April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  V.

  "With Mr. Mavering, of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Saintsbury: "I might haveknown it." Mrs. Pasmer would have given anything she could think of tobe able to ask why her friend might have known it; but for the presentthey could only fall upon each other with flashes of self-accusal andexplanation, and rejoicing for their deferred and now accomplishedmeeting. The Professor stood by with the satirical smile with which menwitness the effusion of women. Young Mavering, after sharing the ladies'excitement fully with them, rewarded himself by an exclusive moment withMiss Pasmer.

  "You must get Mrs. Pasmer to let me show you all of Class Day that aSenior can. I didn't know what a perfect serpent's tooth it was to beone before. Mrs. Saintsbury," he broke off, "have you got tickets forthe Tree? Ah, she doesn't hear me!"

  Mrs. Saintsbury was just then saying to the elder Mavering, "I'm so gladyou decided to come today. It would have been a shame if none of youwere here." She made a feint of dropping her voice, with a glance at DanMavering. "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 someladies going out, and asked were they going so soon, from an abstracthospitality, apparently, for he was not one of the hosts; and so turnedonce more to Miss Pasmer. "We must get away from here, or the afternoonwill get away from us, and leave us nothing to show for it. Suppose wemake a start, Miss Pasmer?"

  He led the way with her out of the vestibule, banked round with potsof palm and fern, and down the steps into the glare of the Cambridgesunshine, blown full, as is the case on Class Day, of fine Cambridgedust, which had drawn a delicate grey veil over the grass of theGymnasium lawn, and mounted in light clouds from the wheels powderingit finer and finer in the street. Along the sidewalks dusty hacks andcarriages were ranged, and others were driving up to let peopledismount at the entrances to the college yard. Within the temporarypicket-fences, secluding a part of the grounds for the students andtheir friends, were seen stretching from dormitory to dormitory longlines of Chinese lanterns, to be lit after nightfall, swung between theelms. Groups of ladies came and went, nearly always under the escort ofsome student; the caterers' carts, disburdened of their ice-creams andsalads, were withdrawn under the shade in the street, and theirdrivers lounged or drowsed upon the seats; now and then a black waiter,brilliant as a bobolink in his white jacket and apron, appeared on someerrand; the large, mild Cambridge policemen kept the entrances to theyard with a benevolent vigilance which was not harsh with the littleIrish children coming up from the Marsh in their best to enjoy the sightof other people's pleasure.

  "Isn't it a perfect Class Day?" cried young Mavering, as he crossedKirkland Street with Miss Pasmer, and glanced down its vaultedperspective of elms, through which the sunlight broke, and lay in theroad in pools and washes as far as the eye reached. "Did you eversee anything bluer than the sky to-day? I feel as if we'd ordered theweather, with the rest of the things, and I had some credit for it ashost. Do make it a little compliment, Miss Pasmer; I assure you I'll bevery modest about it."

  "Ah, I think it's fully up to the occasion," said the girl, catching thespirit of his amiable satisfaction. "Is it the usual Class Day weather?"

  "You spoil everything by asking that," cried the young man; "it obligesme to make a confession--it's always good weather on Class Day. Therehaven't been more than a dozen bad Class Days in the century. But you'lladmit 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 thegirl; and now when Mavering laughed she laughed too.

  "Thank you so much for saying that! I hope it will pass off in uncloudedbrilliancy; it will, if I can make it. Why, hallo! They're on the otherside of the street yet, and looking about as if they were lost."

  He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and waved it at the othersof their party.

  They caught sight of it, and came hurrying over through the dust.

  Mrs. Saintsbury said, apparently as the sum of her consultations withMrs. Pasmer: "The Tree is to be at half-past five; and after we've seena 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 protesthe seemed not to have anything to say immediately in support of it. Hemerely added: "This is Miss Pasmer's first Class Day, and I want her tosee it all."

  "But you'll have to leave us very soon to get yourself ready for theTree," 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 asdisreputable as you'll look at the Tree; and you'll have to take timefor counsel and meditation. You may stay with us just half an hour, andthen we shall part inexorably. I've seen a great many more Class Daysthan you have, and I know what they are in their demands upon theSeniors."

  "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 thelittle procession, with the elder Mavering, and her husband and MrsPasmer preceded her.

  "What?" young Mavering called back, with his smiling face over hisshoulder.

  "She says not to bite off more than you can chew," the professoranswered for her.

  Mavering broke into a conscious laugh, but full of delight, and with hishandkerchief to his face had almost missed the greeting of some ladieswho bowed to him. He had to turn round to acknowledge it, and he wassaluting and returning salutations pretty well all along the line oftheir 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 somany people, after all; only all that I do know seem to be here thismorning."

  "I don't think it's a thing to be sorry for," said the girl. "I wish weknew more people. It's rather forlorn--"

  "Oh, will you let me introduce some of the fellows to you? They'll be soglad."

  "If you'll tell them how forlorn I said I was," said the girl, with asmile.

  "Oh, no, no, no! I understand that. And I assure you that I didn'tsuppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluousreassurance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only thereare some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you'llallow me--"

  "We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behindhim.

  "Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for anotherburst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication ofyouth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in theyoung faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between thedifferent dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged withpeople coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, theprettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, atonce sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of theRenaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old universitytown, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly andalmost pathetically beautiful under the leafage of her hovering elms andin, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youththat overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poetswho have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of thehumanities who has left her.

  "Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to herdaughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor's, "did you ever see somany pretty costumes?"

  "Never," said the girl, with equal intensity.

  "Well, it makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighedMrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You seesplendid dressing abroad, but it
's mostly upon old people who ought tobe sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it's the younggirls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charmingin the Gymnasium, but I see you must get them out-of-doors to have thefull effect. Mr. Mavering, are they always so prettily dressed on ClassDay?"

  "Well, I'm beginning to feel as if it wouldn't be exactly modest forme to say so, whatever I think. You'd better ask Mrs. Saintsbury; shepretends 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 thatquestion."

  "I'm so glad you said that, Mrs. Saintsbury," said the young man. Helooked at the girl; who blushed with a pleasure that seemed to thrill tothe last fibre of her pretty costume.

  She could not say anything, but her mother asked, with an effort atself-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 pridein the dress.

  "Yes; I supposed it must be," said Mrs. Saintsbury, "We used to come inmuslins and tremendous hoops--don't you remember?"

  "Did you look like your photographs?" asked young Mavering, over hisshoulder.

  "Yes; but we didn't know it then," said the Professor's wife.

  "Neither did we," said the Professor. "We supposed that there had neverbeen anything equal to those hoops and white muslins."

  "Thank you, my dear," said his wife, tapping him between the shoulderswith her fan. "Now don't go any further."

  "Do you mean about our first meeting here on Class Day?" asked herhusband.

  "They'll think so now," said Mrs. Saintsbury patiently, with a playfulthreat of consequences in her tone.

  "When I first saw the present Mrs. Saintsbury," pursued theProfessor--it was his joking way, of describing her, as if there hadbeen several other Mrs. Saintsburys--"she was dancing on the greenhere."

  "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," sheanswered.

  "We're a thoroughly indoors people," said the Professor. "And it seemsas if we hadn't really begun to get well as a race till we had come inout of the weather."

  "How can you say that on a day like this?" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I didn'tsuppose 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 Professorof Comparative Literature to be unromantic."

  "I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Pasmer.

  "He will be happy to explain, at the greatest possible length," saidMrs. Saintsbury. "But you shan't spoil our pleasure now, John."

  They all laughed, and the Professor looked proud of the wit at hisexpense; the American husband is so, and the public attitude of theAmerican husband and wife toward each other is apt to be amiablysatirical; their relation seems never to have lost its novelty, or tolack droll and surprising contrasts for them.

  Besides these passages with her husband, Mrs. Saintsbury kept up a fullflow of talk with the elder Mavering, which Mrs. Pasmer did her best tooverhear, for it related largely to his son, whom, it seemed, from thefather'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 troublesomeideas 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 meninterested 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 doso," said the father, but in a tone which conveyed to Mrs. Pasmer theimpression that though he was always open to conviction, his mind wasmade up on this point, whatever it was.