April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XLIX.

  In New York Dan found that Lafflin had gone to Washington to look upsomething in connection with his patent. In his eagerness to get awayfrom home, Dan had supposed that his father meant to make a holiday forhim, and he learned with a little surprise that he was quite in earnestabout getting hold of the invention he wrote home of Lafflin's absence;and he got a telegram in reply ordering him to follow on to Washington.

  The sun was shining warm on the asphalt when he stepped out of thePennsylvania Depot with his bag in his hand, and put it into the hansomthat drove up for him. The sky overhead was of an intense blue that madehim remember the Boston sky as pale and grey; when the hansom tiltedout into the Avenue he had a joyous glimpse of the White House; ofthe Capitol swimming like a balloon in the cloudless air. A keen Marchbreeze swept the dust before him, and through its veil the classicTreasury Building showed like one edifice standing perfect amid ruinrepresented by the jag-tooth irregularities of the business architecturealong the wide street.

  He had never been in Washington before, and he had a confused senseof having got back to Rome, which he remembered from his boyish visit.Throughout his stay he seemed to be coming up against the facade ofthe Temple of Neptune; but it was the Patent Office, or the TreasuryBuilding, or the White House, and under the gay Southern sky thisreversion to the sensations of a happier time began at once, and madeitself a lasting relief. He felt a lift in his spirits from the first.They gave him a room at Wormley's, where the chairs comported themselvesas self-respectfully upon two or three legs as they would have done atBoston upon four; the cooking was excellent, and a mercenary welcomeglittered from all the kind black faces around him. After the quiet ofPonkwasset and the rush of New York, the lazy ease of the hotel pleasedhim; the clack of boots over its pavements, the clouds of tobacco smoke,the Southern and Western accents, the spectacle of people unexpectedlyencountering and recognising each other in the office and thedining-room, all helped to restore him to a hopefuller mood. Withoutasking his heart too curiously why, he found it lighter; he felt that hewas still young.

  In the weather he had struck a cold wave, and the wind was bitter inthe streets, but they were full of sun; he found the grass green insheltered places, and in one of the Circles he plucked a blossomed sprayfrom an adventurous forceythia. This happened when he was walking fromWormley's to the Arlington by a roundabout way of his own involuntaryinvention, and he had the flowers in his button-hole when Lafflin waspointed out to him in the reading room there, and he introduced himself.Lafflin had put his hat far back on his head, and was intensely chewinga toothpick, with an air of rapture from everything about him. He seemeda very simple soul to Dan's inexperience of men, and the young fellowhad no difficulty in committing him to a fair conditional arrangement.He was going to stay some days in Washington, and he promised otherinterviews, so that Dan thought it best to stay too. He used a sheet ofthe Arlington letter-paper in writing his father of what he had done;and then, as Lafflin had left him, he posted his letter at the clerk'sdesk, and wandered out through a corridor different from that which hehad come in by. It led by the door of the ladies parlour, and at thesound of women's voices Dan halted. For no other reason than that suchvoices always irresistibly allured him, he went in, putting on an airof having come to look for some one. There were two or three groups ofladies receiving friends in different parts of the room. At the windowa girl's figure silhouetted itself against the keen light, and ashe advanced into the room, peering about, it turned with a certainvividness that seemed familiar. This young lady, whoever she was, hadthe advantage of Dan in seeing him with the light on his face, and hewas still in the dark about her, when she advanced swiftly upon him,holding out her hand.

  "You don't seem to know your old friends, Mr. Mavering," and the manlytones left him no doubt.

  He felt a rush of gladness, and he clasped her hand and clung to it asif he were not going to let it go again, bubbling out incoherencies ofpleasure at meeting her. "Why, Miss Anderson! You here? What a piece ofluck! Of course I couldn't see you against the window--make you out! Butsomething looked familiar--and the way you turned! And when you startedtoward me! I'm awfully glad! When--where are you--that is--"

  Miss Anderson kept laughing with him, and bubbled back that she was veryglad too, and she was staying with her aunt in that hotel, and they hadbeen there a month, and didn't he think Washington was charming? But itwas too bad he had just got there with that blizzard. The weather hadbeen perfectly divine till the day before yesterday.

  He took the spray of forceythia out of his buttonhole. "I can believeit. I found this in one, of the squares, and I think it belongs toyou." He offered it with a bow and a laugh, and she took it in the samehumour.

  "What is the language of forceythia?" she asked.

  "It has none--only expressive silence, you know."

  A middle-aged lady came in, and Miss Anderson said, "My aunt, Mr.Mavering."

  "Mr. Mavering will hardly remember me," said the lady, giving him herhand. He protested that he should indeed, but she had really made but avague impression upon him at Campobello. He knew that she was there withMiss Anderson; he had been polite to her as he was to all women; but hehad not noticed her much, and in his heart he had a slight for her, ascompared with the Boston people he was more naturally thrown with; hecertainly had not remembered that she was a little hard of hearing.

  Miss Van Hook was in a steel-grey effect of dress, and, she had carriedthis up into her hair, of which she worn two short vertical curls oneach temple.

  She did not sit down, and Dan perceived that the ladies were going out.In her tailor-made suit of close-fitting serge and her Paris bonnet,carried like a crest on her pretty little head, Miss Anderson wascharming. She had a short veil that came across the base of her livelynose, and left her mouth and chin to make the most of themselves,unprejudiced by its irregularity.

  Dan felt it a hardship to part with them, but he prepared to takehimself off. Miss Anderson asked him how long he was to be inWashington, and said he must come to see them; they meant to stay twoweeks yet, and then they were going to Old Point Comfort; they had theirrooms engaged.

  He walked down to their carriage with the ladies and put them into it,and Miss Anderson still kept him talking there.

  Her aunt said: "Why shouldn't you come with us, Mr. Mavering? We'regoing to Mrs. Secretary Miller's reception."

  Dan gave himself a glance. "I don't know--if you want me?"

  "We want you," said Miss Anderson. "Very well, then, I'll go."

  He got in, and they began rolling over that smooth Washington asphaltwhich makes talk in a carriage as easy as in a drawing-room. Dan keptsaying to himself, "Now she's going to bring up Campobello;" but MissAnderson never recurred to their former meeting, and except for thesense of old acquaintance which was manifest in her treatment of himhe might have thought that they had never met before. She talked ofWashington and its informal delights; and of those plans which her aunthad made, like every one who spends a month in Washington, to spend allthe remaining winters of her life there.

  It seemed to Dan that Miss Anderson was avoiding Campobello on hisaccount; he knew from what Alice had told him that there had beenmuch surmise about their affair after he had left the island, and hesuspected that Miss Anderson thought the subject was painful to him. Hewished to reassure her. He asked at the first break in the talk aboutWashington, "How are the Trevors?"

  "Oh, quite well," she said, promptly availing herself of the opening."Have you seen any of our Campobello friends lately in Boston?"

  "No; I've been at home for the last month--in the country." He scannedher face to see if she knew anything of his engagement. But she seemedhonestly ignorant of everything since Campobello; she was not just thekind of New York girl who would visit in Boston, or have friends livingthere; probably she had never heard of his engagement. Somehow thisseemed to simplify matters for Dan. She did not ask specifically afterthe Pasmers; but that might have been because of the sort of br
eak inher friendship with Alice after that night at the Trevors'; she did notask specifically after Mrs. Brinkley or any of the others.

  At Mrs. Secretary Miller's door there was a rapid arrival and departureof carriages, of coupes, of hansoms, and of herdics, all managed by aman in plain livery, who opened and shut the doors, and sent thedrivers off without the intervention of a policeman; it is the genius ofWashington, which distinguishes it from every other capital, from everyother city, to make no show of formality, of any manner of constraintanywhere. People were swarming in and out; coming and going on footas well as by carriage. The blandest of coloured uncles receivedtheir cards in the hall and put them into a vast tray heaped up withpasteboard, smiling affectionately upon them as if they had done him afavour.

  "Don't you like them?" asked Dan of Miss Anderson; he meant the Southernnegroes.

  "I adoye them," she responded, with equal fervour. "You must study somenew types here for next summer," she added.

  Dan laughed and winced too. "Yes!" Then he said solemnly, "I am notgoing to Campobello next summer."

  They felt into a stream of people tending toward an archway between thedrawing-rooms, where Mrs. Secretary Miller stood with two lady friendswho were helping her receive. They smiled wearily but kindly uponthe crowd, for whom the Secretary's wife had a look of impartialhospitality. She could not have known more than one in fifty; andshe met them all with this look at first, breaking into incredulousrecognition when she found a friend. "Don't go away yet," she saidcordially, to Miss Van Hook and her niece, and she held their hands fora moment with a gentle look of relief and appeal which included Dan."Let me introduce you to Mrs. Tolliver and to Miss Dixon."

  These ladies said that it was not necessary in regard to Miss Andersonand Miss Van Hook; and as the crowd pushed them on, Dan felt that theyhad been received with distinction.

  The crowd expressed the national variety of rich and poor, plain andfashionable, urbane and rustic; they elbowed and shouldered each otherupon a perfect equality in a place where all were as free to come as tothe White House, and they jostled quaint groups of almond-eyed legationsin the yellows and purples of the East, who looked dreamily on as ifpuzzled past all surmise by the scene. Certain young gentlemen withthe unmistakable air of being European or South American attaches foundtheir way about on their little feet, which the stalwart boots ofthe republican masses must have imperilled; and smiled with a faintdiplomatic superiority, not visibly admitted, but all the sameindisputable. Several of these seemed to know Miss Anderson, and tookher presentation of Mavering with exaggerated effusion.

  "I want to introduce you to my cousin over yonder," she said, gettingrid of a minute Brazilian under-secretary, and putting her hand on Dan'sarm to direct him: "Mrs. Justice Averill."

  Miss Van Hook, keeping her look of severe vigilance, really followed herenergetic niece, who took the lead, as a young lady must whenever sheand her chaperon meet on equal terms.

  Mrs. Justice Averill, who was from the far West somewhere, received Danwith the ease of the far East, and was talking London and Paris to himbefore the end of the third minute. It gave Dan a sense of liberation,of expansion; he filled his lungs with the cosmopolitan air in a sortof intoxication; without formulating it, he felt, with the astonishmentwhich must always attend the Bostonian's perception of the fact, thatthere is a great social life in America outside of Boston. At Campobellohe had thought Miss Anderson a very jolly girl, bright, and up to allsorts of things; but in the presence of the portable Boston there hecould not help regarding her with a sort of tolerance which he nowblushed for; he thought he had been a great ass. She seemed to know allsorts of nice people, and she strove with generous hospitality to makehim have a good time. She said it was Cabinet Day, and that all thesecretaries' wives were receiving, and she told him he had better makethe rounds with them. He assented very willingly, and at six o'clock hewas already so much in the spirit of this free and simple society,so much opener and therefore so much wiser than any other, that heprofessed a profound disappointment with the two or three Cabinet ladieswhose failure to receive brought his pleasure to a premature close.

  "But I suppose you're going to Mrs. Whittington's to-night!" MissAnderson said to him, as they drove up to Wormley's, where she set himdown. Miss Van Hook had long ceased to say anything; Dan thought her aperfect duenna. "You know you can go late there," she added.

  "No, I can't go at all," said Dan. "I don't know them."

  "They're New England people," urged Miss Anderson; as if to make him tryto think that he was asked to Mrs. Whittington's.

  "I don't know more than half the population of New England," said Dan,with apparent levity, but real forlornness.

  "If you'd like to go--if you're sure you've no other engagement--"

  "Oh, I'm certain of that?"

  "--we would come for you."

  "Do!"

  "At half-past ten, then."

  Miss Anderson explained to her aunt, who cordially confirmed herinvitation, and they both shook hands with him upon it, and he backedout of the carriage with a grin of happiness on his face; it remainedthere while he wrote out the order for his dinner, which they requireat Wormley's in holograph. The waiter reflected his smile with ethnicalwarm-heartedness. For a moment Dan tried to think what it was he hadforgotten; he thought it was some other dish; then he remembered thatit was his broken heart. He tried to subdue himself; but there wassomething in the air of the place, the climate, perhaps, or a pleasantsense of its facile social life, that kept him buoyant in spite ofhimself. He went out after dinner, and saw part of a poor play, andreturned in time to dress for his appointment with Miss Anderson. Heraunt was with her, of course; she seemed to Dan more indefatigable thanshe was by day. He could not think her superfluous; and she was verygood-natured. She made little remarks full of conventional wisdom, andappealed to his judgment on several points as they drove along. Whenthey came to a street lamp where she could see him, he nodded and saidyes, or no, respectfully. Between times he talked with Miss Anderson,who lectured him upon Washington society, and prepared him for thedifference he was to find between Mrs. Whittington's evening of invitedguests and the Cabinet ladies' afternoon of volunteer guests.

  "Volunteer guests is good," he laughed. "Do you mean that anybody cango?"

  "Anybody that is able to be about. This is Cabinet Day. There's aSupreme Court Day and a Senators' Day, and a Representatives' Day. Doyou mean to say you weren't going to call upon your Senator?"

  "I didn't know I had any."

  "Neither did I till I came here. But you've got two; everybody's gottwo. And the President's wife receives three times a week, and thePresident has two or three days. They say the public days at the WhiteHouse are great fun. I've been to some of the invited, or semi-invitedor official evenings."

  He could not see that difference from the great public receptionswhich Miss Anderson had promised him at Mrs. Whittington's, though hepretended afterward that he had done so. The people were more uniformlywell dressed, there were not so many of them, and the hostess was sureof knowing her acquaintances at first glance; but there was the sameease, the same unconstraint, the same absence of provincial anxietywhich makes a Washington a lighter and friendlier London. There wererather more sallow attaches; in their low-cut white waistcoats, withsmall brass buttons, they moved more consciously about, and lookedweightier personages than several foreign ministers who were present.

  Dan was soon lost from the side of Miss Anderson, who more and moreseemed to him important socially. She seemed, in her present leadership;to know more of life, than he; to be maturer. But she did not abuse hersuperiority; she kept an effect of her last summer's friendliness forhim throughout. Several times, finding herself near him; she introducedhim to people.

  Guests kept arriving till midnight. Among the latest, when Dan had losthimself far from Boston in talk with a young lady from Richmond, whospoke with a slur of her vowels that fascinated him, came Mr. andMrs. Brinkley. He felt himself grow pale and i
nattentive to his prettyVirginian. That accent of Mrs. Brinkley's recalled him to his history.He hoped that she would not see him; but in another moment he wasgreeting her with a warmth which Bostonians seldom show in meeting atBoston.

  "When did you come to Washington?" she asked, trying to keep herconsciousness out of her eyes, which she let dwell kindly upon him.

  "Day before yesterday--no, yesterday. It seems a month, I've seen anddone so much," he said, with his laugh. "Miss Anderson's been showing methe whole of Washington society. Have you been here long?"

  "Since morning," said Mrs. Brinkley. And she added, "Miss Anderson?"

  "Yes--Campobello, don't you know?"

  "Oh yes. Is she here to-night?"

  "I came with her and her aunt."

  "Oh yes."

  "How is all Boston?" asked Dan boldly.

  "I don't know; I'm just going down to Old Point Comfort to ask. Everyother house on the Back Bay has been abandoned for the Hygeia." Mrs.Brinkley stopped, and then she asked. "Are you just up from there?"

  "No; but I don't know but I shall go."

  "Hello, Mavering!" said Mr. Brinkley, coming up and taking his hand intohis fat grasp. "On your way to Fortress Monroe? Better come with us.Why; Munt!"

  He turned to greet this other Bostonian, who had hardly expressed hisjoy at meeting with his fellow-townsmen when the hostess rustled softlyup, and said, with the irony more or less friendly, which everybody usesin speaking of Boston, or recognising the intellectual pre-eminence ofits people, "I'm not going to let you keep this feast of reason allto your selves. I want you to leaven the whole lump," and she began todisperse them, and to introduce them about right and left.

  Dan tried to find his Virginian again, but she was gone. He found MissAnderson; she was with her aunt. "Shall we be tearing you away?" sheasked.

  "Oh no. I'm quite ready to go."

  His nerves were in a tremble. Those Boston faces and voices had broughtit all back again; it seemed as if he had met Alice. He was silent andincoherent as they drove home, but Miss Anderson apparently did not wantto talk much, and apparently did not notice his reticence.

  He fell asleep with the pang in his heart which had been there so often.

  When Dan came down to breakfast he found the Brinkleys at a pleasantplace by one of the windows, and after they had exchanged a pleasedsurprise with him that they should all happen to be in the same hotel,they asked him to sit at their table.

  There was a bright sun shining, and the ache was gone out of Dan'sheart. He began to chatter gaily with Mrs. Brinkley about Washington.

  "Oh, better come on to Fortress Monroe," said her husband. "Better comeon with us."

  "No, I can't just yet," said Dan. "I've got some business here that willkeep me for awhile. Perhaps I may run down there a little later."

  "Miss Anderson seems to have a good deal of business in Washington too,"observed Brinkley, with some hazy notion of saying a pleasant rallyingthing to the young man. He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. Withthose panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan's loveaffair with Miss Pasmer.

  Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson asimpersonal as possible.

  "It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesomecreature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think ofthe broad daylight. I always liked that girl."

  "Yes; isn't she jolly?" said Dan joyously. "She seems to know everybodyhere. It's a great piece of luck for me. They're going to take a housein Washington next winter."

  "Yes; I know that stage," said Mrs. Brinkley. "Her aunt's an amusinglyNew-York respectability. I don't think you'd find just such Miss Mitfordcurls as hers in all Boston."

  "Yes, they are like the portraits, aren't they?" said Dan; delighted."She's very nice, don't you think?"

  "Very. But Miss Anderson is more than that. I was disposed to becritical of her at Campobello for a while, but she wore extremely well.All at once you found yourself admiring her uncommon common-sense.

  "Yes. That's just it," cried Dan. "She is so sensible!"

  "I think she's very pretty," said Mrs. Brinkley.

  "Well, her nose," suggested Dan. "It seems a little capricious."

  "It's a trifle bizarre, I suppose. But what beautiful eyes! And herfigure! I declare that girl's carriage is something superb."

  "Yes, she has a magnificent walk."

  "Walks with her carriage," mused Brinkley aloud.

  His wife did not regard him. "I don't know what Miss Anderson'sprinciples are, but her practices are perfect. I never knew her do anunkind or shabby thing. She seems very good and very wise. And thatdeep voice of hers has such a charm. It's so restful. You feel as ifyou could repose upon it for a thousand years. Well! You will get downbefore we leave?"

  "Yes, I will," said Dan. "I'm here after a man who's after a patent,and as soon as I can finish up my business with him I believe I will rundown to Fortress Monroe."

  "This eleven-o'clock train will get you there at six," said Brinkley."Better telegraph for your rooms."

  "Or, let us know," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and we'll secure them for you."

  "Oh, thank you," said Dan.

  He went away, feeling that Mrs. Brinkley was the pleasantest woman heever met. He knew that she had talked Miss Anderson so fully in orderto take away the implication of her husband's joke, and he admired hertact. He thought of this as he loitered along the street from Wormley'sto the Arlington, where he was going to find Miss Anderson, by anappointment of the night before, and take a walk with her; and thinkingof tact made him think of Mrs. Pasmer. Mrs. Pasmer was full of tact; andhow kind she had always been to him! She had really been like a motherto him; he was sure she had understood him; he believed she had defendedhim; with a futility of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend himnow to Alice. Alice was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; hermother's words fell upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer's tears,which Dan made her shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl. Not thathe cared now.

  The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine laystill, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed tobask in it, and which it softened to the foot. He loitered by the gateof the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jacksonis riding a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at theFrench-Italian classicism of the White House architecture with a pensivejoy at finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington.

  Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a longwalk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, andthrough the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimesbeautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernalchirping in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three theysat down on the iron benches and rested.

  They talked and talked--about the people they knew, and of whom theyfound that they thought surprisingly alike, and about themselves,whom they found surprisingly alike in a great many things, and thensurprisingly unlike. Dan brought forward some points of identity whichhe, and Alice had found in themselves; it was just the same with MissAnderson. She found herself rather warm with the seal-skin sacque shehad put on; she let him carry it on his arm while they walked, andthen lay it over her shoulders when they sat down. He felt a pang ofself-reproach, as if he had been inconstant to Alice. This was an oldhabit of feeling, formed during the months of their engagement, when, ather inspiration, he was always bringing himself to book about something.He replied to her bitterly, in the colloquy which began to hold itselfin his mind, and told her that she had no claim upon him now; thatif his thoughts wandered from her it was her fault, not his; that sheherself had set them free. But in fact he was like all young men, witha thousand, potentialities of loving. There was no aspect of beauty thatdid not tenderly move him; he could not help a soft thrill at the sightof any pretty shape, the sound of any piquant voice; and Alice hadmerely been the synthesis of all that was most charmin
g to thisfancy. This is a truth which it is the convention of the poets and thenovelists to deny; but it is also true that she might have remained thesum of all that was loveliest if she would; or if she could.

  It was chiefly because she would not or could not that his glancerecognised the charm of Miss Anderson's back hair, both in its strayinggossamer and in the loose mass in which it was caught up under her hat,when he laid her sacque on her shoulders. They met that afternoon at aSenator's, and in the house of a distinguished citizen, to whose wifeDan had been presented at Mrs. Whittington's, and who had somehow gothis address, and sent him a card for her evening. They encounteredhere with a jocose old friendliness, and a profession of being tired ofalways meeting Miss Anderson and Mr. Mavering. He brought her salad andice, and they made an appointment for another walk in the morning, if itwas fine.

  He carried her some flowers. A succession of fine days followed, andthey walked every morning. Sometimes Dan was late, and explained thatit was his patent-right man had kept him. She was interested in thepatent-right man, whom Dan began to find not quite so simple as atfirst, but she was not exacting with him about his want of punctuality;she was very easy-going; she was not always ready herself. When he beganto beat about the bush, to talk insincerities, and to lose himself inintentionless plausibilities, she waited with serene patience for him tohave done, and met him on their habitual ground of frankness and realityas if he had not left it. He got to telling her all his steps with hispatent-right man, who seemed to be growing mote and more slippery, andwho presently developed a demand for funds. Then she gave him some veryshrewd, practical advice, and told him to go right into the hotel officeand telegraph to his father while she was putting on her bonnet.

  "Yes," he said, "that's what I thought of doing." But he admired her foradvising him; he said to himself that Miss Anderson was the kind of girlhis father would admire. She was good, and she was of the world too;that was what his father meant. He imagined himself arriving home andsaying, "Well father, you know that despatch I sent you, about Lafflin'swanting money?" and telling him about Miss Anderson. Then he fancied heracquainted with his sisters and visiting them, and his father more andmore fond of her, and perhaps in declining health, and eager to see hisson settled in life; and he pictured himself telling her that he haddone with love for ever, but if she could accept respect, fidelity,gratitude, he was ready to devote his life to her. She refused him, butthey always remained good friends and comrades; she married another,perhaps Boardman, while Dan was writing out his telegram, and he brokeinto whispered maledictions on his folly, which attracted the notice ofthe operator.

  One morning when he sent up his name to Miss Anderson, whom he did notfind in the hotel parlour, the servant came back with word that MissVan Hook would like to have him come up to their rooms. But it was MissAnderson who met him at the door.

  "It seemed rather formal to send you word that Miss Van Hook wasindisposed, and Miss Anderson would be unable to walk this morning, andI thought perhaps you'd rather come up and get my regrets in person. AndI wanted you to see our view."

  She led the way to the window for it, but they did not look at it,though they sat down there apparently for the purpose. Dan put his hatbeside his chair, and observed some inattentive civilities in inquiringafter Miss Van Hook's health, and in hearing that it was merely a badheadache, one of a sort in which her niece hated to leave her to serveherself with the wet compresses which Miss Van Hook always bore on herforehead for it.

  "One thing: it's decided us to be off for Fortress Monroe at last. Weshall go by the boat to-morrow, if my aunt's better."

  "To-morrow?" said Dan. "What's to become of me when you're gone?"

  "Oh, we shall not take the whole population with us," suggested MissAnderson.

  "I wish you would take me. I told Mrs. Brinkley I would come while shewas there, but I'm afraid I can't get off. Lafflin is developing intoall sorts of strange propositions."

  "I think you'd better look out for that man," said Miss Anderson.

  "Oh, I do nothing without consulting my father. But I shall miss you."

  "Thank you," said the girl gravely.

  "I don't mean in a business capacity only."

  They both laughed, and Dan looked about the room, which he found was aprivate hotel parlour, softened to a more domestic effect by the signsof its prolonged occupation by two refined women. On a table stood aleather photograph envelope with three cabinet pictures in it. Along thetop lay a spray of withered forceythia. Dan's wandering eyes rested onit. Miss Anderson went and softly closed the door opening into the nextroom.

  "I was afraid our talking might disturb my aunt," she said, and on herway back to him she picked up the photograph case and brought it to thelight. "These are my father and mother. We live at Yonkers; but I'm withmy aunt a good deal of the time in town--even when I'm at home." Shelaughed at her own contradictory statement, and put the case backwithout explaining the third figure--a figure in uniform. Danconjectured a military brother, or from her indifference perhaps amilitia brother, and then forgot about him. But the partial Yonkersresidence accounted for traits of unconventionality in Miss Andersonwhich he had not been able to reconcile with the notion of anexclusively New York breeding. He felt the relief, the sympathy, thecertainty of intelligence which every person whose life has been partlyspent in the country feels at finding that a suspected cockney has alsohad the outlook into nature and simplicity.

  On the Yonkers basis they became more intimate, more personal, and Dantold her about Ponkwasset Falls and his mother and sisters; he told herabout his father, and she said she should like to see his father; shethought he must be like her father.

  All at once, and for no reason that he could think of afterward, except,perhaps, the desire to see the case with her eyes, he began to tell herof his affair with Alice, and how and why it was broken off; he told thewhole truth in regard to that, and did not spare himself.

  She listened without once speaking, but without apparent surprise at theconfidence, though she may have felt surprised. At times she looked asif her thoughts were away from what he was saying.

  He ended with, "I'm sure I don't know why I've told you all this. But Iwanted you to know about me. The worst."

  Miss Anderson said, looking down, "I always thought she was a veryconscientious giyl." Then after a pause, in which she seemed to beovercoming an embarrassment in being obliged to speak of another in sucha conviction, "I think she was very moybid. She was like ever so manyNew England giyls that I've met. They seem to want some excuse forsuffering; and they must suffer even if it's through somebody else. Idon't know; they're romantic, New England giyls are; they have too manyideals."

  Dan felt a balm in this; he too had noticed a superfluity of idealsin Alice, he had borne the burden of realising some of them; they allseemed to relate in objectionable degree to his perfectionation. So hesaid gloomily, "She was very good. And I was to blame."

  "Oh yes!" said Miss Anderson, catching her breath in a queer way; "sheseyved you right."

  She rose abruptly, as if she heard her aunt speak, and Dan perceivedthat he had been making a long call.

  He went away dazed and dissatisfied; he knew now that he ought not tohave told Miss Anderson about his affair, unless he meant more by hisconfidence than he really did--unless he meant to follow it up.

  He took leave of her, and asked her to make his adieux to her aunt; butthe next day he came down to the boat to see them off. It seemed to himthat their interview had ended too hastily; he felt sore and restlessover it; he hoped that something more conclusive might happen. But atthe boat Miss Anderson and her aunt were inseparable. Miss Van Hook saidshe hoped they should soon see him at the Hygeia, and he replied that hewas not sure that he should be able to come after all.

  Miss Anderson called something after him as he turned from them to goashore. He ran back eagerly to know what it was. "Better lookout forthat Mr. Lafflin of yours," she repeated.

  "Oh! oh yes," he said, indefinit
ely disappointed. "I shall keep a sharpeye on him." He was disappointed, but he could not have said what he hadhoped or expected her to say. He was humbled before himself for havingtold Miss Anderson about his affair with Alice, and had wished she wouldsay something that he might scramble back to his self-esteem upon. Hehad told her all that partly from mere weakness, from his longing forthe sympathy which he was always so ready to give, and partly from thewillingness to pose before her as a broken heart, to dazzle her by theirony and persiflage with which he could treat such a tragical matter;but he could not feel that he had succeeded. The sum of her comment hadbeen that Alice had served him right. He did not know whether she reallybelieved that or merely said it to punish him for some reason; but hecould never let it be the last word. He tingled as he turned to wavehis handkerchief to her on the boat, with the suspicion that she waslaughing at him; and he could not console himself with any hero ofa novel who had got himself into just such a box. There were alwayscircumstances, incidents, mitigations, that kept the hero still a hero,and ennobled the box into an unjust prison cell.

  L.

  On the long sunny piazza of the Hygeia Mrs. Brinkley and Miss Van Hooksat and talked in a community of interest which they had not discoveredduring the summer before at Campobello, and with an equality of hearingwhich the sound of the waves washing almost at their feet establishedbetween them. In this pleasant noise Miss Van Hook heard as well as anyone, and Mrs. Brinkley gradually realised that it was the trouble ofhaving to lift her voice that had kept her from cultivating a veryagreeable acquaintance before. The ladies sat in a secluded corner,wearing light wraps that they had often found comfortable at Campobelloin August, and from time to time attested to each other theirastonishment that they needed no more at Old Point in early April.

  They did this not only as a just tribute to the amiable climate, but asa relief from the topic which had been absorbing them, and to which theyconstantly returned.

  "No," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a sort of finality, "I think it is thebest thing that could possibly have happened to him. He is bearing it ina very manly way, but I fancy he has felt it deeply, poor fellow. He'snever been in Boston since, and I don't believe he'd come here if he'dany idea how many Boston people there were in the hotel--we swarm! Itwould be very painful to him."

  "Yes," said Miss Van Hook, "young people seem to feel those things."

  "Of course he's going to get over it. That's what young people do too.At his age he can't help being caught with every pretty face and everypretty figure, even in the midst of his woe, and it's only a questionof time till he seizes some pretty hand and gets drawn out of italtogether."

  "I think that would be the case with my niece, too," said Miss Van Hook,"if she wasn't kept in it by a sense of loyalty. I don't believe shereally dares much for Lieutenant Willing any more; but he sees nosociety where he's stationed, of course, and his constancy is a--arebuke and a--a--an incentive to her. They were engaged a long time agojust after he left West Point--and we've always been in hopes thathe would be removed to some post where he could meet other ladies andbecome interested in some one else. But he never has, and so the affairremains. It's most undesirable they should marry, and in the meantimeshe won't break it off, and it's spoiling her chances in life."

  "It is too bad," sighed Mrs. Brinkley, "but of course you can donothing. I see that."

  "No, we can do nothing. We have tried everything. I used to think it wasbecause she was so dull there at Yonkers with her family, and broodedupon the one idea all the time, that she could not get over it; and atfirst it did seem when she came to me that she would get over it. Sheis very fond of gaiety--of young men's society, and she's had plentyof little flirtations that didn't mean anything, and never amounted toanything. Every now and then a letter would come from the wilds where hewas stationed, and spoil it all. She seemed to feel a sort of chivalrousobligation because he was so far off and helpless and lonely."

  "Yes, I understand," said Mrs. Brinkley. "What a pity she couldn't bemade to feel that that didn't deepen the obligation at all."

  "I've tried to make her," said Miss Van Hook, "and I've been everywherewith her. One winter we were up the Nile, and another in Nice, and lastwinter we were in Rome. She met young men everywhere, and had offersupon offers; but it was of no use. She remained just the same, and tillshe met Mr. Mavering in Washington I don't believe--"

  Miss Van Hook stopped, and Mrs. Brinkley said, "And yet she alwaysseemed to me particularly practical and level-headed--as the men say."

  "So she is. But she is really very romantic about some things; and whenit comes to a matter of that kind, girls are about all alike, don't youthink?"

  "Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley hopelessly, and both ladies looked out overthe water, where the waves came rolling in one after another to wastethemselves on the shore as futilely as if they had been lives.

  In the evening Miss Anderson got two letters from the clerk, at the hourwhen the ladies all flocked to his desk with the eagerness for letterswhich is so engaging in them. One she pulled open and glanced at witha sort of impassioned indifference; the other she read in one intensemoment, and then ran it into her pocket, and with her hand still on ithurried vividly flushing to her room, and read and read it again withconstantly mounting emotion.

  "WORMLEY's HOTEL, Washington, April 7, 188-.

  "DEAR MISS ANDERSON,--I have been acting on your parting advice to lookout for that Mr. Lafflin of mine, and I have discovered that he is anunmitigated scamp. Consequently there is nothing more to keep me inWashington, and I should now like your advice about coming to FortressMonroe. Do you find it malarial? On the boat your aunt asked me to come,but you said nothing about it, and I was left to suppose that you didnot think it would agree with me. Do you still think so? or what do youthink? I know you think it was uncalled for and in extremely bad tastefor me to tell you what I did the other day; and I have thought so too.There is only one thing that could justify it--that is, I think it mightjustify it--if you thought so. But I do not feel sure that you wouldlike to know it, or, if you knew it, would like it. I've been ratherslow coming to the conclusion myself, and perhaps it's only thebeginning of the end; and not the conclusion--if there is such adifference. But the question now is whether I may come and tell you whatI think it is--justify myself, or make things worse than they are now.I don't know that they can be worse, but I think I should like to try. Ithink your presence would inspire me.

  "Washington is a wilderness since Miss--Van Hook left. It is not ahowling wilderness simply because it has not enough left in it to howl;but it has all the other merits of a wilderness.

  "Yours sincerely,

  "D. F. MAVERING."

  After a second perusal of this note, Miss Anderson recurred to the otherletter which she had neglected for it, and read it with eyes from whichthe tears slowly fell upon it. Then she sat a long time at her tablewith both letters before her, and did not move, except to take herhandkerchief out of her pocket and dry her eyes, from which the tearsbegan at once to drip again. At last she started forward, and caught penand paper toward her, biting her lip and frowning as if to keep herselffirm, and she said to the central figure in the photograph case whichstood at the back of the table, "I will, I will! You are a man, anyway."

  She sat down, and by a series of impulses she wrote a letter, with whichshe gave herself no pause till she put it in the clerk's hands, to whomshe ran downstairs with it, kicking her skirt into wild whirls as sheran, and catching her foot in it and stumbling.

  "Will it go--go to-night?" she demanded tragically.

  "Just in time," said the clerk, without looking up, and apparently notthinking that her tone betrayed any unusual amount of emotion in a ladyposting a letter; he was used to intensity on such occasions.

  The letter ran--

  "DEAR MR. MAVERING,--We shall now be here so short a time that I do notthink it advisable for you to come.

  "Your letter was rather enigmatical, and I do not know whether Iunderstood it ex
actly. I suppose you told me what you did for goodreasons of your own, and I did not think much about it. I believe thequestion of taste did not come up in my mind.

  "My aunt joins me in kindest regards.

  "Yours very sincerely,

  "JULIA V. H. ANDERSON.

  "P.S.--I think that I ought to return your letter. I know that you wouldnot object to my keeping it, but it does not seem right. I wish toask your congratulations. I have been engaged for several years toLieutenant Willing, of the Army. He has been transferred from his postin Montana to Fort Hamilton at New York, and we are to be married inJune."

  The next morning Mrs. Brinkley came up from breakfast in a sort ofduplex excitement, which she tried to impart to her husband; he stoodwith his back toward the door, bending forward to the glass for a moreaccurate view of his face, from which he had scraped half the lather inshaving.

  She had two cards in her hand: "Miss Van Hook and Miss Anderson havegone. They went this morning. I found their P. P. C.'s by my plate."

  Mr. Brinkley made an inarticulate noise for comment, and assumed thecontemptuous sneer which some men find convenient for shaving the lowerlip.

  "And guess who's come, of all people in the world?"

  "I don't know," said Brinkley, seizing his chance to speak.

  "The Pasmers!--Alice and her mother! Isn't it awful?"

  Mr. Brinkley had entered upon a very difficult spot at the corner ofhis left jaw. He finished it before he said, "I don't see anything awfulabout it, so long as Pasmer hasn't come too."

  "But Dan Mavering! He's in Washington, and he may come down here anyday. Just think how shocking that would be!"

  "Isn't that rather a theory?" asked Mr. Brinkley, finding suchopportunities for conversation as he could. "I dare say Mrs. Pasmerwould be very glad to see him."

  "I've no doubt she would," said Mrs. Brinkley. "But it's the worstthing that could happen--for him. And I feel like writing him not tocome--telegraphing him."

  "You know how the man made a fortune in Chicago," said her husband,drying his razor tenderly on a towel before beginning to strop it. "Iadvise you to let the whole thing alone. It doesn't concern us in anyway whatever."

  "Then," said Mrs. Brinkley, "there ought to be a committee to take it inhand and warn him."

  "I dare say you could make one up among the ladies. But don't be thefirst to move in the matter."

  "I really believe," said his wife, with her mind taken off the point bythe attractiveness of a surmise which had just occurred to her, "thatMrs. Pasmer would be capable of following him down if she knew he was inWashington."

  "Yes, if she know. But she probably doesn't."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Brinkley disappointedly. "I think the sudden departureof the Van Hooks must have had something to do with Dan Mavering."

  "Seems a very influential young man," said her husband. "He attracts andrepels people right and left. Did you speak to the Pasmers?"

  "No; you'd better, when you go down. They've just come into thedining-room. The girl looks like death."

  "Well, I'll talk to her about Mavering. That'll cheer her up."

  Mrs. Brinkley looked at him for an instant as if she really thought himcapable of it. Then she joined him in his laugh.

  Mrs. Brinkley had theorised Alice Pasmer as simply and primitivelyselfish, like the rest of the Pasmers in whom the family traitsprevailed.

  When Mavering stopped coming to her house after his engagement shejustly suspected that it was because Alice had forbidden him, and shehad rejoiced at the broken engagement as an escape for Dan; she hadfrankly said so, and she had received him back into full favour at thefirst moment in Washington. She liked Miss Anderson, and she had hoped,with the interest which women feel in every such affair, that herflirtation with him might become serious. But now this had apparentlynot happened. Julia Anderson was gone with mystifying precipitation,and Alice Pasmer had come with an unexpectedness which had the aspect offatality.

  Mrs. Brinkley felt bound, of course, since there was no open enmitybetween them, to meet the Pasmers on the neutral ground of the Hygeiawith conventional amiability. She was really touched by the absentwanness of the girls look, and by the later-coming recognition whichshaped her mouth into a pathetic snide. Alice did not look like deathquite, as Mrs. Brinkley had told her husband, with the necessity her sexhas for putting its superlatives before its positives; but she was paleand thin, and she moved with a languid step when they all met at nightafter Mrs. Brinkley had kept out of the Pasmers' way during the day.

  "She has been ill all the latter part of the winter," said Mrs. Pasmerto Mrs. Brinkley that night in the corner of the spreading hotelparlours, where they found themselves. Mrs. Pasmer did not look wellherself; she spoke with her eyes fixed anxiously on the door Alice hadjust passed out of. "She is going to bed, but I know I shall find herawake whenever I go."

  "Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Brinkley, "this soft, heavy sea air will puther to sleep." She tried to speak drily and indifferently, but she couldnot; she was, in fact, very much interested by the situation, and shewas touched, in spite of her distaste for them both, by the evidentunhappiness of mother and daughter. She knew what it came from, andshe said to herself that they deserved it; but this did not altogetherfortify her against their pathos. "I can hardly keep awake myself," sheadded gruffly.

  "I hope it may help her," said Mrs. Pasmer; "the doctor strongly urgedour coming."

  "Mr. Pasmer isn't with you," said Mrs. Brinkley, feeling that it wasdecent to say something about him.

  "No; he was detained." Mrs. Pasmer did not explain the cause of hisdetention, and the two ladies slowly waved their fans a moment insilence. "Are there many Boston People in the house?" Mrs. Pasmer asked.

  "It's full of them," cried Mrs. Brinkley.

  "I had scarcely noticed," sighed Mrs. Pasmer; and Mrs. Brinkley knewthat this was not true. "Alice takes up all my thoughts," she added; andthis might be true enough. She leaned a little forward and asked, in alow, entreating voice over her fan, "Mrs. Brinkley, have you seen Mr.Mavering lately?"

  Mrs. Brinkley considered this a little too bold, a little too brazen.Had they actually come South in pursuit of him? It was shameless, andshe let Mrs. Pasmer know something of her feeling in the shortnesswith which she answered, "I saw him in Washington the other day--for amoment." She shortened the time she had spent in Dan's company so as tocut Mrs. Pasmer off from as much comfort as possible, and she stared ather in open astonishment.

  Mrs. Pasmer dropped her eyes and fingered the edge of her fan with asubmissiveness that seemed to Mrs. Brinkley the perfection of duplicity;she wanted to shake her. "I knew," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, "that you hadalways been such a friend of his."

  It is the last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felther moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if therewas really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh."Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere withMiss Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory of her singleinstant with Dan, but she felt that in such a cause, in the cause ofgiving pain to a woman like Mrs. Pasmer, the deflection from exact truthwas justifiable. She hurried on: "I rather expected he might rundown here, but now that they're gone, I don't suppose he'll come. Youremember Miss Anderson's aunt, Miss Van Hook?"

  "Oh yes," said Mrs. Pasmer.

  "She was here with her."

  "Miss Van Hook was such a New York type--of a certain kind," said Mrs.Pasmer. She rose, with a smile at once so conventional, so heroic, andso pitiful that Mrs. Brinkley felt the remorse of a generous victor.

  She went to her room, hardening her heart, and she burst in with a floodof voluble exasperation that threatened all the neighbouring rooms withoverflow.

  "Well," she cried, "they have shown their hands completely. They havecome here to hound Dan Mavering down, and get him into their toilsagain. Why, the woman actually said as much! But I fancy I have givenher a fit of insomnia that will enable her to share her daughter
'svigils. Really such impudence I never heard of!"

  "Do you want everybody in the corridor to hear of it?" asked Brinkley,from behind a newspaper.

  "I know one thing," continued Mrs. Brinkley, dropping her voice a coupleof octaves. "They will never get him here if I can help it. He won'tcome, anyway, now Miss Anderson is gone; but I'll make assurance doublysure by writing him not to come; I'll tell him they've gone; and than weare going too."

  "You had better remember the man in Chicago," said her husband.

  "Well, this is my business--or I'll make it my business!" cried Mrs.Brinkley. She went on talking rapidly, rising with great excitement inher voice at times, and then remembering to speak lower; and her husbandapparently read on through most of her talk, though now and then he madesome comment that seemed of almost inspired aptness.

  "The way they both made up to me was disgusting. But I know the girl isjust a tool in her mother's hands. Her mother seemed actually passivein comparison. For skilful wheedling I could fall down and worship thatwoman; I really admire her. As long as the girl was with us she keptherself in the background and put the girl at me. It was simply amasterpiece."

  "How do you know she put her at you?" asked Brinkley.

  "How? By the way she seemed not to do it! And because from what I knowof that stupid Pasmer pride it would be perfectly impossible for any onewho was a Pasmer to take her deprecatory manner toward me of herself.You ought to have seen it! It was simply perfect."

  "Perhaps," said Brinkley, with a remote dreaminess, "she was trulysorry."

  "Truly stuff! No, indeed; she hates me as much as ever--more!"

  "Well, then, may be she's doing it because she hates you--doing it forher soul's good--sort of penance, sort of atonement to Mavering."

  Mrs. Brinkley turned round from her dressing-table to see what herhusband meant, but the newspaper hid him. We all know that our ownnatures are mixed and contradictory, but we each attribute to others alogical consistency which we never find in any one out of the novels.Alice Pasmer was cold and reticent, and Mrs. Brinkley, who had livedhalf a century in a world full of paradoxes, could not imagine hersubject to gusts of passionate frankness; she knew the girl to beproud and distant, and she could not conceive of an abject humilityand longing for sympathy in her heart. If Alice felt, when she saw Mrs.Brinkley, that she had a providential opportunity to punish herselffor her injustice to Dan, the fact could not be established upon Mrs.Brinkley's theory of her. If the ascetic impulse is the most purelyselfish impulse in human nature, Mrs. Brinkley might not have beenmistaken in suspecting her of an ignoble motive, though it might havehad for the girl the last sublimity of self-sacrifice. The woman whodisliked her and pitied her knew that she had no arts, and rather thanadopt so simple a theory of her behaviour as her husband had advancedshe held all the more strenuously to her own theory that Alice waspractising her mother's arts. This was inevitable, partly from the senseof Mrs. Pasmer's artfulness which everybody had, and partly from theallegiance which we pay--and women especially like to pay--to thetradition of the playwrights and the novelists, that social results ofall kinds are the work of deep, and more or less darkling, design on thepart of other women--such other women as Mrs. Pasmer.

  Mrs. Brinkley continued to talk, but the god spoke no more from behindthe newspaper; and afterward Mrs. Brinkley lay a long time awake;hardening her heart. But she was haunted to the verge of her dreams bythat girl's sick look, by her languid walk, and by the effect which shehad seen her own words take upon Mrs. Pasmer--an effect so admirablydisowned, so perfectly obvious. Before she could get to sleep she wasobliged to make a compromise with her heart, in pursuance of which, whenshe found Mrs. Pasmer at breakfast alone in the morning, she went up toher, and said, holding her hand a moment, "I hope your daughter sleptwell last night."

  "No," said Mrs. Pasmer, slipping her hand away, "I can't say that shedid." There was probably no resentment expressed in the way she withdrewher hand, but the other thought there was.

  "I wish I could do something for her," she cried.

  "Oh, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "It's very good of you." And Mrs.Brinkley fancied she smiled rather bitterly.

  Mrs. Brinkley went out upon the seaward verandah of the hotel with thisbitterness of Mrs. Pasmer's smile in her thoughts; and it disposed herto feel more keenly the quality of Miss Pasmer's smile. She found thegirl standing there at a remote point of that long stretch of planking,and looking out over the water; she held with both hands across herbreast the soft chuddah shawl which the wind caught and fluttered awayfrom her waist. She was alone, said as Mrs. Brinkley's compunctionsgoaded her nearer, she fancied that the saw Alice master a primarydislike in her face, and put on a look of pathetic propitiation. She didnot come forward to meet Mrs. Brinkley, who liked better her waiting tobe approached; but she smiled gratefully when Mrs. Brinkley put out herhand, and she took it with a very cold one.

  "You must find it chilly here," said the elder woman.

  "I had better be out in the air all I could, the doctor said," answeredAlice.

  "Well, then, come with me round the corner; there's a sort of recessthere, and you won't be blown to pierces," said Mrs. Brinkley, withauthority. They sat down together in the recess, and she added: "I usedto sit here with Miss Van Hook; she could hear better in the noise thewaves made. I hope it isn't too much for you."

  "Oh no," said Alice. "Mamma said you told her they were here." Mrs.Brinkley reassured herself from this; Miss Van Hook's name had ratherslipped out; but of course Mrs. Pasmer had not repeated what she hadsaid about Dan in this connection. "I wish I could have seen Julia,"Alice went on. "It would have been quite like Campobello again."

  "Oh, quite," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a short breath, and not knowingwhither this tended. Alice did not leave her in doubt.

  "I should like to have seen her, and begged her for the way I treatedher the last part of the time there. I feel as if I could make my wholelife a reparation," she added passionately.

  Mrs. Brinkley believed that this was the mere frenzy of sentimentality,the exaltation of a selfish asceticism; but at the break in the girl'svoice and the aversion of her face she could not help a thrillof motherly tenderness for her. She wanted to tell her she was anunconscious humbug, bent now as always on her own advantage, and reallyindifferent to others she also wanted to comfort her, and tell her thatshe exaggerated, and was not to blame. She did neither, but when Aliceturned her face back she seemed encouraged by Mrs. Brinkley's look togo on: "I didn't appreciate her then; she was very generous andhigh-minded--too high-minded for me to understand, even. But we don'tseem to know how good others are till we wrong them."

  "Yes, that is very true," said Mrs. Brinkley. She knew that Alice wasobviously referring to the breach between herself and Miss Andersonfollowing the night of the Trevor theatricals, and the dislike forher that she had shown with a frankness some of the ladies had thoughtbrutal. Mrs. Brinkley also believed that her words had a tacit meaning,and she would have liked to have the hardness to say she had seen anunnamed victim of Alice doing his best to console the other she hadspecified. But she merely said drily, "Yes, perhaps that's the reasonwhy we're allowed to injure people."

  "It must be," said Alice simply. "Did Miss Anderson ever speak of me?"

  "No; I can't remember that she ever did." Mrs. Brinkley did not feelbound to say that she and Miss Van Hook had discussed her at large, andagreed perfectly about her.

  "I should like to see her; I should like to write to her."

  Mrs. Brinkley felt that she ought not to suffer this intimate tendencyin the talk:

  "You must find a great many other acquaintances in the hotel, MissPasmer."

  "Some of the Frankland girds are here, and the two Bellinghams. I havehardly spoken to them yet. Do you think that where you have even beenin the right, if you have been harsh, if you have been hasty, if youhaven't made allowances, you ought to offer some atonement?"

  "Really, I can't say," said Mrs. Brinkley, with a smile of
distaste."I'm afraid your question isn't quite in my line of thinking; it's morein Miss Cotton's way. You'd better ask her some time."

  "No," said Alice sadly; "she would flatter me."

  "Ah! I always supposed she was very conscientious."

  "She's conscientious, but she likes me too well."

  "Oh!" commented Mrs. Brinkley to herself, "then you know I don't likeyou, and you'll use me in one way, if you can't in another. Verywell!" But she found the girl's trust touching somehow, though thesentimentality of her appeal seemed as tawdry as ever.

  "I knew you would be just," added Alice wistfully.

  "Oh, I don't know about atonements!" said Mrs. Brinkley, with an effectof carelessness. "It seems to me that we usually make them for our ownsake."

  "I have thought of that," said Alice, with a look of expectation.

  "And we usually astonish other people when we offer them."

  "Either they don't like it, or else they don't feel so much injured aswe had supposed."

  "Oh, but there's no question--"

  "If Miss Anderson--"

  "Miss Anderson? Oh--oh yes!"

  "If Miss Anderson for example," pursued Mrs. Brinkley, "felt aggrievedwith you. But really I've no right to enter into your affairs, MissPasmer."

  "Oh Yes, yes!--do! I asked you to," the girl implored.

  "I doubt if it will help matters for her to know that you regretanything; and if she shouldn't happen to have thought that you wereunjust to her, it would make her uncomfortable for nothing."

  "Do you think so?" asked the girl, with a disappointment that betrayeditself in her voice and eyes.

  "I never feel I myself competent to advise," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I cancriticise--anybody can--and I do, pretty freely; but advice is a moreserious matter. Each of us must act from herself--from what she thinksis right."

  "Yes, I see. Thank you so much, Mrs. Brinkley."

  "After all, we have a right to do ourselves good, even when we pretendthat it's good to others, if we don't do them any harm."

  "Yes, I see." Alice looked away, and then seemed about to speak again;but one of Mrs. Brinkley's acquaintance came up, and the girl rose witha frightened air and went away.

  "Alice's talk with you this morning did her so much good!" said Mrs.Pasmer, later. "She has always felt so badly about Miss Anderson!"

  Mrs. Brinkley saw that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning oftheir talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration ofwhich she saw that Mrs. Pasmer was gratefully aware.

  She grew more tolerant of both the Pasmers as the danger of greaterintimacy from them, which seemed to threaten at first seemed to passaway. She had not responded to their advances, but there was no reasonwhy she should not be civil to them; there had never been any openquarrel with them. She often found herself in talk with them, and wasamused to note that she was the only Bostonian whom they did not keepaloof from.

  It could not be said that she came to like either of them better. Shestill suspected Mrs. Pasmer of design, though she developed none beyondmanoeuvring Alice out of the way of people whom she wished to avoid; andshe still found the girl, as she always thought her, as egotist, whosebest impulses toward others had a final aim in herself. She thought hervery crude in her ideas--cruder than she had seemed at Campobello, whereshe had perhaps been softened by her affinition with the gentler andkindlier nature of Dan Mavering. Mrs. Brinkley was never tired of sayingthat he had made the most fortunate escape in the world, and thoughBrinkley owned he was tired of hearing it, she continued to say it witha great variety of speculation. She recognised that in most girls ofAlice's age many traits are in solution, waiting their precipitationinto character by the chemical contact which time and chances mustbring, and that it was not fair to judge her by the present ferment ofhereditary tendencies; but she rejoiced all the same that it was not DanMavering's character which was to give fixity to hers. The more she sawof the girl the more she was convinced that two such people could onlymake each other unhappy; from day to day, almost from hour to hour, sheresolved to write to Mavering and tell him not to come.

  She was sure that the Pasmers wished to have the affair on again, andpart of her fascination with a girl whom she neither liked nor approvedwas her belief that Alice's health had broken under the strain of herregrets and her despair. She did not get better from the change ofair; she grew more listless and languid, and more dependent upon Mrs.Brinkley's chary sympathy. The older woman asked herself again and againwhat made the girl cling to her? Was she going to ask her finally tointercede with Dan? or was it really a despairing atonement to him,the most disagreeable sacrifice she could offer, as Mr. Brinkley hadstupidly suggested? She believed that Alice's selfishness and morbidsentiment were equal to either.

  Brinkley generally took the girl's part against his wife, and in a heavyjocose way tried to cheer her up. He did little things for her; fetchedand carried chairs and cushions and rugs, and gave his attentions theair of pleasantries. One of his offices was to get the ladies' lettersfor them in the evening, and one night he came in beaming with a letterfor each of them where they sat together in the parlour. He distributedthem into their laps.

  "Hello! I've made a mistake," he said, putting down his head to takeback the letter he had dropped in Miss Pasmer's lap. "I've given you mywife's letter."

  The girl glanced at it, gave a moaning kind of cry, and fell beak in herchair, hiding her face in her hands.

  Mrs. Brinkley, possessed herself of the other letter, and, though pastthe age when ladies wish to kill their husbands for their stupidity,she gave Brinkley a look of massacre which mystified even more thanit murdered his innocence. He had to learn later from his wife's moreelicit fury what the women had all known instantly.

  He showed his usefulness in gathering Alice up and getting her to hermother's room.

  "Oh, Mrs. Brinkley," implored Mrs. Pasmer, following her to the door,"is Mr. Mavering coming here?"

  "I don't know--I can't say--I haven't read the letter yet."

  "Oh, do let me know when you've read it, won't you? I don't know what weshall do."

  Mrs. Brinkley read the letter in her own room. "You go down," she saidto her husband, with unabated ferocity; "and telegraph Dan Mavering atWormley's not to came. Say we're going away at once."

  Then she sent Mrs. Pasmer a slip of paper on which she had written, "Notcoming."

  It has been the experience of every one to have some alien concern comeinto his life and torment him with more anxiety than any affair of hisown. This is, perhaps, a hint from the infinite sympathy which feelsfor us all that none of us can hope to free himself from the troubles ofothers, that we are each bound to each by ties which, for the most part,we cannot perceive, but which, at the moment their stress comes, wecannot break.

  Mrs. Brinkley lay awake and raged impotently against her complicity withthe unhappiness of that distasteful girl and her more than distastefulmother. In her revolt against it she renounced the interest she hadfelt in that silly boy, and his ridiculous love business, so reallyunimportant to her whatever turn it took. She asked herself what itmattered to her whether those children marred their lives one way oranother way. There was a lurid moment before she slept when she wishedBrinkley to go down and recall her telegram; but he refused to be a foolat so much inconvenience to himself.

  Mrs. Brinkley came to breakfast feeling so much more haggard than shefound either of the Pasmers looking, that she was able to throw offher lingering remorse for having told Mavering not to come. She had theadvantage also of doubt as to her precise motive in having done so; shehad either done so because she had judged it best for him not to seeMiss Pasmer again, or else she had done so to relieve the girl from thepain of an encounter which her mother evidently dreaded for her. If onemotive seemed at moments outrageously meddling and presumptuous, theother was so nobly good and kind that it more than counterbalanced it inMrs. Brinkley's mind, who knew very well in spite of her doubt that shehad, acted from a mixture of both. With this
conviction, it was botha comfort and a pang to find by the register of the hotel, which shefurtively consulted, that Dan had not arrived by the morning boat, asshe groundlessly feared and hoped he might have done.

  In any case, however, and at the end of all the ends, she had that girlon her hands more than ever; and believing as she did that Dan and Alicehad only to meet in order to be reconciled, she felt that the girl whomshe had balked of her prey was her innocent victim. What right had sheto interfere? Was he not her natural prey? If he liked being a prey,who was lawfully to forbid him? He was not perfect; he would know how totake care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves.She looked at the girl's thin cheeks and lack-lustre eyes, and pitiedand hated her with that strange mixture of feeling which our victimsaspire in us.

  She walked out on the verandah with the Pasmers after breakfast, andchatted a while about indifferent things; and Alice made an effort toignore the event of the night before with a pathos which wrung Mrs.Brinkley's heart, and with a gay resolution which ought to have been agreat pleasure to such a veteran dissembler as her mother. She said shehad never found the air so delicious; she really believed it would beginto do her good now; but it was a little fresh just there, and with hereyes she invited her mother to come with her round the corner into thatsheltered recess, and invited Mrs. Brinkley not to come.

  It was that effect of resentment which is lighter even than a touch, thewaft of the arrow's feather; but it could wound a guilty heart, and Mrs.Brinkley sat down where she was, realising with a pang that the timewhen she might have been everything to this unhappy girl had just passedfor ever, and henceforth she could be nothing. She remained musingsadly upon the contradictions she had felt in the girl's character, theconfusion of good and evil, the potentialities of misery and harm, thepotentialities of bliss and good; and she felt less and less satisfiedwith herself. She had really presumed to interfere with Fate; perhapsshe had interfered with Providence. She would have given anything torecall her act; and then with a flash she realised that it was quitepossible to recall it. She could telegraph Mavering to come; and sherose, humbly and gratefully, as if from an answered prayer, to go and doso.

  She was not at all a young woman, and many things had come and gonein her life that ought to have fortified her against surprise; but shewanted to scream like a little frightened girl as Dan Mavering steppedout of the parlour door toward her. The habit of not screaming, however,prevailed, and she made a tolerably successful effort to treat him withdecent composure. She gave him a rigid hand. "Where in the world did youcome from? Did you get my telegram?"

  "No. Did you get my letter?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I took a notion to come right on after I wrote, and I started onthe same train with it. But they said it was no use trying to get intothe Hygeia, and I stopped last night at the little hotel in Hampton.I've just walked over, and Mr. Brinkley told me you were out heresomewhere. That's the whole story, I believe." He gave his nervouslaugh, but it seemed to Mrs. Brinkley that it had not much joy in it.

  "Hush!" she said involuntarily, receding to her chair and sinking backinto it again. He looked surprised. "You know the Van Hooks are gone?"

  He laughed harshly. "I should think they were dead from your manner,Mrs. Brinkley. But I didn't come to see the Van Hooks. What made youthink I did?"

  He gave her a look which she found so dishonest, so really insincere,that she resolved to abandon him to Providence as soon as she could."Oh, I didn't know but there had been some little understanding atWashington."

  "Perhaps on their part. They were people who seemed to take a goodmany things for granted, but they could hardly expect to control otherpeople's movements."

  He looked sharply at Mrs. Brinkley, as if to question how much she knew;but she had now measured him, and she said, "Oh! then the visit's tome?"

  "Entirely," cried Dan. The old sweetness came into his laughing eyesagain, and went to Mrs. Brinkley's heart. She wished him to be happy,somehow; she would have done anything for him; she wished she knew whatto do. Ought she to tell him the Pasmers were there? Ought she to makeup some excuse and get him away before he met them? She felt herselfgetting more and more bewildered and helpless. Those women might comeround that corner any moment and then she know the first sight ofAlice's face would do or undo everything with Dan. Did she wish themreconciled? Did she wish them for ever parted? She no longer knew whatshe wished; she only knew that she had no right to wish anything. Shecontinued to talk on with Dan, who grew more and more at ease, and didmost of the talking, while Mrs. Brinkley's whole being narrowed itselfto the question. Would the Pasmers come back that way, or would they goround the further corner, and get into the hotel by another door?

  The suspense seemed interminable; they must have already gone that otherway. Suddenly she heard the pushing back of chairs in that recess. Shecould not bear it. She jumped to her feet.

  "Just wait a moment, Mr. Mavering! I'll join you again. Mr. Brinkley isexpecting--I must--"

  *****

  One morning of the following June Mrs. Brinkley sat well forward in thebeautiful church where Dan and Alice were to be married. The lovely daybecame a still lovelier day within, enriched by the dyes of the stainedwindows through which it streamed; the still place was dim yet brightwith it; the figures painted on the walls had a soft distinctness;a body of light seemed to irradiate from the depths of the dome likelamp-light.

  There was a subdued murmur of voices among the people in the pews: theywere in a sacred edifice without being exactly at church, and they mighttalk; now and then a muffled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scentof flowers from the masses in the chancel mixed with the light and theprevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery asthe ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of theyoung ushers and compressed themselves into place in the pews.

  Two or three people whom she did not know were put into the pew withMrs. Brinkley, but she kept her seat next the aisle; presently an usherbrought up a lady who sat down beside her, and then for a moment or twoseemed to sink and rise, as if on the springs of an intense excitement.

  It was Miss Cotton, who, while this process of quiescing lasted,appeared not to know Mrs. Brinkley. When she became aware of her, allwas lost again. "Mrs. Brinkley!" she cried, as well as one can cry inwhisper. "Is it possible?"

  "I have my doubts," Mrs. Brinkley whispered back. "But we'll suppose thecase."

  "Oh, it's all too good to be true! How I envy you being the means ofbringing them together, Mrs. Brinkley!"

  "Means?"

  "Yes--they owe it all to you; you needn't try to deny it; he's toldevery one!"

  "I was sure she hadn't," said Mrs. Brinkley, remembering how Alice hadmarked an increasing ignorance of any part she might have had in theaffair from the first moment of her reconciliation with Dan; she had theeffect of feeling that she had sacrificed enough to Mrs. Brinkley; andMrs. Brinkley had been restored to all the original strength of herconviction that she was a solemn little unconscious egotist, and Dan wasas unselfish and good as he was unequal to her exactions.

  "Oh no?" said Miss Cotton. "She couldn't!" implying that Alice would betoo delicate to speak of it.

  "Do you see any of his family here?" asked Mrs. Brinkley.

  "Yes; over there--up front." Miss Cotton motioned, with her eyes towarda pew in which Mrs. Brinkley distinguished an elderly gentleman'sdown-misted bald head and the back of a young lady's bonnet. "His fatherand sister; the other's a bridemaid; mother bed-ridden and couldn'tcome."

  "They might have brought her in an-arm-chair," suggested Mrs. Brinkleyironically, "on such an occasion. But perhaps they don't take muchinterest in such a patched-up affair."

  "Oh yes, they do!" exclaimed Miss Cotton. "They idolise Alice."

  "And Mrs. Pasmer and Mister, too?"

  "I don't suppose that so much matters."

  "They know how to acquiesce, I've no doubt."

  "Oh yes! You've
heard? The young people are going abroad first with herfamily for a year, and then they come back to live with his--where theWorks are."

  "Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Brinkley.

  "Why, Mrs. Brinkley, do you still feel that way?" asked Miss Cotton,with a certain distress. "It seems to me that if ever two young peoplehad the promise of happiness, they have. Just see what their love hasdone for them already!"

  "And you still think that in these cases love can do everything?"

  Miss Cotton was about to reply, when she observed that the people abouther had stopped talking. The bridegroom, with his best man, in whom hisfew acquaintances there recognised Boardman with some surprise, cameover the chancel from one side.

  Miss Cotton bent close to Mrs. Brinkley and whispered rapidly: "Alicefound out Mr. Mavering wished it, and insisted on his having him. It wasa great concession, but she's perfectly magnanimous. Poor fellow! how hedoes look!"

  Alice, on her father's arm, with her bridemaids, of whom the first wasMinnie Mavering, mounted the chancel steps, where Mr. Pasmer remainedstanding till he advanced to give away the bride. He behaved with greatdignity, but seemed deeply affected; the ladies in the front pews saidthey could see his face twitch; but he never looked handsomer.

  The five clergymen came from the back of the chancel in their whitesurplices. The ceremony proceeded to the end.

  The young couple drove at once to the station, where they were to takethe train for New York, and wait there a day or two for Mrs. and Mr.Pasmer before they all sailed.

  As they drove along, Alice held Dan's wrist in the cold clutch of hertrembling little ungloved hand, on which her wedding ring shone. "Odearest! let us be good!" she said. "I will try my best. I will try notto be exacting and unreasonable, and I know I can. I won't even make anyconditions, if you will always be frank and open with me, and tell meeverything."

  He leaned over and kissed her behind the drawn curtains. "I will, Alice!I will indeed! I won't keep anything from you after this."

  He resolved to tell her all about Julia Anderson at the right moment,when Alice was in the mood, and as soon as he thoroughly understood whathe had really meant himself.

  If he had been different she would not have asked him to be frank andopen; if she had been different, he might have been frank and open. Thiswas the beginning of their married life.