April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XLIV.

  The difficulty in life is to bring experience to the level ofexpectation, to match our real emotions in view of any great occasionwith the ideal emotions which we have taught ourselves that we ought tofeel. This is all the truer when the occasion is tragical: we surpriseourselves in a helplessness to which the great event, death, ruin,lost love, reveals itself slowly, and at first wears the aspect of anunbroken continuance of what has been, or at most of another incident inthe habitual sequence.

  Dan Mavering came out into the bright winter morning knowing thathis engagement was broken, but feeling it so little that he could notbelieve it. He failed to realise it, to seize it for a fact, and hecould not let it remain that dumb and formless wretchedness, withoutproportion or dimensions, which it now seemed to be, weighing his lifedown. To verify it, to begin to outlive it, he must instantly impartit, he must tell it, he must see it with others' eyes. This was thenecessity of his youth and of his sympathy, which included himselfas well as the rest of the race in its activity. He had the usualenvironment of a young man who has money. He belonged to clubs, and hehad a large acquaintance among men of his own age, who lived a lifeof greater leisure; or were more absorbed in business, but whom he metconstantly in society. For one reason or another, or for no other reasonthan that he was Dan Mavering and liked every one, he liked them all. Hethought himself great friends with them; he dined and lunched with them;and they knew the Pasmers, and all about his engagement. But he did notgo to any of them now, with the need he felt to impart his calamity, toget the support of come other's credence and opinion of it. He went toa friend whom, in the way of his world, he met very seldom, but whom healways 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 meantsomething decisive in his experiences. The reporter was at his latebreakfast, 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 thewhole case before him. As he made no comment on it for a while, Danwas obliged to ask him what he thought of it. "Well," he said, with thesmile that showed the evenness of his pretty teeth, "there's a kind ofwild justice in it." He admitted this, with the object of meeting Dan'sviews in an opinion.

  "So you think I'm a faithless man too, do you?" demanded Maveringstormily.

  "Not from your point of view," said Boardman, who kept on quietly eatingand drinking.

  Mavering was too amiable not to feel Boardman's innocence of offence inhis unperturbed behaviour. "There was no faithlessness about it, and youknow it," he went on, half laughing, half crying, in his excitement, andmaking Boardman the avenue of an appeal really addressed to Alice. "Iwas ready to do what either side decided."

  "Or both," suggested Boardman.

  "Yes, or both," said Dan, boldly accepting the suggestion. "It wouldn'thave 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 thatwas what I intended--expected: that it would all come out right ofitself--naturally." Dan was still addressing Alice in this belatedreasoning. "But to be accused of bad faith--of trying to deceive anyone--"

  "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, andMavering laughed forlornly with him at his joke, and then walked awayand looked out of Boardman's dormer-window on the roofs below,with their dirty, smoke-stained February snow. He pulled out hishandkerchief, and wiped his face with it. When he turned round, Boardmanlooked keenly at him, and asked, with an air of caution, "And so it'sall 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 forexamination?"

  "I guess you can speak up freely, Boardman," said Dan, "if that's whatyou mean. Miss Pasmer and I are quits."

  "Well, then, I'm glad of it. She wasn't the one for you. She isn't fitfor you."

  "What's the reason she isn't?" cried Dan. "She's the most beautiful andnoble girl in the world, and the most conscientious, and the best--ifshe 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 eachother. You haven't got the same point of view, and you couldn't make itgo. Both out of a scrape."

  "I don't know what you mean by a scrape," said Dan, resenting the wordmore than the idea. Boardman tacitly refused to modify or withdraw it,and Dan said, after a sulky silence, in which he began to dramatise ameeting with his family: "I'm going home; I can't stand it here. What'sthe 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'tstand that three hours' pull alone. They'll be glad to see you--all ofthem. 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. Ido want you. I'm not fooling."

  "Don't think I could get away." Yet he seemed to be pleased with thenotion of the Falls; it made him smile.

  "Well, see," said Mavering disconsolately. "I'm going round to my roomsnow, and I'll be there till two o'clock; train's at 2.30." He wenttowards the door, where he faced about. "And you don't think it would beof 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 theresentment which Alice's injustice had roused in him had died out;he was suffering as helplessly and hopelessly as a child. "Well," hesighed, as he swung out of the door.

  Boardman found him seated at his writing-desk in his smoking-jacketwhen he came to him, rather early, and on the desk were laid out theproperties of the little play which had come to a tragic close. Therewere some small bits of jewellery, among the rest a ring of hers whichAlice had been letting him wear; a lock of her hair which he had kept,for the greater convenience of kissing, in the original parcel, tiedwith crimson ribbon; a succession of flowers which she had worn, moreand more dry and brown with age; one of her gloves, which he had foundand kept from the day they first met in Cambridge; a bunch of witheredbluebells tied with sweet-grass, whose odour filled the room, from thepicnic at Campobello; scraps of paper with her writing on them, andcards; 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 whatthe usual ceremony is," he said, he ventured to add, referring to theheaps 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 beenfeeling as if she were." All at once he dropped his head among thesewitnesses of his loss, and sobbed.

  Boa
rdman appeared shocked, and yet somewhat amused; he made a soft lowsibilation 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 vaguekindness. "Packed yet?" he asked, getting away from the subject assomething he did not feel himself fitted to deal with consecutively.

  "I'm only going to take a bag," said Mavering, going to get some clothesdown from a closet where his words had a sepulchral reverberation.

  "Can't I help?" asked Boardman, keeping away from the sad memorials ofDan's love strewn about on the desk, and yet not able to keep his eyesoff them across the room.

  "Well, I don't know," said Dan. He came out with his armful of coats andtrousers, 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 otherthings." He nodded his head side-wise toward the desk.

  "All right," said Boardman.

  His burst of grief must have relieved Dan greatly. He set aboutgathering up the relics on the desk, and getting a suitable piece ofpaper 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 atlast.

  "Any special kind of paper required?" Boardman asked, pausing in theact of folding a pair of pantaloons so as not to break the fall over theboot.

  "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 besimpler than to send back a lot of love-letters; but the question ofpaper seems insuperable. Manila paper wouldn't do either. And then comesstring. 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 hadgone back to the coats and trousers, abandoning Dan to the subtlerdifficulties in which he was involved.

  "They've all got labels," said Mavering, getting down one marked "TheTennyson" and another lettered "The Clarion," and looking at them withcold rejection.

  "Don't see how you're going to send these things back at all, then. Haveto keep them, I guess." Boardman finished his task, and came back toDan.

  "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 photographicviews had come.

  "Seems to have been made for it," Boardman exulted, watching theenvelope, as it filled up, expand into a kind of shapely packet. Danput the things silently in, and sealed the parcel with his ring. Then heturned it over to address it, but the writing of Alice's name for thispurpose seemed too much for him, in spite of Boardman's humorous supportthroughout.

  "Oh, I can't do it," he said, falling back in his chair.

  "Let me," said his friend, cheerfully ignoring his despair. Hephilosophised the whole transaction, as he addressed the package, rangfor a messenger, and sent it away, telling him to call a cab for tenminutes past two.

  "Mighty good thing in life that we move by steps. Now on the stage, orin a novel, you'd have got those things together and addressed 'em, anddespatched 'em, in just the right kind of paper, with just the rightkind of string round it, at a dash; and then you'd have had time to goup and lean your head against something and soliloquise, or else thinkunutterable things. But here you see how a merciful Providence blocksyour way all along. You've had to fight through all sort of sordidlittle details to the grand tragic result of getting off Miss Pasmer'sletters, 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 jokeat a funeral, Boardman."

  "I've seen some pretty cheerful funerals," said Boardman. "And it's thisprinciple of steps, of degrees, of having to do this little thing, andthat little thing, that keeps funerals from killing the survivors. Isuppose this is worse than a funeral--look at it in the right light. Youmourn 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 onelittle artifice and another prevented him from stagnating in despair.He dissented from the idea of waiting over another day to see if Alicewould not relent when she got her letters back, and send for Dan to comeand see her.

  "Relent a good deal more when she finds you've gone out of town, if shesends for you," he argued; and he got Dan into the cab and off tothe station, carefully making him an active partner in the wholeundertaking, 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. Behonest 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 makeme see things in just the right light, don't you know. That idea ofyours about little steps--it's braced me all up. Yes--"

  "You're such an infernal humbug," said Boardman, "I can't tell whetheryou want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go." Then he boughthis ticket.