I feel like a fool going off with you on this expedition. Be +honest for once, now, Mavering, and tell me you've thought better of it, +and don't want me to go!" + +"Yes--yes, I do. Oh yes, you've got to go. I I do want you. I--you make +me see things in just the right light, don't you know. That idea of yours +about little steps--it's braced me all up. Yes--" + +"You're such an infernal humbug," said Boardman, "I can't tell whether you +want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go." Then he bought his +ticket. + + + + +XLV. + +Boardman put himself in charge of Mavering, and took him into the smoking +car. It was impossible to indulge a poetic gloom there without becoming +unpleasantly conspicuous in the smoking and euchre and profanity. Some of +the men were silent and dull, but no one was apparently very unhappy, and +perhaps if Dan had dealt in absolute sincerity with himself, even he would +not have found himself wholly so. He did not feel as he had felt when +Alice rejected him. Then he was wounded to the quick through his vanity, +and now; in spite of all, in spite of the involuntary tender swaying of +his heart toward her through the mere force of habit, in spite of some +remote compunctions for his want of candour with her, he was supported by +a sense of her injustice, her hardness. Related with this was an obscure +sense of escape, of liberation, which, however he might silence and disown +it, was still there. He could not help being aware that he had long +relinquished tastes customs, purposes, ideals, to gain a peace that seemed +more and more fleeting and uncertain, and that he had submitted to others +which, now that the moment of giving pleasure by his submission was past, +he recognised as disagreeable. He felt a sort of guilt in his +enlargement; he knew, by all that he had, ever heard or read of people in +his position, that he ought to be altogether miserable; and yet this +consciousness of relief persisted. He told himself that a very tragical +thing had befallen him; that this broken engagement was the ruin of his +life and the end of his youth, and that he must live on an old and joyless +man, wise with the knowledge that comes to decrepitude and despair; he +imagined a certain look for himself, a gait, a name, that would express +this; but all the same he was aware of having got out of something. Was +it a bondage, a scrape, as Boardman called it? He thought he must be a +very light, shallow, and frivolous nature not to be utterly broken up by +his disaster. + +"I don't know what I'm going home for," he said hoarsely to Boardman. + +"Kind of a rest, I suppose," suggested his friend. + +"Yes, I guess that's it," said Dan. "I'm tired." + +It seemed to him that this was rather fine; it was a fatigue of the soul +that he was to rest from. He remembered the apostrophic close of a novel +in which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering. "Quiet, quiet +heart!" he repeated to himself. Yes, he too had died to hope, to love, to +happiness. + +As they drew near their journey's end he said, "I don't know how I'm going +to break it to them." + +"Oh, probably break itself," said Boardman. "These things usually do." + +"Yes, of course," Dan assented. + +"Know from your looks that something's up. Or you might let me go ahead a +little and prepare them." + +Dan laughed. "It was awfully good of you to come, Boardman. I don't know +what I should have done without you." + +"Nothing I like more than these little trips. Brightens you up to sere +the misery of others; makes you feel that you're on peculiarly good terms +with Providence. Haven't enjoyed myself so much since that day in +Portland." Boardman's eyes twinkled. + +"Yes," said Dan, with a deep sigh, "it's a pity it hadn't ended there." + +"Oh, I don't know. You won't have to go through with it again. Something +that had to come, wasn't it? Never been satisfied if you hadn't tried it. +Kind of aching void before, and now you've got enough." + +"Yes, I've got enough," said Dan, "if that's all." + +When they got out of the train at Ponkwasset Falls, and the conductor and +the brakeman, who knew Dan as his father's son, and treated him with the +distinction due a representative of an interest valued by the road, had +bidden him a respectfully intimate good-night, and he began to climb the +hill to his father's house, he recurred to the difficulty before him in +breaking the news to his family. "I wish I could have it over in a flash. +I wish I'd thought to telegraph it to them." + +"Wouldn't have done," said Boardman. "It would have given 'em time to +formulate questions and conjectures, and now the astonishment will take +their breath away till you can get your second wind, and then--you'll be +all right." + +"You think so?" asked Dan submissively. + +"Know so. You see, if you could have had it over in a flash, it would +have knocked you flat. But now you've taken all the little steps, and +you've got a lot more to take, and you're all braced up. See? You're +like rock, now--adamant." Dan laughed in forlorn perception of Boardman's +affectionate irony. "Little steps are the thing. You'll have to go in +now and meet your family, and pass the time of day with each one, and talk +about the weather, and account for my being along, and ask how they all +are; and by the time you've had dinner, and got settled with your legs out +in front of the fire, you'll be just in the mood for it. Enjoy telling +them all about it." + +"Don't, Boardman," pleaded Dan. "Boardy, I believe if I could get in and +up to my room without anybody's seeing me, I'd let you tell them. There +don't seem to be anybody about, and I think we could manage it." + +"It wouldn't work," said Boardman. "Got to do it yourself." + +"Well, then, wait a minute," said Dan desperately; and Boardman knew that +he was to stay outside while Dan reconnoitred the interior. Dan opened +one door after another till he stood within the hot brilliantly lighted +hall. Eunice Mavering was coming down the stairs, hooded and wrapped for +a walk on the long verandahs before supper. + +"Dan!" she cried. + +"It's all up, Eunice," he said at once, as if she had asked him about it. +"My engagement's off." + +"Oh, I'm so glad!" She descended upon him with outstretched arms, but +stopped herself before she reached him. "It's a hoax. What do you mean? +Do you really mean it, Dan?" + +"I guess I mean it. But don't--Hold on! Where's Minnie?" + +Eunice turned, and ran back upstairs. "Minnie! Min!" she called on her +way. "Dan's engagement's off." + +"I don't believe it!" answered Minnie's voice joyously, from within some +room. It was followed by her presence, with successive inquiries. "How +do you know? Did you get a letter? When did it happen? Oh, isn't it too +good?" + +Minnie was also dressed for the verandah promenade, which they always took +when the snow was too deep. She caught sight of her brother as she came +down. "Why, Dan's here! Dan, I've been thinking about you all day." She +kissed him, which Eunice was now reminded to do too. + +"Yes, it's true, Minnie," said Dan gravely. "I came up to tell you. It +don't seem to distress you much." + +"Dan!" said his sister reproachfully. "You know I didn't mean to say +anything I only felt so glad to have you back again." + +"I understand, Minnie--I don't dame you. It's all right. How's mother?" +Father up from the works yet? I'm going to my room." + +"Indeed you're not!" cried Eunice, with elder sisterly authority. "You +shall tell us about it first." + +"Oh no! Let him go, Eunice!" pleaded Minnie, "Poor Dan! And I don't +think we ought to go to walk when--" + +Dan's eyes dimmed, and his voice weakened a little at her sympathy. "Yes, +go. I'm tired--that's all. There isn't anything to tell you, hardly. +Miss Pasmer--" + +"Why, he's pale!" cried Minnie. "Eunice!" + +"Oh, it's just the heat in here." Dan really felt a little sick and faint +with it, but he was not sorry to seem affected by the day's strain upon +his nerves. + +The girls began to take off their wraps. "Don't. I'll go with you. +Boardman's out there." + +"Boardman! What nonsense!" exclaimed Eunice. + +"He'll like to hear your opinion of it," Dan began; but his sister pulled +the doors open, and ran out to see if he really meant that too. + +Whether Boardman had heard her, or had discreetly withdrawn out of earshot +at the first sound of voices, she could not tell, but she found him some +distance away from the snow-box on the piazza. "Dan's just managed to +tell us you were here," she said, giving him her hand. "I'm glad to see +you. Do come in." + +"Come along as a sort of Job's comforter," Boardman explained, as he +followed her in; and he had the silly look that the man who feels himself +superfluous must wear. + +"Then you know about it?" said Eunice, while Minnie Mavering and he were +shaking hands. + +"Yes, Boardman knows; he can tell you about it," said Dan, from the hall +chair he had dropped into. He rose and made his way to the stairs, with +the effect of leaving the whole thing to them. + +His sisters ran after him, and got him upstairs and into his room, with +Boardman's semi-satirical connivance, and Eunice put up the window, while +Minnie went to get some cologne to wet his forehead. Their efforts were +so successful that he revived sufficiently to drive them out of his room, +and make them go and show Boardman to his. + +"You know the way, Mr. Boardman," said Eunice, going before him, while +Minnie followed timorously, but curious for what he should say. She +lingered on the threshold, while her sister went in and pulled the +electric apparatus which lighted the gas-burners. "I suppose Dan didn't +break it?" she said, turning sharply upon him. + +"No; and I don't think he was to blame," said Boardman, inferring her +reserved anxiety. + +"Oh, I'm quite sure of that," said Eunice, rejecting what she had asked +for. "You'll find everything, Mr. Boardman. It was kind of you to come +with Dan. Supper's at seven." + +"How severe you were with him!" murmured Minnie, following her away. + +"Severe with Dan?" + +"No--with Mr. Boardman." + +"What nonsense! I had to be. I couldn't let him defend Dan to me. +Couple of silly boys!" + +After a moment Minnie said, "I don't think he's silly." + +"Who?" + +"Mr. Boardman." + +"Well, Dan is, then, to bring him at such a time. But I suppose he felt +that he couldn't get here without him. What a boy! Think of such a child +being engaged! I hope we shan't hear any more of such nonsense for one +while again--at least till Dan's got his growth." + +They went down into the library, where, in their excitement, they sat down +with most of their outdoor things on. + +Minnie had the soft contrary-mindedness of gentle natures. "I should like +to know how you would have had Dan bear it," she said rebelliously. + +"How? Like a man. Or like a woman. How do you suppose Miss Pasmer's +bearing it? Do you suppose she's got some friend to help her?" + +"If she's broken it, she doesn't need any one," urged Minnie. + +"Well," said Eunice, with her high scorn of Dan unabated, "I never could +have liked that girl, but I certainly begin to respect her. I think I +could have got on with her--now that it's no use. I declare," she broke +off, "we're sitting here sweltering to death! What are we keeping our +things on for?" She began to tear hers violently off and to fling them on +chairs, scolding, and laughing at the same time with Minnie, at their +absent-mindedness. + +A heavy step sounded on the verandah without. + +"There's father!" she cried vividly, jumping to her feet and running to +the door, while Minnie, in a nervous bewilderment, ran off upstairs to her +room. Eunice flung the door open. "Well, father, we've got Dan back +again." And at a look of quiet question in his eye she hurried on: "His +engagement's broken, and he's come up here to tell us, and brought Mr. +Boardman along to help." + +"Where is he?" asked the father, with his ruminant quiet, pulling off +first one sleeve of his overcoat, and pausing for Eunice's answer before +he pulled off the other. + + + + +XLVI. + +"He's up in his room, resting from the effort." She laughed nervously, +and her father made no comment. He took off his articles, and then went +creaking upstairs to Dan's room. But at the door he paused, with his hand +on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering. + +Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him. + +"Well, Dan," said his father, shaking hands. + +"I suppose Eunice has told you? Well, I want to tell you why it +happened." + +There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him to +the point. He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his candour +and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct +throughout. He did not realise that this was not so till his father said +at the close, with mild justice, "You were to blame for letting the thing +run on so at loose ends." + +"Yes, of course," said Dan, seeing that he was. "But there was no +intention of deceiving any one of bad faith--" + +"Of course not." + +"I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point." + +"If you'd been older, you wouldn't have thought that. You had women to +deal with on both sides. But if it's all over, I'm not sorry. I always +admired Miss Pasmer, but I've been more and more afraid you were not +suited to each other. Your mother doesn't know you're here?" + +"No, sir, I suppose not. Do you think it will distress her?" + +"How did your sisters take it?" + +Dan gave a rueful laugh. "It seemed to be rather a popular move with +them." + +"I will see your mother first," said the father. + +He left them when they went into the library after supper, and a little +later Dan and Eunice left Boardman in charge of Minnie there. + +He looked after their unannounced withdrawal in comic consciousness. +"It's no use pretending that I'm not a pretty large plurality here," he +said to Minnie. + +"Oh, I'm so glad you came!" she cried, with a kindness which was as real +as if it had been more sincere. + +"Do you think mother will feel it much?" asked Dan anxiously, as he went +upstairs with Eunice. + +"Well, she'll hate to lose a correspondent--such a regular one," said +Eunice, and the affair being so far beyond any other comment, she laughed +the rest of the way to their mother's room. + +The whole family had in some degree that foible which affects people who +lead isolated lives; they come to think that they are the only people who +have their virtues; they exaggerate these, and they conceive a kindness +even for the qualities which are not their virtues. Mrs. Mavering's life +was secluded again from the family seclusion, and their peculiarities were +intensified in her. Besides, she had some very marked peculiarities of +her own, and these were also intensified by the solitude to which she was +necessarily left so much. She meditated a great deal upon the character +of her children, and she liked to analyse and censure it both in her own +mind and openly in their presence. She was very trenchant and definite in +these estimates of them; she liked to ticket them, and then ticket them +anew. She explored their ancestral history on both sides for the origin +of their traits, and there were times when she reduced them in formula to +mere congeries of inherited characteristics. If Eunice was self-willed +and despotic, she was just like her grandmother Mavering; if Minnie was +all sentiment and gentle stubbornness, it was because two aunts of hers, +one on either side, were exactly so; if Dan loved pleasure and beauty, and +was sinuous and uncertain in so many ways, and yet was so kind and +faithful and good, as well as shilly-shallying and undecided, it was +because her mother, and her mother's father, had these qualities in the +same combination. + +When she took her children to pieces before their faces, she was sharp and +admonitory enough with them. She warned them to what their characters +would bring them to if they did not look out; but perhaps because she +beheld them so hopelessly the present effect of the accumulated tendencies +of the family past, she was tender and forgiving to their actions. The +mother came in there, and superseded the student of heredity: she found +excuse for them in the perversity of circumstance, in the peculiar +hardship of the case, in the malignant misbehaviour of others. + +As Dan entered, with the precedence his father and sister yielded him as +the principal actor in the scene which must follow, she lifted herself +vigorously in bed, and propped herself on the elbow of one arm while she +stretched the other towards him. + +"I'm glad of it, Dan!" she called, at the moment he opened the door, and +as he came toward her she continued, with the amazing velocity of +utterance peculiar to nervous sufferers of her sex: "I know all about it, +and I don't blame you a bit! And I don't blame her! Poor helpless young +things! But it's a perfect mercy it's all over; it's the greatest +deliverance I ever heard of! You'd have been eaten up alive. I saw it, +and I knew it from the very first moment, and I've lived in fear and +trembling for you. You could have got on well enough if you'd been left +to yourselves, but that you couldn't have been nor hope to be as long as +you breathed, from the meddling and the machinations and the malice of +that unscrupulous and unconscionable old Cat!" + +By the time Mrs. Mavering had hissed out the last word she had her arm +round her boy's neck and was clutching him, safe and sound after his +peril, to her breast; and between her kissing and crying she repeated her +accusals and denunciations with violent volubility. + +Dan could not have replied to them in that effusion of gratitude and +tenderness he felt for his mother's partisanship; and when she went on in +almost the very terms of his self-defence, and told him that he had done +as he had because it was easy for him to yield, and he could not imagine a +Cat who would put her daughter up to entrapping him into a promise that +she knew must break his mother's heart, he found her so right on the main +point that he could not help some question of Mrs. Pasmer in his soul. +Could she really have been at the bottom of it all? She was very sly, and +she might be very false, and it was certainly she who had first proposed +their going abroad together. It looked as if it might be as his mother +said, and at any rate it was no time to dispute her, and he did not say a +word in behalf of Mrs. Pasmer, whom she continued to rend in a thousand +pieces and scatter to the winds till she had to stop breathless. + +"Yes! it's quite as I expected! She did everything she could to trap you +into it. She fairly flung that poor girl at you. She laid her plans so +that you couldn't say no--she understood your character from the start!-- +and then, when it came out by accident, and she saw that she had older +heads to deal with, and you were not going to be quite at her mercy, she +dropped the mask in an instant, and made Alice break with you. Oh, I +could see through her from the beginning! And the next time, Dan, I +advise you, as you never suspect anybody yourself, to consult with +somebody who doesn't take people for what they seem, and not to let +yourself be flattered out of your sensor, even if you see your father is." + +Mrs. Mavering dropped back on her pillow, and her husband smiled patiently +at their daughter. + +Dan saw his patient smile and understood it; and the injustice which his +father bore made him finally unwilling to let another remain under it. +Hard as it was to oppose his mother in anything when she was praising him +so sweetly and comforting him in the moment of his need, he pulled himself +together to protest: "No, no, mother! I don't think Mrs. Pasmer was to +blame; I don't believe she had anything to do with it. She's always stood +my friend--" + +"Oh, I've no doubt she's made you think so, Dan," said his mother, with +unabated fondness for him; "and you think so because you're so simple and +good, and never suspect evil of any one. It's this hideous optimism +that's killing everything--" + +A certain note in the invalid's falling voice seemed to warn her hearers +of an impending change that could do no one good. Eunice rose hastily and +interrupted: "Mother, Mr. Boardman's here. He came up with Dan. May +Minnie come in with him?" + +Mrs. Mavering shot a glance of inquiry at Dan, and then let a swift +inspection range over all the details of the room, and finally concentrate +itself on the silk and lace of her bed, over which she passed a smoothing +hand. "Mr. Boardman?" she cried, with instantly recovered amiability. "Of +course she may!" + + + + +XLVII. + +In Boston the rumour of Dan's broken engagement was followed promptly by a +denial of it; both the rumour and the denial were apparently +authoritative; but it gives the effect of a little greater sagacity to +distrust rumours of all kinds, and most people went to bed, after the teas +and dinners and receptions and clubs at which the fact was first debated, +in the self-persuasion that it was not so. The next day they found the +rumour still persistent; the denial was still in the air too, but it +seemed weaker; at the end of the third day it had become a question as to +which broke the engagement, and why; by the end of a week it was known +that Alice had broken the engagement, but the reason could not be +ascertained. + +This was not for want of asking, more or less direct. Pasmer, of course, +went and came at his club with perfect immunity. Men are quite as curious +as women, but they set business bounds to their curiosity, and do not +dream of passing these. With women who have no business of their own, and +can not quell themselves with the reflection that this thing or that is +not their affair, there is no question so intimate that they will not put +it to some other woman; perhaps it is not so intimate, or perhaps it will +not seem so; at any rate, they chance it. Mrs. Pasmer was given every +opportunity to explain the facts to the ladies whom she met, and if she +was much afflicted by Alice's behaviour, she had a measure of consolation +in using her skill to baffle the research of her acquaintance. After each +encounter of the kind she had the pleasure of reflecting that absolutely +nothing more than she meant had become known. The case never became fully +known through her; it was the girl herself who told it to Miss Cotton in +one of those moments of confidence which are necessary to burdened minds; +and it is doubtful if more than two or three people ever clearly +understood it; most preferred one or other of several mistaken versions +which society finally settled down to. + +The paroxysm of self-doubt, almost self-accusal, in which Alice came to +Miss Cotton, moved the latter to the deepest sympathy, and left her with +misgivings which became an intolerable anguish to her conscience. The +child was so afflicted at what she had done, not because she wished to be +reconciled with her lover, but because she was afraid she had been unjust, +been cruelly impatient and peremptory with him; she seemed to Miss Cotton +so absolutely alone and friendless with her great trouble, she was so +helpless, so hopeless, she was so anxious to do right, and so fearful she +had done wrong, that Miss Cotton would not have been Miss Cotton if she +had not taken her in her arms and assured her that in everything she had +done she had been sublimely and nobly right, a lesson to all her sex in +such matters for ever. She told her that she had always admired her, but +that now she idolised her; that she felt like going down on her knees and +simply worshipping her. + +"Oh, don't say that, Miss Cotton!" pleaded Alice, pulling away from her +embrace, but still clinging to her with her tremulous, cold little hands. +"I can't bear it! I'm wicked and hard you don't know how bad I am; and +I'm afraid of being weak, of doing more harm yet. Oh, I wronged him +cruelly in ever letting him get engaged to me! But now what you've said +will support me. If you think I've done right--It must seem strange to +you that I should come to you with my trouble instead of my mother; but +I've been to her, and--and we think alike on so few subjects, don't you +know--" + +"Yes, yes; I know, dear!" said Miss Cotton, in the tender folly of her +heart, with the satisfaction which every woman feels in being more +sufficient to another in trouble than her natural comforters. + +"And I wanted to know how you saw it; and now, if you feel as you say, I +can never doubt myself again." + +She tempested out of Miss Cotton's house, all tearful under the veil she +had pulled down, and as she shut the door of her coupe, Miss Cotton's +heart jumped into her throat with an impulse to run after her, to recall +her, to recant, to modify everything. + +From that moment Miss Cotton's trouble began, and it became a torment that +mounted and gave her no peace till she imparted it. She said to herself +that she should suffer to the utmost in this matter, and if she spoke to +any one, it must not be to same one who had agreed with her about Alice, +but to some hard, skeptical nature, some one who would look at it from a +totally different point of view, and would punish her for her error, if +she had committed an error, in supporting and consoling Alice. All the +time she was thinking of Mrs. Brinkley; Mrs. Brinkley had come into her +mind at once; but it was only after repeated struggles that she could get +the strength to go to her. + +Mrs. Brinkley, sacredly pledged to secrecy, listened with a sufficiently +dismaying air to the story which Miss Cotton told her in the extremity of +her fear and doubt. + +"Well," she said at the end, "have you written to Mr. Mavering?" + +"Written to Mr. Mavering?" gasped Miss Cotton. + +"Yes--to tell him she wants him back." + +"Wants him back?" Miss Cotton echoed again. + +"That's what she came to you for." + +"Oh, Mrs. Brinkley!" moaned Miss Cotton, and she stared at her in mute +reproach. + +Mrs. Brinkley laughed. "I don't say she knew that she came for that; but +there's no doubt that she did; and she went away bitterly disappointed +with your consolation and support. She didn't want anything of the kind-- +you may comfort yourself with that reflection, Miss Cotton." + +"Mrs. Brinkley," said Miss Cotton, with a severity which ought to have +been extremely effective from so mild a person, "do you mean to accuse +that poor child of dissimulation--of deceit--in such--a--a--" + +"No!" shouted Mrs. Brinkley; "she didn't know what she was doing any more +than you did; and she went home perfectly heart-broken; and I hope she'll +stay so, for the good of all parties concerned." + +Miss Cotton was so bewildered by Mrs. Brinkley's interpretation of Alice's +latent motives that she let the truculent hostility of her aspiration pass +unheeded. She looked helplessly about, and seemed faint, so that Mrs. +Brinkley, without appearing to notice her state, interposed the question +of a little sherry. When it had been brought, and Miss Cotton had sipped +the glass that trembled in one hand while her emotion shattered a biscuit +with the other, Mrs. Brinkley went on: "I'm glad the engagement is broken, +and I hope it will never be mended. If what you tell me of her reason for +breaking it is true--" + +"Oh, I feel so guilty for telling you! I'd no right to! Please never +speak of it!" pleaded Miss Cotton. + +"Then I feel more than ever that it was all a mistake, and that to help it +on again would be a--crime." + +Miss Cotton gave a small jump at the word, as if she had already committed +the crime: she had longed to do it. + +"Yes; I mean to say that they are better parted than plighted. If matches +are made in heaven, I believe some of them are unmade there too. They're +not adapted to each other; there's too great a disparity." + +"You mean," began Miss Cotton, from her prepossession of Alice's +superiority, "that she's altogether his inferior, intellectually and +morally." + +"Oh, I can't admit that!" cried Miss Cotton, glad to have Mrs. Brinkley go +too far, and plucking up courage from her excess. + +"Intellectually and morally," repeated Mrs. Brinkley, with the mounting +conviction which ladies seem to get from mere persistence. "I saw that +girl at Campobello; I watched her." + +"I never felt that you did her justice!" cried Miss Cotton, with the +valour of a hen-sparrow. "There was an antipathy." + +"There certainly wasn't a sympathy, I'm happy to say," retorted Mrs. +Brinkley. "I know her, and I know her family, root and branch. The +Pasmers are the dullest and most selfish people in the world." + +"Oh, I don't think that's her character," said Miss Cotton, ruffling her +feathers defensively. + +"Neither do I. She has no fixed character. No girl has. Nobody has. We +all have twenty different characters--more characters than gowns--and we +put them on and take them off just as often for different occasions. I +know you think each person is permanently this or that; but my experience +is that half the time they're the other thing." + +"Then why," said Miss Cotton, winking hard, as some weak people do when +they thick they are making a point, "do you say that Alice is dull and +selfish?" + +"I don't--not always, or not simply so. That's the character of the +Pasmer blood, but it's crossed with twenty different currents in her; and +from some body that the Pasmer dulness and selfishness must have driven +mad she got a crazy streak of piety; and that's got mixed up in her again +with a nonsensical ideal of duty; and everything she does she not only +thinks is right, but she thinks it's religious, and she thinks it's +unselfish." + +"If you'd seen her, if you'd heard her, this morning," said Miss Cotton, +"you wouldn't say that, Mrs. Brinkley." + +Mrs. Brinkley refused this with an impatient gesture. "It isn't what she +is now, or seems to be, or thinks she is. It's what she's going to +finally harden into--what's going to be her prevailing character. Now Dan +Mavering has just the faults that will make such a girl think her own +defects are virtues, because they're so different. I tell you Alice +Pasmer has neither the head nor the heart to appreciate the goodness, the +loveliness, of a fellow like Dan Mavering." + +"I think she feels his sweetness fully," urged Miss Cotton. "But she +couldn't endure his uncertainty. With her the truth is first of all +things." + +"Then she's a little goose. If she had the sense to know it, she would +know that he might delay and temporise and beat about the bush, but he +would be true when it was necessary. I haven't the least doubt in the +world but that poor fellow was going on in perfect security, because he +felt that it would be so easy for him to give up, and supposed it would be +just as easy for her. I don't suppose he had a misgiving, and it must +have come upon him like a thunder-clap." + +"Don't you think," timidly suggested Miss Cotton, "that truth is the first +essential in marriage?" + +"Of course it is. And if this girl was worthy of Dan Mavering, if she +were capable of loving him or anybody else unselfishly, she would have +felt his truth even if she couldn't have seen it. I believe this minute +that that manoeuvring, humbugging mother of hers is a better woman, a +kinder woman, than she is." + +"Alice says her mother took his part," said Miss Cotton, with a sigh. +"She took your view of it." + +"She's a sensible woman. But I hope she won't be able to get him into her +toils again," continued Mrs. Brinkley, recurring to the conventional +estimate of Mrs. Pasmer. + +"I can't help feeling--believing--that they'll come together somehow +still," murmured Miss Cotton. It seemed to her that she had all along +wished this; and she tried to remember if what she had said to comfort +Alice might be construed as adverse to a reconciliation. + +"I hope they won't, then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "for they couldn't help +being unhappy together, with their temperaments. There's one thing, Miss +Cotton, that's more essential in marriage than Miss Pasmer's instantaneous +honesty, and that's patience." + +"Patience with wrong?" demanded Miss Cotton. + +"Yes, even with wrong; but I meant patience with each other. Marriage is +a perpetual pardon, concession, surrender; it's an everlasting giving up; +that's the divine thing about it; and that's just what Miss Passer could +never conceive of, because she is self-righteous and conceited and +unyielding. She would make him miserable." + +Miss Cotton rose in a bewilderment which did not permit her to go at once. +There was something in her mind which she wished to urge, but she could +not make it out, though she fingered in vague generalities. When she got +a block away from the house it suddenly came to her. Love! If they loved +each other, would not all be well with them? She would have liked to run +back and put that question to Mrs. Brinkley; but just then she met +Brinkley lumbering heavily homeward; she heard his hard breathing from the +exertion of bowing to her as he passed. + +His wife met him in the hall, and went up to kiss him. He smelt +abominably of tobacco smoke. + +"Hullo!" said her husband. "What are you after?" + +"Nothing," said his wife, enjoying his joke. "Come in here; I want to +tell you how I have just sat upon Miss Cotton." + + + + +XLVIII. + +The relations between Dan and his father had always been kindly and +trustful; they now became, in a degree that touched and flattered the +young fellow, confidential. With the rest of the family there soon ceased +to be any reference to his engagement; his sisters were glad, each in her +way, to have him back again; and, whatever they may have said between +themselves, they said nothing to him about Alice. His mother appeared to +have finished with the matter the first night; she had her theory, and she +did it justice; and when Mrs. Mavering had once done a thing justice, she +did not bring it up again unless somebody disputed it. But nobody had +defended Mrs. Pasmer after Dan's feeble protest in her behalf; Mrs. +Mavering's theory was accepted with obedience if not conviction; the whole +affair dropped, except between Dan and his father. + +Dan was certainly not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find that he +was not so gay. There had been a sort of mercy in the suddenness of the +shock; it benumbed him, and the real stress and pain came during the long +weeks that followed, when nothing occurred to vary the situation in any +manner; he did not hear a word about Alice from Boston, nor any rumour of +her people. + +At first he had intended to go back with Boardman and face it out; but +there seemed no use in this, and when it came to the point he found it +impossible. Boardman went back alone, and he put Dan's things together in +his rooms at Boston and sent them to him, so that Dan remained at home. + +He set about helping his father at the business with unaffected docility. +He tried not to pose, and he did his best to bear his loss and humiliation +with manly fortitude. But his whole life had not set so strongly in one +direction that it could be sharply turned aside now, and not in moments of +forgetfulness press against the barriers almost to bursting. Now and +then, when he came to himself from the wonted tendency, and remembered +that Alice and he, who had been all in all to each other, were now +nothing, the pain was so sharp, so astonishing, that he could not keep +down a groan, which he then tried to turn off with a cough, or a snatch of +song, or a whistle, looking wildly round to see if any one had noticed. + +Once this happened when his father and he were walking silently home from +the works, and his father said, without touching him or showing his +sympathy except in his tone of humorously frank recognition, "Does it +still hurt a little occasionally, Dan?" + +"Yes, sir, it hurts," said the son; and he turned his face aside, and +whistled through his teeth. + +"Well, it's a trial, I suppose," said his father, with his gentle, soft +half-lisp. "But there are greater trials." + +"How, greater?" asked Dan, with sad incredulity. "I've lost all that made +life worth living; and it's all my own fault, too." + +"Yes," said his father; "I think she was a good girl." + +"Good!" cried Dan; the word seemed to choke him. + +"Still, I doubt if it's all your fault." Dan looked round at him. He +added, "And I think it's perhaps for the best as it is." + +Dan halted, and then said, "Oh, I suppose so," with dreary resignation, as +they walked on. + +"Let us go round by the paddock," said his father, "and see if Pat's put +the horses up yet. You can hardly remember your mother, before she became +an invalid, I suppose," he added, as Dan mechanically turned aside with +him from the path that led to the house into that leading to the barn. + +"No; I was such a little fellow," said Dan. + +"Women give up a great deal when they marry," said the elder. "It's not +strange that they exaggerate the sacrifice, and expect more in return than +it's in the nature of men to give them. I should have been sorry to have +you marry a woman of an exacting disposition." + +"I'm afraid she was exacting," said Dan. "But she never asked more than +was right." + +"And it's difficult to do all that's right," suggested the elder. + +"I'm sure you always have, father," said the son. + +The father did not respond. "I wish you could remember your mother when +she was well," he said. Presently he added, "I think it isn't best for a +woman to be too much in love with her husband." + +Dan took this to himself, and he laughed harshly. "She's been able to +dissemble her love at last." + +His father went on, "Women keep the romantic feeling longer than men; it +dies out of us very soon--perhaps too soon." + + +"You think I couldn't have come to time?" asked Dan. "Well, as it's +turned out, I won't have to." + +"No man can be all a woman wishes him to be," said his father. "It's +better for the disappointment to come before it's too late." + +"I was to blame," said Dan stoutly. "She was all right." + +"You were to blame in the particular instance," his father answered. "But +in general the fault was in her--or her temperament. As long as the +romance lasted she might have deluded herself, and believed you were all +she imagined you; but romance can't last, even with women. I don like +your faults, and I don't want you to excuse them to yourself. I don't +like your chancing things, and leaving them to come out all right of +themselves; but I've always tried to make you children see all your +qualities in their true proportion and relation." + +"Yes; I know that, sir," said Dan. + +"Perhaps," continued his father, as they swung easily along, shoulder to +shoulder, "I may have gone too far in that direction because I was afraid +that you might take your mother too seriously in the other--that you might +not understand that she judged you from her nerves and not her +convictions. It's part of her malady, of her suffering, that her +inherited Puritanism clouds her judgment, and makes her see all faults as +of one size and equally damning. I wish you to know that she was not +always so, but was once able to distinguish differences in error, and to +realise that evil is of ill-will." + +"Yes; I know that," said Dan. "She is now--when she feels well." + +"Harm comes from many things, but evil is of the heart. I wouldn't have +you condemn yourself too severely for harm that you didn't intend--that's +remorse--that's insanity; and I wouldn't have you fall under the +condemnation of another's invalid judgment." + +"Thank you, father," said Dan. + +They had come up to the paddock behind the barn, and they laid their arms +on the fence while they looked over at the horses, which were still there. +The beasts, in their rough winter coats, some bedaubed with frozen clots +of the mud in which they had been rolling earlier in the afternoon, stood +motionless in the thin, keen breeze that crept over the hillside from the +March sunset, and blew their manes and tails out toward Dan and his +father. Dan's pony sent him a gleam of recognition from under his frowsy +bangs, but did not stir. + +"Bunch looks like a caterpillar," he said, recalling the time when his +father had given him the pony; he was a boy then, and the pony was as much +to him, it went through his mind, as Alice had ever been. Was it all a +jest, an irony? he asked himself. + +"He's getting pretty old," said his father. "Let's see: you were only +twelve." + +"Ten," said Dan. "We've had him thirteen years." + +Some of the horses pricked up their ears at the sound of their voices. +One of them bit another's neck; the victim threw up his heels and +squealed. + +Pat called from the stable, "Heigh, you divils!" + +"I think he'd better take them in," said Dan's father; and he continued, +as if it were all the same subject, "I hope you'll have seen something +more of the world before you fall in love the next time." + +"Thank you; there won't be any next time. But do you consider the world +such a school of morals; then? I supposed it was a very bad place." + +"We seem to have been all born into it," said the father. He lifted his +arms from the fence, and Dan mechanically followed him into the stable. +A warm, homely smell of hay and of horses filled the place; a lantern +glimmered, a faint blot, in the loft where Pat was pitching some hay +forward to the edge of the boards; the naphtha gas weakly flared from the +jets beside the harness-room, whence a smell of leather issued and mingled +with the other smell. The simple, earthy wholesomeness of the place +appealed to Dan and comforted him. The hay began to tumble from the loft +with a pleasant rustling sound. + +His father called up to Pat, "I think you'd better take the horses in +now." + +"Yes, sir: I've got the box-stalls ready for 'em." + +Dan remembered how he and Eunice used to get into the box-stall with his +pony, and play at circus with it; he stood up on the pony, and his sister +was the ring-master. The picture of his careless childhood reflected a +deeper pathos upon his troubled present, and he sighed again. + +His father said, as they moved on through the barn: "Some of the best +people I've ever known were what were called worldly people. They are apt +to be sincere, and they have none of the spiritual pride, the conceit of +self-righteousness, which often comes to people who are shut up by +conscience or circumstance to the study of their own motives and actions." + +"I don't think she was one of that kind," said Dan. + +"Oh, I don't know that she was. But the chances of happiness, of +goodness, would be greater with a less self-centred person--for you." + +"Ah, Yes! For me!" said Dan bitterly. "Because I hadn't it in me to be +frank with her. With a man like me, a woman had better be a little +scampish, too! Father, I could get over the loss; she might have died, +and I could have got over that; but I can't get over being to blame." + +"I don't think I'd indulge in any remorse," said his father. "There's +nothing so useless, so depraving, as that. If you see you're wrong, it's +for your warning, not for your destruction." + +Dan was not really feeling very remorseful; he had never felt that he was +much to blame; but he had an intellectual perception of the case, and he +thought that he ought to feel remorseful; it was this persuasion that he +took for an emotion. He continued to look very disconsolate. + +"Come," said his father, touching his arm, "I don't want you to brood upon +these things. It can do no manner of good. I want you to go to New York +next week and look after that Lafflin process. If it's what he thinks--if +he can really cast his brass patterns without air-holes--it will +revolutionise our business. I want to get hold of him." + +The Portuguese cook was standing in the basement door which they passed at +the back of the house. He saluted father and son with a glittering smile. + +"Hello, Joe!" said Dan. + +"Ah, Joe!" said his father; he touched his hat to the cook, who snatched +his cap off. + +"What a brick you are, father!" thought Dan. His heart leaped at the +notion of getting away from Ponkwasset; he perceived how it had been +irking him to stay. "If you think I could manage it with Lafflin--" + +"Oh, I think you could. He's another slippery chap." + +Dan laughed for pleasure and pain at his father's joke. + + + + +XLIX. + +In New York Dan found that Lafflin had gone to Washington to look up +something in connection with his patent. In his eagerness to get away +from home, Dan had supposed that his father meant to make a holiday for +him, and he learned with a little surprise that he was quite in earnest +about getting hold of the invention. he wrote home of Lafflin's absence; +and he got a telegram in reply ordering him to follow on to Washington. + +The sun was shining warm on the asphalt when he stepped out of the +Pennsylvania Depot with his bag in his hand, and put it into the hansom +that drove up for him. The sky overhead was of an intense blue that made +him remember the Boston sky as pale and grey; when the hansom tilted out +into the Avenue he had a joyous glimpse of the White House; of the Capitol +swimming like a balloon in the cloudless air. A keen March breeze swept +the dust before him, and through its veil the classic Treasury Building +showed like one edifice standing perfect amid ruin represented by the jag- +tooth irregularities of the business architecture along the wide street. + +He had never been in Washington before, and he had a confused sense of +having got back to Rome, which he remembered from his boyish visit. +Throughout his stay he seemed to be coming up against the facade of the +Temple of Neptune; but it was the Patent Office, or the Treasury Building, +or the White House, and under the gay Southern sky this reversion to the +sensations of a happier time began at once, and made itself a lasting +relief. He felt a lift in his spirits from the first. They gave him a +room at Wormley's, where the chairs comported themselves as self- +respectfully upon two or three legs as they would have done at Boston upon +four; the cooking was excellent, and a mercenary welcome glittered from +all the kind black faces around him. After the quiet of Ponkwasset and +the rush of New York, the lazy ease of the hotel pleased him; the clack of +boots over its pavements, the clouds of tobacco smoke, the Southern and +Western accents, the spectacle of people unexpectedly encountering and +recognising each other in the office and the dining-room, all helped to +restore him to a hopefuller mood. Without asking his heart too curiously +why, he found it lighter; he felt that he was still young. + +In the weather he had struck a cold wave, and the wind was bitter in the +streets, but they were full of sun; he found the grass green in sheltered +places, and in one of the Circles he plucked a blossomed spray from an +adventurous forceythia. This happened when he was walking from Wormley's +to the Arlington by a roundabout way of his own involuntary invention, and +he had the flowers in his button-hole when Lafflin was pointed out to him +in the reading room there, and he introduced himself. Lafflin had put his +hat far back on his head, and was intensely chewing a toothpick, with an +air of rapture from everything about him. He seemed a very simple soul to +Dan's inexperience of men, and the young fellow had no difficulty in +committing him to a fair conditional arrangement. He was going to stay +some days in Washington, and he promised other interviews, so that Dan +thought it best to stay too. He used a sheet of the Arlington letter- +paper in writing his father of what he had done; and then, as Lafflin had +left him, he posted his letter at the clerk's desk, and wandered out +through a corridor different from that which he had come in by. It led by +the door of the ladies parlour, and at the sound of women's voices Dan +halted. For no other reason than that such voices always irresistibly +allured him, he went in, putting on an air of having come to look for some +one. There were two or three groups of ladies receiving friends in +different parts of the room. At the window a girl's figure silhouetted +itself against the keen light, and as he advanced into the room, peering +about, it turned with a certain vividness that seemed familiar. This +young lady, whoever she was, had the advantage of Dan in seeing him with +the light on his face, and he was still in the dark about her, when she +advanced swiftly upon him, holding out her hand. + +"You don't seem to know your old friends, Mr. Mavering," and the manly +tones left him no doubt. + +He felt a rush of gladness, and he clasped her hand and clung to it as if +he were not going to let it go again, bubbling out incoherencies of +pleasure at meeting her. "Why, Miss Anderson! You here? What a piece +of luck! Of course I couldn't see you against the window--make you out! +But something looked familiar--and the way you turned! And when you +started toward me! I'm awfully glad! When--where are you--that is--" + +Miss Anderson kept laughing with him, and bubbled back that she was very +glad too, and she was staying with her aunt in that hotel, and they had +been there a month, and didn't he think Washington was charming? But it +was too bad he had just got there with that blizzard. The weather had +been perfectly divine till the day before yesterday. + +He took the spray of forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believe it. +I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs to you." He. +offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took it in the same humour. + +"What is the language of forceythia?" she asked. + +"It has none--only expressive silence, you know." + +A middle-aged lady came in, and Miss Anderson said, "My aunt, Mr. +Mavering." + +"Mr. Mavering will hardly remember me," said the lady, giving him her +hand. He protested that he should indeed, but she had really made but a +vague impression upon him at Campobello. He knew that she was there with +Miss Anderson; he had been polite to her as he was to all women; but he +had not noticed her much, and in his heart he had a slight for her, as +compared with the Boston people he was more naturally thrown with; he +certainly had not remembered that she was a little hard of hearing. + +Miss Van Hook was in a steel-grey effect of dress, and, she had carried +this up into her hair, of which she worn two short vertical curls on each +temple. + +She did not sit down, and Dan perceived that the ladies were going out. +In her tailor-made suit of close-fitting serge and her Paris bonnet, +carried like a crest on her pretty little head, Miss Anderson was +charming. She had a short veil that came across the base of her lively +nose, and left her mouth and chin to make the most of themselves, +unprejudiced by its irregularity. + +Dan felt it a hardship to part with them, but he prepared to take himself +off. Miss Anderson asked him how long he was to be in Washington, and +said he must come to see them; they meant to stay two weeks yet, and then +they were going to Old Point Comfort; they had their rooms engaged. + +He walked down to their carriage with the ladies and put them into it, and +Miss Anderson still kept him talking there. + +Her aunt said: "Why shouldn't you come with us, Mr. Mavering? We're going +to Mrs. Secretary Miller's reception." + +Dan gave himself a glance. "I don't know--if you want me?" + +"We want you," said Miss Anderson. "Very well, then, I'll go." + +He got in, and they began rolling over that smooth Washington asphalt +which makes talk in a carriage as easy as in a drawing-room. Dan kept +saying to himself, "Now she's going to bring up Campobello;" but Miss +Anderson never recurred to their former meeting, and except for the sense +of old acquaintance which was manifest in her treatment of him he might +have thought that they had never met before. She talked of Washington and +its informal delights; and of those plans which her aunt had made, like +every one who spends a month in Washington, to spend all the remaining +winters of her life there. + +It seemed to Dan that Miss Anderson was avoiding Campobello on his +account; he knew from what Alice had told him that there had been much +surmise about their affair after he had left the island, and he suspected +that Miss Anderson thought the subject was painful to him. He wished to +reassure her. He asked at the first break in the talk about Washington, +"How are the Trevors?" + +"Oh, quite well," she said, promptly availing herself of the opening. +"Have you seen any of our Campobello friends lately in Boston?" + +"No; I've been at home for the last month--in the country." He scanned +her face to see if she knew anything of his engagement. But she seemed +honestly ignorant of everything since Campobello; she was not just the +kind of New York girl who would visit in Boston, or have friends living +there; probably she had never heard of his engagement. Somehow this +seemed to simplify matters for Dan. She did not ask specifically after +the Pasmers; but that might have been because of the sort of break in her +friendship with Alice after that night at the Trevors'; she did not ask +specifically after Mrs. Brinkley or any of the others. + +At Mrs. Secretary Miller's door there was a rapid arrival and departure of +carriages, of coupes, of hansoms, and of herdics, all managed by a man in +plain livery, who opened and shut the doors, and sent the drivers off +without the intervention of a policeman; it is the genius of Washington, +which distinguishes it from every other capital, from every other city, to +make no show of formality, of any manner of constraint anywhere. People +were swarming in and out; coming and going on foot as well as by carriage. +The blandest of coloured uncles received their cards in the hall and put +them into a vast tray heaped up with pasteboard, smiling affectionately +upon them as if they had done him a favour. + +"Don't you like them?" asked Dan of Miss Anderson; he meant the Southern +negroes. + +"I adoye them," she responded, with equal fervour. "You must study some +new types here for next summer," she added. + +Dan laughed and winced too. "Yes!" Then be said solemnly, "I am not +going to Campobello next summer." + +They felt into a stream of people tending toward an archway between the +drawing-rooms, where Mrs. Secretary Miller stood with two lady friends who +were helping her receive. They smiled wearily but kindly upon the crowd, +for whom the Secretary's wife had a look of impartial hospitality. She +could not have known more than one in fifty; and she met them all with +this look at first, breaking into incredulous recognition when she found a +friend. "Don't go away yet," she said cordially, to Miss Van Hook and her +niece, and she held their hands for a moment with a gentle look of relief +and appeal which included Dan. "Let me introduce you to Mrs. Tolliver and +to Miss Dixon." + +These ladies said that it was not necessary in regard to Miss Anderson and +Miss Van Hook; and as the crowd pushed them on, Dan felt that they had +been received with distinction. + +The crowd expressed the national variety of rich and poor, plain and +fashionable, urbane and rustic; they elbowed and shouldered each other +upon a perfect equality in a place where all were as free to come as to +the White House, and they jostled quaint groups of almond-eyed legations +in the yellows and purples of the East, who looked dreamily on as if +puzzled past all surmise by the scene. Certain young gentlemen with the +unmistakable air of being European or South American attaches found their +way about on their little feet, which the stalwart boots of the republican +masses must have imperilled; and smiled with a faint diplomatic +superiority, not visibly admitted, but all the same indisputable. Several +of these seemed to know Miss Anderson, and took her presentation of +Mavering with exaggerated effusion. + +"I want to introduce you to my cousin over yonder," she said, getting rid +of a minute Brazilian under-secretary, and putting her hand on Dan's arm +to direct him: "Mrs. Justice Averill." + +Miss Van Hook, keeping her look of severe vigilance, really followed her +energetic niece, who took the lead, as a young lady must whenever she and +her chaperon meet on equal terms. + +Mrs. Justice Averill, who was from the far West somewhere, received Dan +with the ease of the far East, and was talking London and Paris to him +before the end of the third minute. It gave Dan a sense of liberation, of +expansion; he filled his lungs with the cosmopolitan air in a sort of +intoxication; without formulating it, he felt, with the astonishment which +must always attend the Bostonian's perception of the fact, that there is a +great social life in America outside of Boston. At Campobello he had +thought Miss Anderson a very jolly girl, bright, and up to all sorts of +things; but in the presence of the portable Boston there he could not help +regarding her with a sort of tolerance which he now blushed for; he +thought he had been a great ass. She seemed to know all sorts of nice +people, and she strove with generous hospitality to make him have a good +time. She said it was Cabinet Day, and that all the secretaries' wives +were receiving, and she told him he had better make the rounds with them. +He assented very willingly, and at six o'clock he was already so much in +the spirit of this free and simple society, so much opener and therefore +so much wiser than any other, that he professed a profound disappointment +with the two or three Cabinet ladies whose failure to receive brought his +pleasure to a premature close. + +"But I suppose you're going to Mrs. Whittington's to-night!" Miss +Anderson said to him, as they drove up to Wormley's, where she set him +down. Miss Van Hook had long ceased to say anything; Dan thought her a +perfect duenna. "You know you can go late there," she added. + +"No, I can't go at all," said Dan. "I don't know them." + +"They're New England people," urged Miss Anderson; as if to make him try +to think that he was asked to Mrs. Whittington's. + +"I don't know more than half the population of New England," said Dan, +with apparent levity, but real forlornness. + +"If you'd like to go--if you're sure you've no other engagement--" + +"Oh, I'm certain of that?" + +"--we would come for you." + +"Do!" + +"At half-past ten, then." + +Miss Anderson explained to her aunt, who cordially confirmed her +invitation, and they both shook hands with him upon it, and he backed out +of the carriage with a grin of happiness on his face; it remained there +while he wrote out the order for his dinner, which they require at +Wormley's in holograph. The waiter reflected his smile with ethnical +warm-heartedness. For a moment Dan tried to think what it was he had +forgotten; he thought it was some other dish; then he remembered that it +was his broken heart. He tried to subdue himself; but there was something +in the air of the place, the climate, perhaps, or a pleasant sense of its +facile social life, that kept him buoyant in spite of himself. He went +out after dinner, and saw part of a poor play, and returned in time to +dress for his appointment with Miss Anderson. Her aunt was with her, of +course; she seemed to Dan more indefatigable than she was by day. He +could not think her superfluous; and she was very good-natured. She made +little remarks full of conventional wisdom, and appealed to his judgment +on several points as they drove along. When they came to a street lamp +where she could see him, he nodded and said yes, or no, respectfully. +Between times he talked with Miss Anderson, who lectured him upon +Washington society, and prepared him for the difference he was to find +between Mrs. Whittington's evening of invited guests and the Cabinet +ladies' afternoon of volunteer guests. + +"Volunteer guests is good," he laughed. "Do you mean that anybody can +go?" + +"Anybody that is able to be about. This is Cabinet Day. There's a +Supreme Court Day and a Senators' Day, and a Representatives' Day. Do you +mean to say you weren't going to call upon your Senator?" + +"I didn't know I had any." + +"Neither did I till I came here. But you've got two; everybody's got two. +And the President's wife receives three times a week, and the President +has two or three days. They say the public days at the White House are +great fun. I've been to some of the invited, or semi-invited or official +evenings." + +He could not see that difference from the great public receptions which +Miss Anderson had promised him at Mrs. Whittington's, though he pretended +afterward that he had done so. The people were more uniformly well +dressed, there were not so many of them, and the hostess was sure of +knowing her acquaintances at first glance; but there was the same ease, +the same unconstraint, the same absence of provincial anxiety which makes +a Washington a lighter and friendlier London. There were rather more +sallow attaches; in their low-cut white waistcoats, with small brass +buttons, they moved more consciously about, and looked weightier +personages than several foreign ministers who were present. + +Dan was soon lost from the side of Miss Anderson, who more and more seemed +to him important socially. She seemed, in her present leadership; to know +more of life, than he; to be maturer. But she did not abuse her +superiority; she kept an effect of her last summer's friendliness for him +throughout. Several times, finding herself near him; she introduced him +to people. + +Guests kept arriving till midnight. Among the latest, when Dan had lost +himself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, who spoke +with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley. +He felt himself grow pale and inattentive to his pretty Virginian. That +accent of Mrs. Brinkley's recalled him to his history. He hoped that she +would not see him; but in another moment he was greeting her with a warmth +which Bostonians seldom show in meeting at Boston. + +"When did you come to Washington?" she asked, trying to keep her +consciousness out of her eyes, which she let dwell kindly upon him. + +"Day before yesterday--no, yesterday. It seems a month, I've seen and +done so much," he said, with his laugh. "Miss Anderson's been showing me +the whole of Washington society. Have you been here long?" + +"Since morning," said Mrs. Brinkley. And she added, "Miss Anderson?" + +"Yes--Campobello, don't you know?" + +"Oh yes. Is she here to-night?" + +"I came with her and her aunt." + +"Oh yes." + +"How is all Boston?" asked Dan boldly. + +"I don't know; I'm just going down to Old Point Comfort to ask. Every +other house on the Back Bay has been abandoned for the Hygeia." Mrs. +Brinkley stopped, and then she asked. "Are you just up from there?" + +"No; but I don't know but I shall go." + +"Hello, Mavering!" said Mr. Brinkley, coming up and taking his hand into +his fat grasp. "On your way to Fortress Monroe? Better come with us. +Why; Munt!" + +He turned to greet this other Bostonian, who had hardly expressed his joy +at meeting with his fellow-townsmen when the hostess rustled softly up, +and said, with the irony more or less friendly, which everybody uses in +speaking of Boston, or recognising the intellectual pre-eminence of its +people, "I'm not going to let you keep this feast of reason all to your +selves. I want you to leaven the whole lump," and she began to disperse +them, and to introduce them about right and left. + +Dan tried to find his Virginian again, but she was gone. He found Miss +Anderson; she was with her aunt. "Shall we be tearing you away?" she +asked. + +"Oh no. I'm quite ready to go." + +His nerves were in a tremble. Those Boston faces and voices had brought +it all back again; it seemed as if he had met Alice. He was silent and +incoherent as they drove home, but Miss Anderson apparently did not want +to talk much, and apparently did not notice his reticence. + +He fell asleep with the pang in his heart which had been there so often. + +When Dan came down to breakfast he found the Brinkleys at a pleasant place +by one of the windows, and after they had exchanged a pleased surprise +with him that they should all happen to be in the same hotel, they asked +him to sit at their table. + +There was a bright sun shining, and the ache was gone out of Dan's heart. +He began to chatter gaily with Mrs. Brinkley about Washington. + +"Oh, better come on to Fortress Monroe," said her husband. "Better come +on with us." + +"No, I can't just yet," said Dan. "I've got some business here that will +keep me for awhile. Perhaps I may run down there a little later." + +"Miss Anderson seems to have a good deal of business in Washington too," +observed Brinkley, with some hazy notion of saying a pleasant rallying +thing to the young man. He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. With +those panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan's love +affair with Miss Pasmer. + +Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson as impersonal +as possible. + +"It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesome +creature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think of +the broad daylight. I always liked that girl." + +"Yes; isn't she jolly?" said Dan joyously. "She seems to know everybody +here. It's a great piece of luck for me. They're going to take a house +in Washington next winter." + +"Yes; I know that stage," said Mrs. Brinkley. "Her aunt's an amusingly +New-York respectability. I don't think you'd find just such Miss Mitford +curls as hers in all Boston." + +"Yes, they are like the portraits, aren't they?" said Dan; delighted. +"She's very nice, don't you think?" + +"Very. But Miss Anderson is more than that. I was disposed to be +critical of her at Campobello for a while, but she wore extremely well. +All at once you found yourself admiring her uncommon common-sense. + +"Yes. That's just it," cried Dan. "She is so sensible!" + +"I think she's very pretty," said Mrs. Brinkley." + +"Well, her nose," suggested Dan. "It seems a little capricious." + +"It's a trifle bizarre, I suppose. But what beautiful eyes! And her +figure! I declare that girl's carriage is something superb." + +"Yes, she has a magnificent walk." + +"Walks with her carriage," mused Brinkley aloud. + +His wife did not regard him. "I don't know what Miss Anderson's +principles are, but her practices are perfect. I never knew her do an +unkind or shabby thing. She seems very good and very wise. And that deep +voice of hers has such a charm. It's so restful. You feel as if you +could repose upon it for a thousand years. Well! You will get down +before we leave?" + +"Yes, I will," said Dan. "I'm here after a man who's after a patent, and +as soon as I can finish up my business with him I believe I will run down +to Fortress Monroe." + +"This eleven-o'clock train will get you there at six," said Brinkley. +"Better telegraph for your rooms." + + +"Or, let us know," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and we'll secure them for you." + +"Oh, thank you," said Dan. + +He went away, feeling that Mrs. Brinkley was the pleasantest woman he ever +met. He knew that she had talked Miss Anderson so fully in order to take +away the implication of her husband's joke, and he admired her tact. He +thought of this as he loitered along the street from Wormley's to the +Arlington, where he was going to find Miss Anderson, by an appointment of +the night before, and take a walk with her; and thinking of tact made him +think of Mrs. Pasmer. Mrs. Pasmer was full of tact; and how kind she had +always been to him! She had really been like a mother to him; he was sure +she had understood him; he believed she had defended him; with a futility +of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend him now to Alice. Alice +was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; her mother's words fell +upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer's tears, which Dan made her +shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl. Not that he cared now. + +The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine lay +still, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed to +bask in it, and which it softened to the foot. He loitered by the gate of +the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jackson is +riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at the French- +Italian classicism of the White House architecture with a pensive joy at +finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington. + +Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a long +walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and +through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes +beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping +in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three they sat down +on the iron benches and rested. + +They talked and talked--about the people they knew, and of whom they found +that they thought surprisingly alike, and about themselves, whom they +found surprisingly alike in a great many things, and then surprisingly +unlike. Dan brought forward some points of identity which he, and Alice +had found in themselves; it was just the same with Miss Anderson. She +found herself rather warm with the seal-skin sacque she had put on; she +let him carry it on his arm while they walked, and then lay it over her +shoulders when they sat down. He felt a pang of self-reproach, as if he +had been inconstant to Alice. This was an old habit of feeling, formed +during the months of their engagement, when, at her inspiration, he was +always bringing himself to book about something. He replied to her +bitterly, in the colloquy which began to hold itself in his mind, and told +her that she had no claim upon him now; that if his thoughts wandered from +her it was her fault, not his; that she herself had set them free. But in +fact he was like all young men, with a thousand, potentialities of loving. +There was no aspect of beauty that did not tenderly move him; he could not +help a soft thrill at the sight of any pretty shape, the sound of any +piquant voice; and Alice had merely been the synthesis of all that was +most charming to this fancy. This is a truth which it is the convention +of the poets and the novelists to deny; but it is also true that she might +have remained the sum of all that was loveliest if she would; or if she +could. + +It was chiefly because she would not or could not that his glance +recognised the charm of Miss Anderson's back hair, both in its straying +gossamer and in the loose mass in which it was caught up under her hat, +when he laid her sacque on her shoulders. They met that afternoon at a +Senator's, and in the house of a distinguished citizen, to whose wife Dan +had been presented at Mrs. Whittington's, and who had somehow got his +address, and sent him a card for her evening. They encountered here with +a jocose old friendliness, and a profession of being tired of always +meeting Miss Anderson and Mr. Mavering. He brought her salad and ice, and +they made an appointment for another walk in the morning, if it was fine. + +He carried her some flowers. A succession of fine days followed, and they +walked every morning. Sometimes Dan was late, and explained that it was +his patent-right man had kept him. She was interested in the patent-right +man, whom Dan began to find not quite so simple as at first, but she was +not exacting with him about his want of punctuality; she was very easy- +going; she was not always ready herself. When he began to beat about the +bush, to talk insincerities, and to lose himself in intentionless +plausibilities, she waited with serene patience for him to have done, and +met him on their habitual ground of frankness and reality as if he had +not left it. He got to telling her all his steps with his patent-right +man, who seemed to be growing mote and more slippery, and who presently +developed a demand for funds. Then she gave him some very shrewd, +practical advice, and told him to go right into the hotel office and +telegraph to his father while she was putting on her bonnet. + +"Yes," he said, "that's what I thought of doing." But he admired her for +advising him; he said to himself that Miss Anderson was the kind of girl +his father would admire. She was good, and she was of the world too; +that was what his father meant. He imagined himself arriving home and +saying, "Well father, you know that despatch I sent you, about Lafflin's +wanting money?" and telling him about Miss Anderson. Then he fancied her +acquainted with his sisters and visiting them, and his father more and +more fond of her, and perhaps in declining health, and eager to see his +son settled in life; and he pictured himself telling her that he had done +with love for ever, but if she could accept respect, fidelity, gratitude, +he was ready to devote his life to her. She refused him, but they always +remained good friends and comrades; she married another, perhaps Boardman, +while Dan was writing out his telegram, and he broke into whispered +maledictions on his folly, which attracted the notice of the operator. + +One morning when he sent up his name to Miss Anderson, whom he did not +find in the hotel parlour, the servant came back with word that Miss Van +Hook would like to have him come up to their rooms. But it was Miss +Anderson who met him at the door. + +"It seemed rather formal to send you word that Miss Van Hook was +indisposed, and Miss Anderson would be unable to walk this morning, +and I thought perhaps you'd rather come up and get my regrets in person. +And I wanted you to see our view." + +She led the way to the window for it, but they did not look at it, though +they sat down there apparently for the purpose. Dan put his hat beside +his chair, and observed some inattentive civilities in inquiring after +Miss Van Hook's health, and in hearing that it was merely a bad headache, +one of a sort in which her niece hated to leave her to serve herself with +the wet compresses which Miss Van Hook always bore on her forehead for it. + +"One thing: it's decided us to be off for Fortress Monroe at last. We +shall go by the boat to-morrow, if my aunt's better." + +"To-morrow?" said Dan. "What's to become of me when you're gone?" + +"Oh, we shall not take the whole population with us," suggested Miss +Anderson. + +"I wish you would take me. I told Mrs. Brinkley I would come while she +was there, but I'm afraid I can't get off. Lafflin is developing into all +sorts of strange propositions." + +"I think you'd better look out for that man," said Miss Anderson. + +"Oh, I do nothing without consulting my father. But I shall miss you." + +"Thank you," said the girl gravely. + +"I don't mean in a business capacity only." + +They both laughed, and Dan looked about the room, which he found was a +private hotel parlour, softened to a more domestic effect by the signs of +its prolonged occupation by two refined women. On a table stood a leather +photograph envelope with three cabinet pictures in it. Along the top lay +a spray of withered forceythia. Dan's wandering eyes rested on it. Miss +Anderson went and softly closed the door opening into the next room. + +"I was afraid our talking might disturb my aunt," she said, and on her way +back to him she picked up the photograph case and brought it to the light. +"These are my father and mother. We live at Yonkers; but I'm with my aunt +a good deal of the time in town--even when I'm at home." She laughed at +her own contradictory statement, and put the case back without explaining +the third figure--a figure in uniform. Dan conjectured a military +brother, or from her indifference perhaps a militia brother, and +then forgot about him. But the partial Yonkers residence accounted for +traits of unconventionality in Miss Anderson which he had not been able to +reconcile with the notion of an exclusively New York breeding. He felt +the relief, the sympathy, the certainty of intelligence which every person +whose life has been partly spent in the country feels at finding that a +suspected cockney has also had the outlook into nature and simplicity. + +On the Yonkers basis they became more intimate, more personal, and Dan +told her about Ponkwasset Falls and his mother and sisters; he told her +about his father, and she said she should like to see his father; she +thought he must be like her father. + +All at once, and for no reason that he could think of afterward, except, +perhaps, the desire to see the case with her eyes, he began to tell her of +his affair with Alice, and how and why it was broken off; he told the +whole truth in regard to that, and did not spare himself. + +She listened without once speaking, but without apparent surprise at the +confidence, though she may have felt surprised. At times she looked as if +her thoughts were away from what he was saying. + +He ended with, "I'm sure I don't know why I've told you all this. But I +wanted you to know about me. The worst." + +Miss Anderson said, looking down, "I always thought she was a very +conscientious giyl." Then after a pause, in which she seemed to be +overcoming an embarrassment in being obliged to speak of another in such a +conviction, "I think she was very moybid. She was like ever so many New +England giyls that I've met. They seem to want some excuse for suffering; +and they must suffer even if it's through somebody else. I don't know; +they're romantic, New England giyls are; they have too many ideals." + +Dan felt a balm in this; he too had noticed a superfluity of ideals in +Alice, he had borne the burden of realising some of them; they all seemed +to relate in objectionable degree to his perfectionation. So he said +gloomily, "She was very good. And I was to blame." + +"Oh yes!" said Miss Anderson, catching her breath in a queer way; "she +seyved you right." + +She rose abruptly, as if she heard her aunt speak, and Dan perceived that +he had been making a long call. + +He went away dazed and dissatisfied; he knew now that he ought not to have +told Miss Anderson about his affair, unless he meant more by his +confidence than he really did--unless he meant to follow it up. + +He took leave of her, and asked her to make his adieux to her aunt; but +the next day he came down to the boat to see them off. It seemed to him +that their interview had ended too hastily; he felt sore and restless over +it; he hoped that something more conclusive might happen. But at the boat +Miss Anderson and her aunt were inseparable. Miss Van Hook said she hoped +they should soon see him at the Hygeia, and he replied that he was not +sure that he should be able to come after all. + +Miss Anderson called something after him as he turned from them to go +ashore. He ran back eagerly to know what it was. "Better lookout for +that Mr. Lafflin of yours," she repeated. + +"Oh! oh yes," he said, indefinitely disappointed. "I shall keep a sharp +eye on him." He was disappointed, but he could not have said what he had +hoped or expected her to say. He was humbled before himself for having +told Miss Anderson about his affair with Alice, and had wished she would +say something that he might scramble back to his self-esteem upon. He had +told her all that partly from mere weakness, from his longing for the +sympathy which he was always so ready to give, and partly from the +willingness to pose before her as a broken heart, to dazzle her by the +irony and persiflage with which he could treat such a tragical matter; but +he could not feel that he had succeeded. The sum of her comment had been +that Alice had served him right. He did not know whether she really +believed that or merely said it to punish him for some reason; but he +could never let it be the last word. He tingled as he turned to wave his +handkerchief to her on the boat, with the suspicion that she was laughing +at him; and he could not console himself with any hero of a novel who had +got himself into just such a box. There were always circumstances, +incidents, mitigations, that kept the hero still a hero, and ennobled the +box into an unjust prison cell. + + + + +L. + +On the long sunny piazza of the Hygeia Mrs. Brinkley and Miss Van Hook sat +and talked in a community of interest which they had not discovered during +the summer before at Campobello, and with an equality of hearing which the +sound of the waves washing almost at their feet established between them. +In this pleasant noise Miss Van Hook heard as well as any one, and Mrs. +Brinkley gradually realised that it was the trouble of having to lift her +voice that had kept her from cultivating a very agreeable acquaintance +before. The ladies sat in a secluded corner, wearing light wraps that +they had often found comfortable at Campobello in August, and from time to +time attested to each other their astonishment that they needed no more at +Old Point in early April. + +They did this not only as a just tribute to the amiable climate, but as a +relief from the topic which had been absorbing them, and to which they +constantly returned. + +"No," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a sort of finality, "I think it is the best +thing that could possibly have happened to him. He is bearing it in a +very manly way, but I fancy he has felt it deeply, poor fellow. He's +never been in Boston since, and I don't believe he'd come here if he'd any +idea how many Boston people there were in the hotel--we swarm! It would +be very painful to him." + +"Yes," said Miss Van Hook, "young people seem to feel those things." + +"Of course he's going to get over it. That's what young people do too. +At his age he can't help being caught with every pretty face and every +pretty figure, even in the midst of his woe, and it's only a question of +time till he seizes some pretty hand and gets drawn out of it altogether." + +"I think that would be the case with my niece, too," said Miss Van Hook, +"if she wasn't kept in it by a sense of loyalty. I don't believe she +really dares much for Lieutenant Willing any more; but he sees no society +where he's stationed, of course, and his constancy is a--a rebuke and a-- +a--an incentive to her. They were engaged a long time ago just after he +left West Point--and we've always been in hopes that he would be removed +to some post where he could meet other ladies and become interested in +some one else. But he never has, and so the affair remains. It's most +undesirable they should marry, and in the meantime she won't break it off, +and it's spoiling her chances in life." + +"It is too bad," sighed Mrs. Brinkley, "but of course you can do nothing. +I see that." + +"No, we can do nothing. We have tried everything. I used to think it was +because she was so dull there at Yonkers with her family, and brooded upon +the one idea all the time, that she could not get over it; and at first it +did seem when she came to me that she would get over it. She is very fond +of gaiety--of young men's society, and she's had plenty of little +flirtations that didn't mean anything, and never amounted to anything. +Every now and then a letter would come from the wilds where he was +stationed, and spoil it all. She seemed to feel a sort of chivalrous +obligation because he was so far off and helpless and lonely." + +"Yes, I understand," said Mrs. Brinkley. "What a pity she couldn't be +made to feel that that didn't deepen the obligation at all." + +"I've tried to make her," said Miss Van Hook, "and I've been everywhere +with her. One winter we were up the Nile, and another in Nice, and last +winter we were in Rome. She met young men everywhere, and had offers upon +offers; but it was of no use. She remained just the same, and till she +met Mr. Mavering in Washington I don't believe--" + +Miss Van Hook stopped, and Mrs. Brinkley said, "And yet she always seemed +to me particularly practical and level-headed--as the men say." + +"So she is. But she is really very romantic about some things; and when +it comes to a matter of that kind, girls are about all alike, don't you +think?" + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley hopelessly, and both ladies looked out over +the water, where the waves came rolling in one after another to waste +themselves on the shore as futilely as if they had been lives. + +In the evening Miss Anderson got two letters from the clerk, at the hour +when the ladies all flocked to his desk with the eagerness for letters +which is so engaging in them. One she pulled open and glanced at with a +sort of impassioned indifference; the other she read in one intense +moment, and then ran it into her pocket, and with her hand still on it +hurried vividly flushing to her room, and read and read it again with +constantly mounting emotion. + +"WORMLEY's HOTEL, Washington, April 7, 188-. + +"DEAR MISS ANDERSON,--I have been acting on your parting advice to look +out for that Mr. Lafflin of mine, and I have discovered that he is an +unmitigated scamp. Consequently there is nothing more to keep me in +Washington, and I should now like your advice about coming to Fortress +Monroe. Do you find it malarial? On the boat your aunt asked me to come, +but you said nothing about it, and I was left to suppose that you did not +think it would agree with me. Do you still think so? or what do you +think? I know you think it was uncalled for and in extremely bad taste +for me to tell you what I did the other day; and I have thought so too. +There is only one thing that could justify it--that is, I think it might +justify it--if you thought so. But I do not feel sure that you would like +to know it, or, if you knew it, would like it. I've been rather slow +coming to the conclusion myself, and perhaps it's only the beginning of +the end; and not the conclusion--if there is such a difference. But the +question now is whether I may come and tell you what I think it is-- +justify myself, or make things worse than they are now. I don't know that +they can be worse, but I think I should like to try. I think your +presence would inspire me. + +"Washington is a wilderness since Miss--Van Hook left. It is not a +howling wilderness simply because it has not enough left in it to howl; +but it has all the other merits of a wilderness. + +"Yours sincerely, + +"D. F. MAVERING." + + +After a second perusal of this note, Miss Anderson recurred to the other +letter which she had neglected for it, and read it with eyes from which +the tears slowly fell upon it. Then she sat a long time at her table with +both letters before her, and did not move, except to take her handkerchief +out of her pocket and dry her eyes, from which the tears began at once to +drip again. At last she started forward, and caught pen and paper toward +her, biting her lip and frowning as if to keep herself firm, and she said +to the central figure in the photograph case which stood at the back of +the table, "I will, I will! You are a man, anyway." + +She sat down, and by a series of impulses she wrote a letter, with which +she gave herself no pause till she put it in the clerk's hands, to whom +she ran downstairs with it, kicking her skirt into wild whirls as she ran, +and catching her foot in it and stumbling. + +"Will it go--go to-night?" she demanded tragically. + +"Just in time," said the clerk, without looking up, and apparently not +thinking that her tone betrayed any unusual amount of emotion in a lady +posting a letter; he was used to intensity on such occasions. + +The letter ran-- + +"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--We shall now be here so short a time that I do not +think it advisable for you to come. + +"Your letter was rather enigmatical, and I do not know whether I +understood it exactly. I suppose you told me what you did for good +reasons of your own, and I did not think much about it. I believe the +question of taste did not come up in my mind. + +"My aunt joins me in kindest regards. + +"Yours very sincerely, + +"JULIA V. H. ANDERSON." + +"P.S.--I think that I ought to return your letter. I know that you would +not object to my keeping it, but it does not seem right. I wish to ask +your congratulations. I have been engaged for several years to Lieutenant +Willing, of the Army. He has been transferred from his post in Montana to +Fort Hamilton at New York, and we are to be married in June." + + +The next morning Mrs. Brinkley came up from breakfast in a sort of duplex +excitement, which she tried to impart to her husband; he stood with his +back toward the door, bending forward to the glass for a more accurate +view of his face, from which he had scraped half the lather in shaving. + +She had two cards in her hand: "Miss Van Hook and Miss Anderson have gone. +They went this morning. I found their P. P. C.'s by my plate." + +Mr. Brinkley made an inarticulate noise for comment, and assumed the +contemptuous sneer which some men find convenient for shaving the lower +lip. + +"And guess who's come, of all people in the world?" + +"I don't know," said Brinkley, seizing his chance to speak. + +"The Pasmers!--Alice and her mother! Isn't it awful?" + +Mr. Brinkley had entered upon a very difficult spot at the corner of his +left jaw. He finished it before he said, "I don't see anything awful +about it, so long as Pasmer hasn't come too." + +"But Dan Mavering! He's in Washington, and he may come down here any day. +Just think how shocking that would be!" + +"Isn't that rather a theory?" asked Mr. Brinkley, finding such +opportunities for conversation as he could. "I dare say Mrs. Pasmer would +be very glad to see him." + +"I've no doubt she would," said Mrs. Brinkley. But it's the worst thing +that could happen--for him. And I feel like writing him not to come-- +telegraphing him." + +"You know how the man made a fortune in Chicago," said her husband, drying +his razor tenderly on a towel before beginning to strop it. "I advise you +to let the whole thing alone. It doesn't concern us in any way whatever." + +"Then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "there ought to be a committee to take it in +hand and warn him." + +"I dare say you could make one up among the ladies. But don't be the +first to move in the matter." + +"I really believe," said his wife, with her mind taken off the point by +the attractiveness of a surmise which had just occurred to her, "that Mrs. +Pasmer would be capable of following him down if she knew he was in +Washington." + +"Yes, if she know. But she probably doesn't." + +"Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley disappointedly. "I think the sudden departure +of the Van Hooks must have had something to do with Dan Mavering." + +"Seems a very influential young man," said her husband. "He attracts and +repels people right and left. Did you speak to the Pasmers?" + +"No; you'd better, when you go down. They've just come into the dining- +room. The girl looks like death." + +"Well, I'll talk to her about Mavering. That'll cheer her up." + +Mrs. Brinkley looked at him for an instant as if she really thought him +capable of it. Then she joined him in his laugh. + +Mrs. Brinkley had theorised Alice Pasmer as simply and primitively +selfish, like the rest of the Pasmers in whom the family traits prevailed. + +When Mavering stopped coming to her house after his engagement she justly +suspected that it was because Alice had forbidden him, and she had +rejoiced at the broken engagement as an escape for Dan; she had frankly +said so, and she had received him back into full favour at the first +moment in Washington. She liked Miss Anderson, and she had hoped, with +the interest which women feel in every such affair, that her flirtation +with him might become serious. But now this had apparently not happened. +Julia Anderson was gone with mystifying precipitation, and Alice Pasmer +had come with an unexpectedness which had the aspect of fatality. + +Mrs. Brinkley felt bound, of course, since there was no open enmity +between them, to meet the Pasmers on the neutral ground of the Hygeia with +conventional amiability. She was really touched by the absent wanness of +the girls look, and by the later-coming recognition which shaped her mouth +into a pathetic snide. Alice did not look like death quite, as Mrs. +Brinkley had told her husband, with the necessity her sex has for putting +its superlatives before its positives; but she was pale and thin, and she +moved with a languid step when they all met at night after Mrs. Brinkley +had kept out of the Pasmers' way during the day. + +"She has been ill all the latter part of the winter," said Mrs. Pasmer to +Mrs. Brinkley that night in the corner of the spreading hotel parlours, +where they found themselves. Mrs. Pasmer did not look well herself; she +spoke with her eyes fixed anxiously on the door Alice had just passed out +of. "She is going to bed, but I know I shall find her awake whenever I +go." + +"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Brinkley, "this soft, heavy sea air will put her +to sleep." She tried to speak drily and indifferently, but she could not; +she was, in fact, very much interested by the situation, and she was +touched, in spite of her distaste for them both, by the evident +unhappiness of mother and daughter. She knew what it came from, and she +said to herself that they deserved it; but this did not altogether fortify +her against their pathos. "I can hardly keep awake myself," she added +gruffly. + +"I hope it may help her," said Mrs. Pasmer; "the doctor strongly urged our +coming." + +Mr. Pasmer isn't with you," said Mrs. Brinkley, feeling that it was decent +to say something about him. + +"No; he was detained." Mrs. Pasmer did not explain the cause of his +detention, and the two ladies slowly waved their fans a moment in silence. +"Are there many Boston People in the house?" Mrs. Pasmer asked. + +"It's full of them," cried Mrs. Brinkley. + +"I had scarcely noticed," sighed Mrs. Pasmer; and Mrs. Brinkley knew that +this was not true. "Alice takes up all my thoughts," she added; and this +might be true enough. She leaned a little forward and asked, in a low, +entreating voice over her fan, "Mrs. Brinkley, have you seen Mr. Mavering +lately?" + +Mrs. Brinkley considered this a little too bold, a little too brazen. Had +they actually come South in pursuit of him? It was shameless, and she let +Mrs: Pasmer know something of her feeling in the shortness with which she +answered, "I saw him in Washington the other day--for a moment." She +shortened the time she had spent in Dan's company so as to cut Mrs. Pasmer +off from as much comfort as possible, and she stared at her in open +astonishment. + +Mrs. Pasmer dropped her eyes and fingered the edge of her fan with a +submissiveness that seemed to Mrs. Brinkley the perfection of duplicity; +she wanted to shake her. "I knew," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, "that you had +always been such a friend of his." + +It is the last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her +moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was +really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he +had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss +Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory of her single +instant with Dan, but she felt that in such a cause, in the cause of +giving pain to a woman like Mrs. Pasmer, the deflection from exact truth +was justifiable. She hurried on: "I rather expected he might run down +here, but now that they're gone, I don't suppose he'll come. You remember +Miss Anderson's aunt, Miss Van Hook?" + +"Oh yes," said Mrs. Pasmer. + +"She was here with her." + +"Miss Van Hook was such a New York type--of a certain kind," said Mrs. +Pasmer. She rose, with a smile at once so conventional, so heroic, and so +pitiful that Mrs. Brinkley felt the remorse of a generous victor. + +She went to her room, hardening her heart, and she burst in with a flood +of voluble exasperation that threatened all the neighbouring rooms with +overflow. + +"Well, she cried, "they have shown their hands completely. They have come +here to hound Dan Mavering down, and get him into their toils again. Why, +the woman actually said as much! But I fancy I have given her a fit of +insomnia that will enable her to share her daughter's vigils. Really such +impudence I never heard of!" + +"Do you want everybody in the corridor to hear of it?" asked Brinkley, +from behind a newspaper. + +"I know one thing," continued Mrs. Brinkley, dropping her voice a couple +of octaves. They will never get him here if I can help it. He won't +come, anyway, now Miss Anderson is gone; but I'll make assurance doubly +sure by writing him not to come; I'll tell him they've gone; and than we +are going too." + +"You had better remember the man in Chicago," said her husband. + +"Well, this is my business--or I'll make it my business!" cried Mrs. +Brinkley. She went on talking rapidly, rising with great excitement in +her voice at times, and then remembering to speak lower; and her husband +apparently read on through most of her talk, though now and then he made +some comment that seemed of almost inspired aptness. + +"The way they both made up to me was disgusting. But I know the girl is +just a tool in her mother's hands. Her mother seemed actually passive in +comparison. For skilful wheedling I could fall down and worship that +woman; I really admire her. As long as the girl was with us she kept +herself in the background and put the girl at me. It was simply a +masterpiece." + +"How do you know she put her at you?" asked Brinkley. + +"How? By the way she seemed not to do it! And because from what I know +of that stupid Pasmer pride it would be perfectly impossible for any one +who was a Pasmer to take her deprecatory manner toward me of herself. You +ought to have seen it! It was simply perfect." + +"Perhaps," said Brinkley, with a remote dreaminess, "she was truly sorry." + +"Truly stuff! No, indeed; she hates me as much as ever--more!" + +"Well, then, may be she's doing it because she hates you--doing it for her +soul's good--sort of penance, sort of atonement to Mavering." + +Mrs. Brinkley turned round from her dressing-table to see what her husband +meant, but the newspaper hid him. We all know that our own natures are +mixed and contradictory, but we each attribute to others a logical +consistency which we never find in any one out of the novels. Alice +Pasmer was cold and reticent, and Mrs. Brinkley, who had lived half a +century in a world full of paradoxes, could not imagine her subject to +gusts of passionate frankness; she knew the girl to be proud and distant, +and she could not conceive of an abject humility and longing for sympathy +in her heart. If Alice felt, when she saw Mrs. Brinkley, that she had a +providential opportunity to punish herself for her injustice to Dan, the +fact could not be established upon Mrs. Brinkley's theory of her. If the +ascetic impulse is the most purely selfish impulse in human nature, Mrs. +Brinkley might not have been mistaken in suspecting her of an ignoble +motive, though it might have had for the girl the last sublimity of self- +sacrifice. The woman who disliked her and pitied her knew that she had +no arts, and rather than adopt so simple a theory of her behaviour as her +husband had advanced she held all the more strenuously to her own theory +that Alice was practising her mother's arts. This was inevitable, partly +from the sense of Mrs. Pasmer's artfulness which everybody had, and partly +from the allegiance which we pay--and women especially like to pay--to the +tradition of the playwrights and the novelists, that social results of all +kinds are the work of deep, and more or less darkling, design on the part +of other women--such other women as Mrs. Pasmer. + +Mrs. Brinkley continued to talk, but the god spoke no more from behind the +newspaper; and afterward Mrs. Brinkley lay a long time awake; hardening +her heart. But she was haunted to the verge of her dreams by that girl's +sick look, by her languid walk, and by the effect which she had seen her +own words take upon Mrs. Pasmer--an effect so admirably disowned, so +perfectly obvious. Before she could get to sleep she was obliged to make +a compromise with her heart, in pursuance of which, when she found Mrs. +Pasmer at breakfast alone in the morning, she went up to her, and said, +holding her hand a moment, "I hope your daughter slept well last night." + +"No," said Mrs. Pasmer, slipping her hand away, "I can't say that she +did." There was probably no resentment expressed in the way she withdrew +her hand, but the other thought there was. + +"I wish I could do something for her," she cried. + +"Oh, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "It's very good of you." And Mrs. +Brinkley fancied she smiled rather bitterly. + +Mrs. Brinkley went out upon the seaward verandah of the hotel with this +bitterness of Mrs. Pasmer's smile in her thoughts; and it disposed her to +feel more keenly the quality of Miss Pasmer's smile. She found the girl +standing there at a remote point of that long stretch of planking, and +looking out over the water; she held with both hands across her breast the +soft chuddah shawl which the wind caught and fluttered away from her +waist. She was alone, said as Mrs. Brinkley's compunctions goaded her +nearer, she fancied that the saw Alice master a primary dislike in her +face, and put on a look of pathetic propitiation. She did not come +forward to meet Mrs. Brinkley, who liked better her waiting to be +approached; but she smiled gratefully when Mrs. Brinkley put out her hand, +and she took it with a very cold one. + +"You must find it chilly here," said the elder woman. + +"I had better be out in the air all I could, the doctor said," answered +Alice. + +"Well, then, come with me round the corner; there's a sort of recess +there, and you won't be blown to pierces," said Mrs. Brinkley, with +authority. They sat down together in the recess, and she added: "I used +to sit here with Miss Van Hook; she could hear better in the noise the +waves made. I hope it isn't too much for you." + +"Oh no," said Alice. "Mamma said you told her they were here." Mrs. +Brinkley reassured herself from this; Miss Van Hook's name had rather +slipped out; but of course Mrs. Pasmer had not repeated what she had said +about Dan in this connection. "I wish I could have seen Julia," Alice +went on. "It would have been quite like Campobello again." + +"Oh, quite," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a short breath, and not knowing +whither this tended. Alice did not leave her in doubt. + +"I should like to have seen her, and begged her for the way I treated her +the last part of the time there. I feel as if I could make my whole life +a reparation," she added passionately. + +Mrs. Brinkley believed that this was the mere frenzy of sentimentality, +the exaltation of a selfish asceticism; but at the break in the girl's +voice and the aversion of her face she could not help a thrill of motherly +tenderness for her. She wanted to tell her she was an unconscious humbug, +bent now as always on her own advantage, and really indifferent to others +she also wanted to comfort her, and tell her that she exaggerated, and was +not to blame. She did neither, but when Alice turned her face back she +seemed encouraged by Mrs. Brinkley's look to go on: "I didn't appreciate +her then; she was very generous and high-minded--too high-minded for me to +understand, even. But we don't seem to know how good others are till we +wrong them." + +"Yes, that is very true," said Mrs. Brinkley. She knew that Alice was +obviously referring to the breach between herself and Miss Anderson +following the night of the Trevor theatricals, and the dislike for her +that she had shown with a frankness some of the ladies had thought brutal. +Mrs. Brinkley also believed that her words had a tacit meaning, and she +would have liked to have the hardness to say she had seen an unnamed +victim of Alice doing his best to console the other she had specified. +But she merely said drily, "Yes, perhaps that's the reason why we're +allowed to injure people." + +"It must be," said Alice simply. "Did Miss Anderson ever speak of me?" + +"No; I can't remember that she ever did." Mrs. Brinkley did not feel +bound to say that she and Miss Van Hook had discussed her at large, and +agreed perfectly about her. + +"I should like to see her; I should like to write to her." + +Mrs. Brinkley felt that she ought not to suffer this intimate tendency in +the talk: + +"You must find a great many other acquaintances in the hotel, Miss +Pasmer." + +"Some of the Frankland girds are here, and the two Bellinghams. I have +hardly spoken to them yet. Do you think that where you have even been in +the right, if you have been harsh, if you have been hasty, if you haven't +made allowances, you ought to offer some atonement?" + +"Really, I can't say," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a smile of distaste. "I'm +afraid your question isn't quite in my line of thinking; it's more in Miss +Cotton's way. You'd better ask her some time." + +"No," said Alice sadly; "she would flatter me." + +"Ah! I always supposed she was very conscientious." + +"She's conscientious, but she likes me too well." + +"Oh!" commented Mrs. Brinkley to herself, "then you know I don't like you, +and you'll use me in one way, if you can't in another. Very well!" But +she found the girl's trust touching somehow, though the sentimentality of +her appeal seemed as tawdry as ever. + +"I knew you would be just," added Alice wistfully. + +"Oh, I don't know about atonements!" said Mrs. Brinkley, with an effect of +carelessness. "It seems to me that we usually make them for our own +sake." + +"I have thought of that," said Alice, with a look of expectation. + +"And we usually astonish other people when we offer them." + +"Either they don't like it, or else they don't feel so much injured as we +had supposed." + +"Oh, but there's no question--" + +"If Miss Anderson--" + +"Miss Anderson? Oh--oh yes!" + +"If Miss Anderson for example," pursued Mrs. Brinkley, "felt aggrieved +with you. But really I've no right to enter into your affairs, Miss +Pasmer." + +"Oh Yes, yes!--do! I asked you to," the girl implored. + +"I doubt if it will help matters for her to know that you regret anything; +and if she shouldn't happen to have thought that you were unjust to her, +it would make her uncomfortable for nothing." + +"Do you think so?" asked the girl, with a disappointment that betrayed +itself in her voice and eyes. + +"I never feel I myself competent to advise," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I can +criticise--anybody can--and I do, pretty freely; but advice is a more +serious matter. Each of us must act from herself--from what she thinks is +right." + +"Yes, I see. Thank you so much, Mrs. Brinkley." + +"After all, we have a right to do ourselves good, even when we pretend +that it's good to others, if we don't do them any harm." + +"Yes, I see." Alice looked away, and then seemed about to speak again; +but one of Mrs. Brinkley's acquaintance came up, and the girl rose with a +frightened air and went away. + +"Alice's talk with you this morning did her so much good!" said Mrs. +Pasmer, later. "She has always felt so badly about Miss Anderson!" + +Mrs. Brinkley saw that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning of their +talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration of which she +saw that Mrs. Pasmer was gratefully aware. + +She grew more tolerant of both the Pasmers as the danger of greater +intimacy from them, which seemed to threaten at first seemed to pass away. +She had not responded to their advances, but there was no reason why she +should not be civil to them; there had never been any open quarrel with +them. She often found herself in talk with them, and was amused to note +that she was the only Bostonian whom they did not keep aloof from. + +It could not be said that she came to like either of them better. She +still suspected Mrs. Pasmer of design, though she developed none beyond +manoeuvring Alice out of the way of people whom she wished to avoid; and +she still found the girl, as she always thought her, as egotist, whose +best impulses toward others had a final aim in herself. She thought her +very crude in her ideas--cruder than she had seemed at Campobello, where +she had perhaps been softened by her affinition with the gentler and +kindlier nature of Dan Mavering. Mrs. Brinkley was never tired of saying +that he had made the most fortunate escape in the world, and though +Brinkley owned he was tired of hearing it, she continued to say it with a +great variety of speculation. She recognised that in most girls of +Alice's age many traits are in solution, waiting their precipitation into +character by the chemical contact which time and chances must bring, and +that it was not fair to judge her by the present ferment of hereditary +tendencies; but she rejoiced all the same that it was not Dan Mavering's +character which was to give fixity to hers. The more she saw of the girl +the more she was convinced that two such people could only make each other +unhappy; from day to day, almost from hour to hour, she resolved to write +to Mavering and tell him not to come. + +She was sure that the Pasmers wished to have the affair on again, and part +of her fascination with a girl whom she neither liked nor approved was her +belief that Alice's health had broken under the strain of her regrets and +her despair. She did not get better from the change of air; she grew more +listless and languid, and more dependent upon Mrs. Brinkley's chary +sympathy. The older woman asked herself again and again what made the +girl cling to her? Was she going to ask her finally to intercede with +Dan? or was it really a despairing atonement to him, the most disagreeable +sacrifice she could offer, as Mr. Brinkley had stupidly suggested? She +believed that Alice's selfishness and morbid sentiment were equal to +either. + +Brinkley generally took the girl's part against his wife, and in a heavy +jocose way tried to cheer her up. He did little things for her; fetched +and carried chairs and cushions and rugs, and gave his attentions the air +of pleasantries. One of his offices was to get the ladies' letters for +them in the evening, and one night he came in beaming with a letter for +each of them where they sat together in the parlour. He distributed them +into their laps. + +"Hello! I've made a mistake," he said, putting down his head to take back +the letter he had dropped in Miss Pasmer's lap. "I've given you my wife's +letter." + +The girl glanced at it, gave a moaning kind of cry, and fell beak in her +chair, hiding her face in her hands. + +Mrs. Brinkley, possessed herself of the other letter, and, though past the +age when ladies wish to kill their husbands for their stupidity, she gave +Brinkley a look of massacre which mystified even more than it murdered his +innocence. He had to learn later from his wife's more elicit fury what +the women had all known instantly. + +He showed his usefulness in gathering Alice up and getting her to her +mother's room." + +"Oh, Mrs. Brinkley," implored Mrs. Pasmer, following her to the door, "is +Mr. Mavering coming here?" + +"I don't know--I can't say--I haven't read the letter yet." + +"Oh, do let me know when you've read it, won't you? I don't know what we +shall do." + +Mrs. Brinkley read the letter in her own room. "You go down," she said to +her husband, with unabated ferocity; "and telegraph Dan Mavering at +Wormley's not to came. Say we're going away at once." + +Then she sent Mrs. Pasmer a slip of paper on which she had written, "Not +coming." + +It has been the experience of every one to have some alien concern come +into his life and torment him with more anxiety than any affair of his +ovn. This is, perhaps, a hint from the infinite sympathy which feels for +us all that none of us can hope to free himself from the troubles of +others, that we are each bound to each by ties which, for the most part, +we cannot perceive, but which, at the moment their stress comes, we cannot +break. + +Mrs. Brinkley lay awake and raged impotently against her complicity with +the unhappiness of that distasteful girl and her more than distasteful +mother. In her revolt against it she renounced the interest she had felt +in that silly boy, and his ridiculous love business, so really unimportant +to her whatever turn it took. She asked herself what it mattered to her +whether those children marred their lives one way or another way. There +was a lurid moment before she slept when she wished Brinkley to go down +and recall her telegram; but he refused to be a fool at so much +inconvenience to himself. + +Mrs. Brinkley came to breakfast feeling so much more haggard than she +found either of the Pasmers looking, that she was able to throw off her +lingering remorse for having told Mavering not to come. She had the +advantage also of doubt as to her precise motive in having done so; she +had either done so because she had judged it best for him not to see Miss +Pasmer again, or else she had done so to relieve the girl from the pain of +an encounter which her mother evidently dreaded for her. If one motive +seemed at moments outrageously meddling and presumptuous, the other was so +nobly good and kind that it more than counterbalanced it in Mrs. +Brinkley's mind, who knew very well in spite of her doubt that she had, +acted from a mixture of both. With this conviction, it was both a comfort +and a pang to find by the register of the hotel, which she furtively +consulted, that Dan had not arrived by the morning boat, as she +groundlessly feared and hoped he might have done. + +In any case, however, and at the end of all the ends, she had that girl on +her hands more than ever; and believing as she did that Dan and Alice had +only to meet in order to be reconciled, she felt that the girl whom she +had balked of her prey was her innocent victim. What right had she to +interfere? Was he not her natural prey? If he liked being a prey, who +was lawfully to forbid him? He was not perfect; he would know how to take +care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves. She +looked at the girl's thin cheeks and lack-lustre eyes, and pitied and +hated her with that strange mixture of feeling which our victims aspire in +us. + +She walked out on the verandah with the Pasmers after breakfast, and +chatted a while about indifferent things; and Alice made an effort to +ignore the event of the night before with a pathos which wrung Mrs. +Brinkley's heart, and with a gay resolution which ought to have been a +great pleasure to such a veteran dissembler as her mother. She said she +had never found the air so delicious; she really believed it would begin +to do her good now; but it was a little fresh just there, and with her +eyes she invited her mother to come with her round the corner into that +sheltered recess, and invited Mrs. Brinkley not to come. + +It was that effect of resentment which is lighter even than a touch, the +waft of the arrow's feather; but it could wound a guilty heart, and Mrs. +Brinkley sat down where she was, realising with a pang that the time when +she might have been everything to this unhappy girl had just passed for +ever, and henceforth she could be nothing. She remained musing sadly upon +the contradictions she had felt in the girl's character, the confusion of +good and evil, the potentialities of misery and harm, the potentialities +of bliss and good; and she felt less and less satisfied with herself. She +had really presumed to interfere with Fate; perhaps she had interfered +with Providence. She would have given anything to recall her act; and +then with a flash she realised that it was quite possible to recall it. +She could telegraph Mavering to come; and she rose, humbly and gratefully, +as if from an answered prayer, to go and do so. + +She was not at all a young woman, and many things had come and gone in her +life that ought to have fortified her against surprise; but she wanted to +scream like a little frightened girl as Dan Mavering stepped out of the +parlour door toward her. The habit of not screaming, however, prevailed, +and she made a tolerably successful effort to treat him with decent +composure. She gave him a rigid hand. "Where in the world did you come +from? Did you get my telegram?" + +"No. Did you get my letter?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, I took a notion to come right on after I wrote, and I started on +the same train with it. But they said it was no use trying to get into +the Hygeia, and I stopped last night at the little hotel in Hampton. I've +just walked over, and Mr. Brinkley told me you were out here somewhere. +That's the whole story, I believe." He gave his nervous laugh, but it +seemed to Mrs. Brinkley that it had not much joy in it. + +"Hush!" she said involuntarily, receding to her chair and sinking back +into it again. He looked surprised. "You know the Van Hooks are gone?" + +He laughed harshly. "I should think they were dead from your manner, Mrs. +Brinkley. But I didn't come to see the Van Hooks. What made you think I +did?" + +He gave her a look which she found so dishonest, so really insincere, that +she resolved to abandon him to Providence as soon as she could. "Oh, I +didn't know but there had been some little understanding at Washington." + +"Perhaps on their part. They were people who seemed to take a good many +things for granted, but they could hardly expect to control other people's +movements." + +He looked sharply at Mrs. Brinkley, as if to question how much she knew; +but she had now measured him, and she said, "Oh! then the visit's to me?" + +"Entirely," cried Dan. The old sweetness came into his laughing eyes +again, and went to Mrs. Brinkley's heart. She wished him to be happy, +somehow; she would have done anything for him; she wished she knew what to +do. Ought she to tell him the Pasmers were there? Ought she to make up +some excuse and get him away before he met them? She felt herself getting +more and more bewildered and helpless. Those women might come round that +corner any moment and then she know the first sight of Alice's face would +do or undo everything with Dan. Did she wish them reconciled? Did she +wish them for ever parted? She no longer knew what she wished; she only +knew that she had no right to wish anything. She continued to talk on +with Dan, who grew more and more at ease, and did most of the talking, +while Mrs. Brinkley's whole being narrowed itself to the question. Would +the Pasmers come back that way, or would they go round the further corner, +and get into the hotel by another door? + +The suspense seemed interminable; they must have already gone that other +way. Suddenly she heard the pushing back of chairs in that recess. She +could not bear it. She jumped to her feet. + +"Just wait a moment, Mr. Mavering! I'll join you again. Mr. Brinkley is +expecting--I must--" + + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + +One morning of the following June Mrs. Brinkley sat well forward in the +beautiful church where Dan and Alice were to be married. The lovely day +became a still lovelier day within, enriched by the dyes of the stained +windows through which it streamed; the still place was dim yet bright with +it; the figures painted on the walls had a soft distinctness; a body of +light seemed to irradiate from the depths of the dome like lamp-light. + +There was a subdued murmur of voices among the people in the pews: they +were in a sacred edifice without being exactly at church, and they might +talk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of +flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and the +prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the +ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young +ushers and compressed themselves into place in the pews. + +Two or three people whom she did not know were put into the pew with Mrs. +Brinkley, but she kept her seat next the aisle; presently an usher brought +up a lady who sat down beside her, and then for a moment or two seemed to +sink and rise, as if on the springs of an intense excitement. + +It was Miss Cotton, who, while this process of quiescing lasted, appeared +not to know Mrs. Brinkley. When she became aware of her, all was lost +again. "Mrs. Brinkley!" she cried, as well as one can cry in whisper. +"Is it possible?" + +"I have my doubts," Mrs. Brinkley whispered back. "But we'll suppose the +case." + +"Oh, it's all too good to be true! How I envy you being the means of +bringing them together, Mrs. Brinkley!" + +"Means?" + +"Yes--they owe it all to you; you needn't try to deny it; he's told every +one!" + +"I was sure she hadn't," said Mrs. Brinkley, remembering how Alice had +marked an increasing ignorance of any part she might have had in the +affair from the first moment of her reconciliation with Dan; she had the +effect of feeling that she had sacrificed enough to Mrs. Brinkley; and +Mrs. Brinkley had been restored to all the original strength of her +conviction that she was a solemn little unconscious egotist, and Dan was +as unselfish and good as he was unequal to her exactions. + +"Oh no?" said Miss Cotton. "She couldn't!" implying that Alice would be +too delicate to speak of it. + +"Do you see any of his family here?" asked Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Yes; over there--up front." Miss Cotton motioned, with her eyes toward a +pew in which Mrs. Brinkley distinguished an elderly gentleman's down- +misted bald head and the back of a young lady's bonnet. "His father and +sister; the other's a bridemaid; mother bed-ridden and couldn't come." + +"They might have brought her in an-arm-chair," suggested Mrs. Brinkley +ironically, "on such an occasion. But perhaps they don't take much +interest in such a patched-up affair." + +"Oh yes, they do!" exclaimed Miss Cotton. "They idolise Alice." + +"And Mrs. Pasmer and Mister, too?" + +"I don't suppose that so much matters." + +"They know how to acquiesce, I've no doubt." + +"Oh yes! You've heard? The young people are going abroad first with her +family for a year, and then they come back to live with his--where the +Works are." + +"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Brinkley. + +"Why, Mrs. Brinkley, do you still feel that way?" asked Miss Cotton, with +a certain distress. It seems to me that if ever two young people had the +promise of happiness, they have. Just see what their love has done for +them already!" + +"And you still think that in these cases love can do everything?" + +Miss Cotton was about to reply, when she observed that the people about +her had stopped talking. The bridegroom, with his best man, in whom his +few acquaintances there recognised Boardman with some surprise, came over +the chancel from one side. + +Miss Cotton bent close to Mrs. Brinkley and whispered rapidly: "Alice +found out Mr. Mavering wished it, and insisted on his having him. It was +a great concession, but she's perfectly magnanimous. Poor fellow! how he +does look!" + +Alice, on her father's arm, with her bridemaids, of whom the first was +Minnie Mavering, mounted the chancel steps, where Mr. Pasmer remained +standing till he advanced to give away the bride. He behaved with great +dignity, but seemed deeply affected; the ladies in the front pews said +they could see his face twitch; but he never looked handsomer. + +The five clergymen carne from the back of the chancel in their white +surplices. The ceremony proceeded to the end. + +The young couple drove at once to the station, where they were to take the +train for New York, and wait there a day or two for Mrs. and Mr. Pasmer +before they all sailed. + +As they drove along, Alice held Dan's wrist in the cold clutch of her +trembling little ungloved hand, on which her wedding ring shone. "O +dearest! let us be good!" she said. "I will try my best. I will try not +to be exacting and unreasonable, and I know I can. I won't even make any +conditions, if you will always be frank and open with me, and tell me +everything." + +He leaned over and kissed her behind the drawn curtains. "I will, Alice! +I will indeed! I won't keep anything from you after this." + +He resolved to tell her all about Julia Anderson at the right moment, when +Alice was in the mood, and as soon as he thoroughly understood what he had +really meant himself. + +If he had been different she would not have asked him to be frank and +open; if she had been different, he might have been frank and open. This +was the beginning of their married life. + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of April Hopes +by William Dean Howells + diff --git a/old/whahp11.zip b/old/whahp11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..303360f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whahp11.zip |