XIII.
The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody likehim were interested in his differentiation of the attentions he offeredevery age and sex from those he paid Alice. But while they all agreedthat there never was a sweeter fellow, they would have been puzzled tosay in just what this difference consisted, and much as they likedhim, the ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him tillthey decided that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which wasperfectly fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is,he did nice things for others without asking; but with her there wasalways 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, whosequalities they felt that only women could really appreciate, they wereinterested to see how near Mavering could come to being good enough; andas the drama played itself before their eyes, they pleased themselves inanalysing its hero.
"He is not bashful, certainly," said one of a little group who satmidway of the piazza while Alice and Mavering walked up and downtogether. "But don't you think he's modest? There's that difference, youknow."
The lady addressed waited so long before answering that the young couplecame abreast of the group, and then she had to wait till they were outof 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 knowwhat you mean. And I suppose they ought to be something more alike indisposition."
"Or sympathies?" suggested the other.
"Yes, or sympathies."
A third lady laughed a little. "Mr. Mavering has so many sympathies thathe ought to be like her in some of them."
"Do you mean that he's too sympathetic--that he isn't sincere?" askedthe first--a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a littleknot of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by theunremitting 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 oftento incline people to sarcasm. "No, I don't think he's insincere. I thinkhe always means what he says and does--Well, do you think a little moreconcentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose--ifshe has it?"
"Yes, I see," said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixedwistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. "Iwonder 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-humouredpleasure 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 hervision by the turn of the talk. "I suppose," she continued, "that hewouldn'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 soappreciative of one another as women are. It's most amusing to see theopen scorn with which two young fellows treat each other if a prettygirl introduces them."
All the ladies joined in the laugh with which Mrs. Brinkley herself ledoff. But Miss Cotton stopped laughing first.
"Do you mean,", she asked, "that if a gentleman were generally popularwith gentlemen it would be--"
"Because he wasn't generally so with women? Something like that--ifyou'll leave Mr. Mavering out of the question. Oh, how very good ofthem!" she broke off, and all the ladies glanced at Mavering and Alicewhere they had stopped at the further end of the piazza, and werelooking off. "Now I can probably finish before they get back here again.What I do mean, Miss Cotton, is that neither sex willingly accepts thefavourites of the other."
"Yes," said Miss Cotton admissively.
"And all that saves Miss Pasmer is that she has not only the qualitiesthat women like in women, but some of the qualities that men, like inthem. She's thoroughly human."
A little sensation, almost a murmur, not wholly of assent, went roundthat 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 mothersays."
The ladies all laughed, recognising a common turn of phrase in Mrs.Pasmer.
"I should think," said Mrs. Stamwell, "that she would believe a littlein heredity if she noticed that in her daughter;" and the ladies laughedagain.
"Then," Mrs. Brinkley resumed concerning Alice, "she has a very prettyface--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 fascinatingawkwardness. Then she dresses--or her mother dresses her--exquisitely."The ladies, with another sensation, admitted the perfect accuracy withwhich these points had been touched.
"That's what men like, what they fall in love with, what Mr. Mavering'sin love with this instant. It's no use women's flattering themselvesthat they don't, for they do. The rest of the virtues and graces andcharms are for women. If that serious girl could only know the sillythings 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 seemedlooking far into the past.
"Yes, and quite right to do it," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I don't know thatwe should be very proud ourselves if we confessed just what caught ourfancy in our husbands. For my part I shouldn't like to say how much alight hat that Mr. Brinkley happened to be wearing had to do with thematter."
The ladies broke into another laugh, and then checked themselves,so that Mrs. Pasmer, coming out of the corridor upon them, naturallythought they were laughing at her. She reflected that if she had beenin their place she would have shown greater tact by not stopping just atthat instant.
But she did not mind. She knew that they talked her over, but having avery good conscience, she simply talked them over in return. "Have youseen 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 thebuilding."
"Oh," said Mrs. Pasmer. She had a novel, with her finger between itsleaves, pressed against her heart, after the manner of ladies coming outon hotel piazzas. She sat down and rested it on her knee, with her handover the top.
Miss Cotton bent forward, and Mrs. Pasmer lifted her fingers to let hersee the name of the book.
"Oh yes," said Miss Cotton. "But he's so terribly pessimistic, don't youthink?"
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brinkley.
"Fumee," said Mrs. Pasmer, laying the book title upward on her lap forevery one to see.
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, fanning herself. "Tourguenief. That mangave 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?" askedMrs. Pasmer, with the involuntary superiority of a woman who reads herTourguenief in French.
"I don't know. I had it in English. I don't build my ships to cross thesea in, as Emerson says; I take those I find built."
"Ah! I was already on the other side," said Mrs. Pasmer softly. Sheadded: "I must get Lisa. I like a good heart-break; don't you? If that'swhat gave you the bad moment."
"Heart-break? Heart-crush! Where Lavretsky comes back old to the sceneof his love for
Lisa, and strikes that chord on the piano--well, Isimply wonder that I'm alive to recommend the book to you.
"Do you know," said Miss Cotton, very deferentially, "that your daughteralways made me think of Lisa?"
"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, not wholly pleased, but gratified that shewas 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 Russiantragedies. You feel that they're so perfectly true there, and soperfectly impossible here. Lavretsky would simply have got himselfdivorced from Varvara Pavlovna, and no clergyman could have objected tomarrying him to Lisa."
"That's what I mean by his pessimism," said Miss Cotton. "He leaves youno hope. And I think that despair should never be used in a novel exceptfor some good purpose; don't you, Mrs. Brinkley?"
"Well," said Mrs. Brinkley, "I was trying to think what good purposedespair 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'drun 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 tocontinue for her--
"And marriage means happiness--in a book."
"I'm not sure that it does in this case. The time would come, afterLitvinof had told Tatiana everything, when she would have to askherself, and not once only, what sort of man it really was who waswilling to break his engagement and run off with another man's wife, andwhether he could ever repent enough for it. She could make excuses forhim, and would, but at the bottom of her heart--No, it seems to methat there, almost for the only time, Tourguenief permitted himself anamiable weakness. All that part of the book has the air of begging thequestion."
"But don't you see," said Miss Cotton, leaning forward in the way shehad when very earnest, "that he means to show that her love is strongenough for all that?"
"But he doesn't, because it isn't. Love isn't strong enough to savepeople from unhappiness through each other's faults. Do you suppose thatso many married people are unhappy in each other because they don't loveeach other? No; it's because they do love each other that their faultsare such a mutual torment. If they were indifferent, they wouldn't mindeach other's faults. Perhaps that's the reason why there are so manyAmerican divorces; if they didn't care, like Europeans, who don't marryfor love, they could stand it."
"Then the moral is," said Mrs. Pasmer, at her lightest through thesurrounding gravity, "that as all Americans marry for love, onlyAmericans 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 aswell 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 towardthem, 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 aman is the court of final appeal for the wisest women. Till some man haspronounced upon their wisdom, they do not know whether it is wisdom ornot.
Munt drew up his chair, and addressed himself to the whole group throughMrs. Pasmer: "We are thinking of getting up a little picnic to-morrow."
April Hopes Page 13
