April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  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 makesure--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 ofBoardman.

  "I came down here to do a sort of one-horse yacht race to-day," Boardmanexplained.

  "Going to be a yacht race? Better have some breakfast. Or betternot--here. Flies under your bacon."

  "Rough on the flies," said Boardman, snapping the bell which summonedthe spectre in the black jersey, and he sat down. "What are you doing inPortland?"

  Mavering told him, and then Boardman asked him how he had left thePasmers. Mavering needed no other hint to speak, and he spoke fully,while Boardman listened with an agreeable silence, letting the hero ofthe tale break into self-scornful groans and doleful laughs, and easehis heart with grotesque, inarticulate noises, and made little or nocomments.

  By the time his breakfast came, Boardman was ready to say, "I didn'tsuppose it was so much of a mash."

  "I didn't either," said Mavering, "when I left Boston. Of course I knewI was going down there to see her, but when I got there it kept goingon, just like anything else, up to the last moment. I didn't realisetill it came to the worst that I had become a mere pulp."

  "Well, you won't stay so," said Boardman, making the first vain attemptat consolation. He lifted the steak he had ordered, and peered beneathit. "All right this time, any way."

  "I don't know what you mean by staying so," replied Mavering, withgloomy rejection of the comfort offered.

  "You'll see that it's all for the best; that you're well out of it. Ifshe could throw you over, after leading you on--"

  "But she didn't lead me on!" exclaimed Mavering. "Don't you understandthat it was all my mistake from the first? If I hadn't been perfectlybesotted I should have seen that she was only tolerating me. Don't yousee? Why, hang it, Boardman, I must have had a kind of consciousnessof it under my thick-skinned conceit, after all, for when I came to thepoint--when I did come to the point--I hadn't the sand to stick to itlike a man, and I tried to get her to help me. Yes, I can see that I didnow. I kept fooling about, and fooling about, and it was because I hadthat sort of prescience--of whatever you call it--that I was mistakenabout it from the very beginning."

  He wished to tell Boardman about the events of the night before; buthe could not. He said to himself that he did not care about their beinghardly to his credit; but he did not choose to let Alice seem to haveresented anything in them; it belittled her, and claimed too much forhim. 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 topresuppose that a girl like Miss Pasmer is interested in an idiot likeyou? 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 comesto the point? You've got to shillyshally, and then you've got to go itblind. 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, rejectingthe first offer from another of the censure which he had been heapingupon himself: the irritation of his nerves spoke. "I did speak out atlast--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 admireanybody very much who admired me. No, sir. She did just right. I was afool, and she couldn't have treated me differently."

  "Oh, I guess it'll come out all right," said Boardman, abandoninghimself to mere optimism.

  "How come all right?" demanded Mavering, flattered by the hope herefused. "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 youto think small beer of yourself, and I don't see how you could thinkanything else just at present. But you wait awhile. When did it happen?"

  Mavering took out his watch. "One day, one hour, twenty minutes, andfifteen seconds ago."

  "Sure about the seconds? I suppose you didn't hang round a great whileafterward?"

  "Well, people don't, generally," said Mavering, with scorn.

  "Never tried it," said Boardman, looking critically at his friedpotatoes before venturing upon them. "If you had stayed, perhaps shemight have changed her mind," he added, as if encouraged to this hopefulview 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 thepotatoes with involuntary interest. "She won't change her mind; sheisn't one of that kind. But she's the one woman in this world who couldhave made a man of me, Boardman."

  "Is that so?" asked Boardman lightly. "Well, she is a good-lookinggirl."

  "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 thenmakes 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'snothing--nothing to her goodness. She's so good, Boardman! Well, Igive it up! She's religious. You wouldn't think that, may be; you can'timagine a pretty girl religious. And she's all the more intoxicatingwhen she's serious; and when she's forgotten your whole worthlessexistence she's ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girlwhen she's going right for you. There's a kind of look comes into hereyes--kind of absence, rapture, don't you know--when she's serious, thatbrings your heart right into your mouth. She makes you think of someof those pictures--I want to tell you what she said the other day at apicnic when we were off getting blueberries, and you'll understand thatshe isn't like other girls--that she has a soul fall of--of--you knowwhat, Boardman. She has high thoughts about everything. I don't believeshe's ever had a mean or ignoble impulse--she couldn't have." In thebusiness of imparting his ideas confidentially, Mavering had drawnhimself across the table toward Boardman, without heed to what was onit.

  "Look out! You'll be into my steak first thing you know."

  "Oh, confound your steak?" cried Mavering, pushing the dish away. "Whatdifference 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, shewouldn't let you come up there and dangle round a whole fortnightwithout letting you know she didn't like it, unless she did like it. Nowyou just go a little into detail."

  Mavering was quite willing. He went so much into detail that he leftnothing to Boardman's imagination. He lost the sense of its calamitousclose in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiledand blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described MissAnderson and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladieson the margin of a newspaper, and the tears came into his eyes when herepeated 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. Shedidn't mean it, of course."

  "Mean what?"

  "That you were ungentlemanly. Women don't know half the time how hardthey're hitting."

  "I guess she meant that she didn't want me, anyway," said Maveringgloomily.

  "Ah, I don't know about that. You'd better ask her the next time you seeher. Good-bye." He had risen, and he offered his hand to Mavering, whowas still seated.

  "Why, I've half a mind to go with you."

  "All right, come along. But I thought you migh
t be going right on toBoston."

  "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 thetime being." Mavering wore a very bitter air as he said this; it seemedto him that he would always be cynical; he rose, and arranged to leavehis bag with the restaurateur, who put it under the counter, and then hewent out with his friend.

  The sun had come out, and the fog was burning away; there was life andlift in the air, which the rejected lover could not refuse to feel, andhe said, looking round, and up and down the animated street. "I guessyou'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 pavementfrom a shop door toward a coupe just in front of them, with her handfull of light packages; she dropped one of them, and Mavering sprangforward instinctively and picked it up for her.

  "Oh, thank you!" she said, with the deep gratitude which societycultivates for the smallest services. Then she lifted her droopedeyelashes, and, with a flash of surprise, exclaimed, "Mr. Mavering!" anddropped all her packages that she might shake hands with him.

  Boardman sauntered slowly on, but saw with a backward glance Maveringcarrying the lady's packages to the coupe for her; saw him lift hishat there, and shake hands with somebody in the coupe, and then standtalking beside it. He waited at the corner of the block for Mavering tocome 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 thepress 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 gotso taken up with--"

  "I see," said Boardman, showing his teeth, fine and even as grains ofpop-corn, in a slight sarcastic smile. "Sort of poetical justice," hesuggested.

  "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 someparley and laughter, get into the coupe, from which he inferred thatthey had turned down the little seat in front, and made him take it; andhe inferred that they must be very jolly, sociable girls.

  He did not see Mavering again till the train was on its way, when hecame in, looking distraughtly about for his friend. He was again verymelancholy, and said dejectedly that they had made him stay to dinner,and had then driven him down to the station, bag and all. "The oldgentleman 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 thatinfernal Boston stiffness. The one you saw me talking with is married,though."

  Boardman was writing out his report from a little book with shorthandnotes in it. There were half a dozen other reporters in the car busywith their work. A man who seemed to be in authority said to one ofthem, "Try to throw in a little humour."

  Mavering pulled his hat over his eyes, and leaned his head on the backof his seat, and tried to sleep.