XLIII
Dan had learned, with a lover's keenness, to read Alice's moods in themost colourless wording of her notes. She was rather apt to write himnotes, taking back or reaffirming the effect of something that had justpassed between them. Her note were tempered to varying degrees of heatand cold, so fine that no one else would have felt the difference, butsensible to him in their subtlest intention.
Perhaps a mere witness of the fact would have been alarmed by a notewhich began without an address, except that on the envelope, and endedits peremptory brevity with the writer's name signed in full. Dan readcalamity in it, and he had all the more trouble to pull himself togetherto meet it because he had parted with unusual tenderness from Alicethe night before, after an evening in which it seemed to him that theirideals had been completely reconciled.
The note came, as her notes were apt to come, while Dan was atbreakfast, which he was rather luxurious about for so young a man, andhe felt formlessly glad afterward that he had drunk his first cup ofcoffee before he opened it, for it chilled the second cup, and seemed totake all character out of the omelet.
He obeyed it, wondering what the doom menaced in it might be, butknowing that it was doom, and leaving his breakfast half-finished, witha dull sense of the tragedy of doing so.
He would have liked to ask for Mrs. Pasmer first, and interpose a momentof 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 itimpassable to the simple impulse he usually had to take her in his armsand kiss her. But as she stood holding out a letter to him, with theapparent intention that he should come and take it, he traversed theintervening space and took it.
"Why, it's from mother!" he said joyously, with a glance at thehandwriting.
"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, andwent on with a pretty expression of interest in Alice's letters andgratitude for them; Mrs. Mavering assured the girl that she could notimagine what a pleasure they had been to her. She promised herselfthat they should be great friends, and she said that she looked forwardeagerly to the time, now drawing near, when Dan should bring her home tothem. She said she knew Alice would find it dull at the Falls except forhim, but they would all do their best, and she would find the placevery different from what she had seen it in the winter. Alice could makebelieve that she was there just for the summer, and Mrs. Mavering hopedthat before the summer was gone she would be so sorry for a sick oldwoman that she would not even wish to go with it. This part of theletter, which gave Dan away so hopelessly, as he felt, was phrased sotouchingly, that he looked up from it with moist eyes to the hard coldjudgment 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 hometo live?"
Dan did not answer.
"You promised my mother to go abroad. What else have you promised?" Hecontinued silent, and she added, "You are a faithless man." They werethe words of Romola, in the romance, to Tito; she had often admiredthem; and they seemed to her equally the measure of Dan's offence.
"Alice--"
"Here are your letters and remembrances, Mr. Mavering." Dan mechanicallyreceived the packet she had been holding behind her; with a perversefreak of intelligence he observed that, though much larger now, it wastied up with the same ribbon which had fastened it when Alice returnedhis letters and gifts before. "Good-bye. I wish you every happinessconsistent with your nature."
She bowed coldly, and was about to leave him, as she had planned; butshe 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 letyou pass till you have listened to me--till you tell me why you treat meso. 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 shesaid, "I will listen to you," so much more gently than she had spokenbefore 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 ismade up this time. Why should we talk?"
"Why, because mine isn't," said Dan. "What is the matter, Alice? Do youthink I would force you, or even ask you, to go home with me tolive unless you were entirely willing? It could only be a temporaryarrangement anyway."
"That isn't the question," she retorted. "The question is whether you'vepromised your mother one thing and me another."
"Well, I don't know about promising," said Dan, laughing a little moreuneasily, but still laughing. "As nearly as I can remember, I wasn'tconsulted about the matter. Your mother proposed one thing, and mymother 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 bycharacteristic. The thing didn't have to be decided at once, and Ididn't suppose it would be difficult for either side to give way, if itwas judged best. I was sure my mother wouldn't insist."
"It seems very easy for your family to make sacrifices that are notlikely 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 selfishto give up, if it were for the best."
"I do nothing of the kind, and unless you are determined to quarrel withme 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 takethat back."
"I can't take it back; it's the truth. Aren't you faithless, if you letus go on thinking that you're going to Europe, and let your mother thinkthat 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'syour way."
"Well, I suppose I do till it's necessary to decide them. It saves theneedless effusion of talk," said Dan, with a laugh; and then, as peopledo in a quarrel, he went back to his angry mood, and said "Besides, Isupposed 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; nothingis sacred to you, it seems. I can't say that you have ever sought anyopportunities 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 gladto 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, rueinghis 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 daythat you thought I would like to live at Ponkwasset Falls if my businesswas 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 tointimidate me in my father's house. I demand that you shall stand asideand let me pass."
"I'll not oblige you to leave the room," said Dan. "I will go. But if Igo, 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 hewhirled out of the room and down the dim narrow passageway into the armsof Mrs. Pasmer, who had resisted as long as s
he could her curiosity toknow what the angry voices of himself and Alice meant.
"O Mr. Mavering, is it you?" she buzzed; and she flung aside onepretence for another in adding, "Couldn't Alice make you stay tobreakfast?"
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 wrungher hand, and found his way out of the apartment door, leaving her toclear 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 qualifyingher tone and manner to her mother. "I've dismissed Mr. Mavering."
"Then you want him to come to lunch?" asked her mother. "I should advisehim to refuse."
"I don't think he'd accept," said Alice. Then, as Mrs. Pasmer stoodin the door, preventing her egress, as Dan had done before, she askedmeekly "Will you let me pass, mamma? My head aches."
Mrs. Pasmer, whose easy triumphs in so many difficult circumstances kepther nearly always in good temper, let herself go, at these words, invexation very uncommon with her. "Indeed I shall not!" she retorted."And you will please sit down here and tell me what you mean bydismissing 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 whatis it all?"
"Perhaps this letter, will explain," said Alice, continuing to dignifyher enforced submission with a tone of unabated hauteur; and she gaveher mother Mrs. Mavering's letter, which Dan had mechanically restoredto her.
Mrs. Pasmer read it, not only without indignation, but apparentlywithout 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 seethat he's promised us one thing and her another, and that he's false toboth?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, recovering her good-humour in view ofa situation that she felt herself able to cope with. "Of course he hasto temporise, to manage a little. She's an invalid, and of course she'svery exacting. He has to humour her. How do you know he has promisedher? 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'sso sweet and yielding, and can't bear to refuse. I can understand itperfectly."
"Then if he hasn't promised us, he's deceived us all the moreshamefully, for he's made us think he had."
"He hasn't me," said Mrs. Pasmer, smiling at the stormy virtue in herdaughter's face. "And what if you should go home awhile with him--forthe summer, say? It couldn't last longer, much; and it wouldn't hurt usto wait. I suppose he hoped for something of that kind."
"Oh, it isn't that," groaned the girl, in a kind of bewilderment. "Icould have gone there with him joyfully, and lived all my days, if he'donly been frank with me."
"Oh no, you couldn't," said her mother, with cosy security. "When itcomes to it, you don't like giving up any more than other people. It'svery hard for you to give up; he sees that--he knows it, and he doesn'treally 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 thefirst, 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 fromseeing 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--spoilseverything. It's over," said the girl, rising, with a sigh, from thechair she had dropped into. "We're best apart; we could only have beenwretched and wicked together."
"What did you say to him, Alice?" asked her mother, unshaken by herrhetoric.
"I told him he was a faithless person."
"Then you were a cruel girl," cried Mrs. Pasmer, with suddenindignation; "and if you were not my daughter I could be glad he hadescaped you. I don't know where you got all those silly, romanticnotions of yours about these things. You certainly didn't get them fromme," she continued, with undeniable truth, "and I don't believe youget them from your Church, It's just as Miss Anderson said: your Churchmakes allowance for human nature, but you make none."
"I shouldn't go to Julia Anderson for instruction in such matters," saidthe girl, with cold resentment.
"I wish you would go to her for a little commonsense--or somebody," saidMrs. 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 manwhom I couldn't trust--who wanted to please me so much that he had todeceive me, and was too much afraid of me to tell me the truth."
"You headstrong girl!" said her mother impartially, admiring at the sametime the girl's haughty beauty.
There was an argument in reserve in Mrs. Pasmer's mind which perhapsnone but an American mother would have hesitated to urge; but it is sowholly our tradition to treat the important business of marriage as aromantic episode that even she could not bring herself to insist thather daughter should not throw away a chance so advantageous fromevery worldly point of view. She could only ask, "If you break thisengagement, 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. "Iwill have no such nonsense. Don't flatter yourself that I will. Even ifI 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'venever seen you ready to give up your own will, or your own comforteven, in the slightest degree. And Dan Mavering, if he were twice astemporising and circuitous"--the word came to her from her talk withhim--"would be twice too good for you. I'm going to breakfast."
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