XLVII.
In Boston the rumour of Dan's broken engagement was followed promptlyby a denial of it; both the rumour and the denial were apparentlyauthoritative; but it gives the effect of a little greater sagacity todistrust rumours of all kinds, and most people went to bed, after theteas and dinners and receptions and clubs at which the fact was firstdebated, in the self-persuasion that it was not so. The next day theyfound the rumour still persistent; the denial was still in the airtoo, but it seemed weaker; at the end of the third day it had become aquestion as to which broke the engagement, and why; by the end of a weekit was known that Alice had broken the engagement, but the reason couldnot be ascertained.
This was not for want of asking, more or less direct. Pasmer, of course,went and came at his club with perfect immunity. Men are quite ascurious as women, but they set business bounds to their curiosity, anddo not dream of passing these. With women who have no business of theirown, and can not quell themselves with the reflection that this thingor that is not their affair, there is no question so intimate that theywill not put it to some other woman; perhaps it is not so intimate, orperhaps it will not seem so; at any rate, they chance it. Mrs. Pasmerwas given every opportunity to explain the facts to the ladies whomshe met, and if she was much afflicted by Alice's behaviour, she had ameasure of consolation in using her skill to baffle the research of heracquaintance. After each encounter of the kind she had the pleasure ofreflecting that absolutely nothing more than she meant had become known.The case never became fully known through her; it was the girl herselfwho told it to Miss Cotton in one of those moments of confidence whichare necessary to burdened minds; and it is doubtful if more than two orthree people ever clearly understood it; most preferred one or other ofseveral mistaken versions which society finally settled down to.
The paroxysm of self-doubt, almost self-accusal, in which Alice came toMiss Cotton, moved the latter to the deepest sympathy, and left her withmisgivings which became an intolerable anguish to her conscience. Thechild was so afflicted at what she had done, not because she wished tobe reconciled with her lover, but because she was afraid she had beenunjust, been cruelly impatient and peremptory with him; she seemed toMiss Cotton so absolutely alone and friendless with her great trouble,she was so helpless, so hopeless, she was so anxious to do right, andso fearful she had done wrong, that Miss Cotton would not have beenMiss Cotton if she had not taken her in her arms and assured her that ineverything she had done she had been sublimely and nobly right, a lessonto all her sex in such matters for ever. She told her that she hadalways admired her, but that now she idolised her; that she felt likegoing down on her knees and simply worshipping her.
"Oh, don't say that, Miss Cotton!" pleaded Alice, pulling away fromher embrace, but still clinging to her with her tremulous, cold littlehands. "I can't bear it! I'm wicked and hard you don't know how bad Iam; and I'm afraid of being weak, of doing more harm yet. Oh, I wrongedhim cruelly in ever letting him get engaged to me! But now what you'vesaid will support me. If you think I've done right--It must seem strangeto you that I should come to you with my trouble instead of my mother;but I've been to her, and--and we think alike on so few subjects, don'tyou know--"
"Yes, yes; I know, dear!" said Miss Cotton, in the tender folly ofher heart, with the satisfaction which every woman feels in being moresufficient to another in trouble than her natural comforters.
"And I wanted to know how you saw it; and now, if you feel as you say, Ican never doubt myself again."
She tempested out of Miss Cotton's house, all tearful under the veil shehad pulled down, and as she shut the door of her coupe, Miss Cotton'sheart jumped into her throat with an impulse to run after her, to recallher, to recant, to modify everything.
From that moment Miss Cotton's trouble began, and it became a tormentthat mounted and gave her no peace till she imparted it. She said toherself that she should suffer to the utmost in this matter, and if shespoke to any one, it must not be to same one who had agreed with herabout Alice, but to some hard, skeptical nature, some one who would lookat it from a totally different point of view, and would punish her forher error, if she had committed an error, in supporting and consolingAlice. All the time she was thinking of Mrs. Brinkley; Mrs. Brinkleyhad come into her mind at once; but it was only after repeated strugglesthat she could get the strength to go to her.
Mrs. Brinkley, sacredly pledged to secrecy, listened with a sufficientlydismaying air to the story which Miss Cotton told her in the extremityof her fear and doubt.
"Well," she said at the end, "have you written to Mr. Mavering?"
"Written to Mr. Mavering?" gasped Miss Cotton.
"Yes--to tell him she wants him back."
"Wants him back?" Miss Cotton echoed again.
"That's what she came to you for."
"Oh, Mrs. Brinkley!" moaned Miss Cotton, and she stared at her in mutereproach.
Mrs. Brinkley laughed. "I don't say she knew that she came for that; butthere's no doubt that she did; and she went away bitterly disappointedwith your consolation and support. She didn't want anything of thekind--you may comfort yourself with that reflection, Miss Cotton."
"Mrs. Brinkley," said Miss Cotton, with a severity which ought to havebeen extremely effective from so mild a person, "do you mean to accusethat poor child of dissimulation--of deceit--in such--a--a--"
"No!" shouted Mrs. Brinkley; "she didn't know what she was doing anymore than you did; and she went home perfectly heart-broken; and I hopeshe'll stay so, for the good of all parties concerned."
Miss Cotton was so bewildered by Mrs. Brinkley's interpretation ofAlice's latent motives that she let the truculent hostility of heraspiration pass unheeded. She looked helplessly about, and seemed faint,so that Mrs. Brinkley, without appearing to notice her state, interposedthe question of a little sherry. When it had been brought, and MissCotton had sipped the glass that trembled in one hand while her emotionshattered a biscuit with the other, Mrs. Brinkley went on: "I'm glad theengagement is broken, and I hope it will never be mended. If what youtell me of her reason for breaking it is true--"
"Oh, I feel so guilty for telling you! I'd no right to! Please neverspeak of it!" pleaded Miss Cotton.
"Then I feel more than ever that it was all a mistake, and that to helpit on again would be a--crime."
Miss Cotton gave a small jump at the word, as if she had alreadycommitted the crime: she had longed to do it.
"Yes; I mean to say that they are better parted than plighted. Ifmatches are made in heaven, I believe some of them are unmade there too.They're not adapted to each other; there's too great a disparity."
"You mean," began Miss Cotton, from her prepossession of Alice'ssuperiority, "that she's altogether his inferior, intellectually andmorally."
"Oh, I can't admit that!" cried Miss Cotton, glad to have Mrs. Brinkleygo too far, and plucking up courage from her excess.
"Intellectually and morally," repeated Mrs. Brinkley, with the mountingconviction which ladies seem to get from mere persistence. "I saw thatgirl at Campobello; I watched her."
"I never felt that you did her justice!" cried Miss Cotton, with thevalour of a hen-sparrow. "There was an antipathy."
"There certainly wasn't a sympathy, I'm happy to say," retorted Mrs.Brinkley. "I know her, and I know her family, root and branch. ThePasmers are the dullest and most selfish people in the world."
"Oh, I don't think that's her character," said Miss Cotton, ruffling herfeathers defensively.
"Neither do I. She has no fixed character. No girl has. Nobody has. Weall have twenty different characters--more characters than gowns--and weput them on and take them off just as often for different occasions.I know you think each person is permanently this or that; but myexperience is that half the time they're the other thing."
"Then why," said Miss Cotton, winking hard, as some weak people do whenthey thick they are making a point, "do you say that Alice is dull andselfish?"
"I don't--not always, or not simply so.
That's the character of thePasmer blood, but it's crossed with twenty different currents in her;and from some body that the Pasmer dulness and selfishness must havedriven mad she got a crazy streak of piety; and that's got mixed up inher again with a nonsensical ideal of duty; and everything she does shenot only thinks is right, but she thinks it's religious, and she thinksit's unselfish."
"If you'd seen her, if you'd heard her, this morning," said Miss Cotton,"you wouldn't say that, Mrs. Brinkley."
Mrs. Brinkley refused this with an impatient gesture. "It isn't whatshe is now, or seems to be, or thinks she is. It's what she's going tofinally harden into--what's going to be her prevailing character. NowDan Mavering has just the faults that will make such a girl think herown defects are virtues, because they're so different. I tell you AlicePasmer has neither the head nor the heart to appreciate the goodness,the loveliness, of a fellow like Dan Mavering."
"I think she feels his sweetness fully," urged Miss Cotton. "But shecouldn't endure his uncertainty. With her the truth is first of allthings."
"Then she's a little goose. If she had the sense to know it, she wouldknow that he might delay and temporise and beat about the bush, but hewould be true when it was necessary. I haven't the least doubt in theworld but that poor fellow was going on in perfect security, because hefelt that it would be so easy for him to give up, and supposed it wouldbe just as easy for her. I don't suppose he had a misgiving, and it musthave come upon him like a thunder-clap."
"Don't you think," timidly suggested Miss Cotton, "that truth is thefirst essential in marriage?"
"Of course it is. And if this girl was worthy of Dan Mavering, if shewere capable of loving him or anybody else unselfishly, she would havefelt his truth even if she couldn't have seen it. I believe this minutethat that manoeuvring, humbugging mother of hers is a better woman, akinder woman, than she is."
"Alice says her mother took his part," said Miss Cotton, with a sigh."She took your view of it."
"She's a sensible woman. But I hope she won't be able to get him intoher toils again," continued Mrs. Brinkley, recurring to the conventionalestimate of Mrs. Pasmer.
"I can't help feeling--believing--that they'll come together somehowstill," murmured Miss Cotton. It seemed to her that she had all alongwished this; and she tried to remember if what she had said to comfortAlice might be construed as adverse to a reconciliation.
"I hope they won't, then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "for they couldn't helpbeing unhappy together, with their temperaments. There's one thing,Miss Cotton, that's more essential in marriage than Miss Pasmer'sinstantaneous honesty, and that's patience."
"Patience with wrong?" demanded Miss Cotton.
"Yes, even with wrong; but I meant patience with each other. Marriageis a perpetual pardon, concession, surrender; it's an everlasting givingup; that's the divine thing about it; and that's just what Miss Passercould never conceive of, because she is self-righteous and conceited andunyielding. She would make him miserable."
Miss Cotton rose in a bewilderment which did not permit her to go atonce. There was something in her mind which she wished to urge, but shecould not make it out, though she fingered in vague generalities. Whenshe got a block away from the house it suddenly came to her. Love! Ifthey loved each other, would not all be well with them? She would haveliked to run back and put that question to Mrs. Brinkley; but justthen she met Brinkley lumbering heavily homeward; she heard his hardbreathing from the exertion of bowing to her as he passed.
His wife met him in the hall, and went up to kiss him. He smeltabominably of tobacco smoke.
"Hullo!" said her husband. "What are you after?"
"Nothing," said his wife, enjoying his joke. "Come in here; I want totell you how I have just sat upon Miss Cotton."
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