Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Do you forbid it, really? Won’t you let me even think it?”

  “No, not even think it.”

  “How lovely you are! Oh! I like to be commanded by you.”

  “Do you? You’ll have lots of fun, then. I’m an awfully commanding spirit.”

  “I didn’t suppose you were so humorous — always. I’m afraid you won’t like me. I’ve no sense of fun.”

  “And I’m a little too funny sometimes, I’m afraid.”

  “No, you never are. When?”

  “That night at the Trevors’. You didn’t like it.”

  “I thought Miss Anderson was rather ridiculous,” said Alice. “I don’t like buffoonery in women.”

  “Nor I in men,” said Mavering, smiling. “I’ve dropped it.”

  “Well, now we must part. I must go home at once,” said Alice. “It’s perfectly insane.”

  “Oh no, not yet; not till we’ve said something else; not till we’ve changed the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  “Miss Anderson.”

  Alice laughed and blushed, but she was not vexed. She liked to have him understand her. “Well, now,” she said, as if that were the next thing, “I’m going to cross here at once and walk up the other pavement, and you must go back through the Garden; or else I shall never get away from you.”

  “May I look over at you?”

  “You may glance, but you needn’t expect me to return your glance.”

  “Oh no.”

  “And I want you to take the very first Cambridge car that comes along. I command you to.”

  “I thought you wanted me to do the commanding.”

  “So I do — in essentials. If you command me not to cry when I get home, I won’t.”

  She looked at him with an ecstasy of self-sacrifice in her eyes.

  “Ah, I sha’n’t do that. I can’t tell what would open. But — Alice!”

  “Well, what?” She drifted closely to him, and looked fondly up into his face. In walking they had insensibly drawn nearer together, and she had been obliged constantly to put space between them. Now, standing at the corner of Arlington Street, and looking tentatively across Beacon, she abandoned all precautions.

  “What! I forget. Oh yes! I love you!”

  “But you said that before, dearest!”

  “Yes; but just now it struck me as a very novel idea. What if your mother shouldn’t like the idea?”

  “Nonsense! you know she perfectly idolises you. She did from the first. And doesn’t she know how I’ve begin behaving about you ever since I — lost you?”

  “How have you behaved? Do tell me, Alice?”

  “Some time; not now,” she said; and with something that was like a gasp, and threatened to be a sob, she suddenly whipped across the road. He walked back to Charles Street by the Garden path, keeping abreast of her, and not losing sight of her for a moment, except when the bulk of a string team watering at the trough beside the pavement intervened. He hurried by, and when he had passed it he found himself exactly abreast of her again. Her face was turned toward him; they exchanged a smile, lost in space. At the corner of Charles Street he deliberately crossed over to her.

  “O dearest love! why did you come?” she implored.

  “Because you signed to me.”

  “I hoped you wouldn’t see it. If we’re both to be so weak as this, what are we going to do?”

  “But I’m glad you came. Yes: I was frightened. They must have overheard us there when we were talking.”

  “Well, I didn’t say anything I’m ashamed of. Besides, I shouldn’t care much for the opinion of those nurses and babies.”

  “Of course not. But people must have seen us. Don’t stand here talking, Dan! Do come on!” She hurried him across the street, and walked him swiftly up the incline of Beacon Street. There, in her new fall suit, with him, glossy-hatted, faultlessly gloved, at a fit distance from her side, she felt more in keeping with the social frame of things than in the Garden path, which was really only a shade better than the Beacon Street Mall of the Common. “Do you suppose anybody saw us that knew us?”

  “I hope so! Don’t you want people to know it?”

  “Yes, of course. They will have to know it — in the right way. Can you believe that it’s only half a year since we met? It won’t be a year till Class Day.”

  “I don’t believe it, Alice. I can’t recollect anything before I knew you.”

  “Well, now, as time is so confused, we must try to live for eternity. We must try to help each other to be good. Oh, when I think what a happy girl I am, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful person under the sun not to be good. Let’s try to make our lives perfect — perfect! They can be. And we mustn’t live for each other alone. We must try to do good as well as be good. We must be kind and forbearing with every one.”

  He answered, with tender seriousness, “My life’s in your hands, Alice. It shall be whatever you wish.”

  They were both silent in their deep belief of this. When they spoke again, she began gaily: “I shall never get over the wonder of it. How strange that we should meet at the Museum!” They had both said this already, but that did not matter; they had said nearly everything two or three times. “How did you happen to be there?” she asked, and the question was so novel that she added, “I haven’t asked you before.”

  He stopped, with a look of dismay that broke up in a hopeless laugh. “Why, I went there to meet some people — some ladies. And when I saw you I forgot all about them.”

  Alice laughed to; this was a part of their joy, their triumph.

  “Who are they?” she asked indifferently, and only to heighten the absurdity by realising the persons.

  “You don’t know them,” he said. “Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, of Portland. I promised to meet them there and go out to Cambridge with them.”

  “What will they think?” asked Alice. “It’s too amusing.”

  “They’ll think I didn’t come,” said Mavering, with the easy conscience of youth and love; and again they laughed at the ridiculous position together. “I remember now I was to be at the door, and they were to take me up in their carriage. I wonder how long they waited? You put everything else out of my head.”

  “Do you think I’ll keep it out?” she asked archly.

  “Oh yes; there is nothing else but you now.”

  The eyes that she dropped, after a glance at him, glistened with tears.

  A lump came into his throat. “Do you suppose,” he asked huskily, “that we can ever misunderstand each other again?”

  “Never. I see everything clearly now. We shall trust each other implicitly, and at the least thing that isn’t clear we can speak. Promise me that you’ll speak.”

  “I will, Alice. But after this all will be clear. We shall deal with each other as we do with ourselves.”

  “Yes; that will be the way.”

  “And we mustn’t wait for question from each other. We shall know — we shall feel — when there’s any misgiving, and then the one that’s caused it will speak.”

  “Yes,” she sighed emphatically. “How perfectly you say it? But that’s because you feel it, because you are good.”

  They walked on, treading the air in a transport of fondness for each other. Suddenly he stopped.

  “Miss Pasmer, I feel it my duty to warn you that you’re letting me go home with you.”

  “Am I? How noble of you to tell me, Dan; for I know you don’t want to tell. Well, I might as well. But I sha’n’t let you come in. You won’t try, will you? Promise me you won’t try.”

  “I shall only want to come in the first door.”

  “What for?”

  “What for? Oh, for half a second.”

  She turned away her face.

  He went on. “This engagement has been such a very public affair, so far, that I think I’d like to see my fiancee alone for a moment.”

  “I don’t know what in the world you can have to say more.”
>
  He went into the first door with her, and then he went with her upstairs to the door of Mrs. Pasmer’s apartment. The passages of the Cavendish were not well lighted; the little lane or alley that led down to this door from the stairs landing was very dim.

  “So dark here!” murmured Alice, in a low voice, somewhat tremulous.

  “But not too dark.”

  XXV.

  She burst into the room where her mother sat looking over some housekeeping accounts. His kiss and his name were upon her lips; her soul was full of him.

  “Mamma!” she panted.

  Her mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of the vital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing the first autumn month’s provision bill with that of the last spring month, and trying to account for the difference.

  The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother’s hands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemed suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl’s rapture burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a storm of tears.

  “Alice!” cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to rescue women from the terror of any sudden shock. “What is the matter with you? — what do you mean?” She dropped both of the provision bills to the floor, and started toward her daughter.

  “Nothing — nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room.” She tried to reach the door beyond her mother.

  “Indeed you shall not!” cried Mrs. Pasmer. “I will not have you behaving so! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half out of my senses.”

  The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa, with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother began to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mother she knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was, must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them. She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and dropped a light shawl over the girl’s shoulders, so that she should not take cold.

  Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering somewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him. During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling in regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter’s ordeal in an affair of the heart which she has favoured.

  The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting off the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found it hard to utter it.

  “What is it, Alice? — what is it?” urged her mother.

  “Nothing. I — Mr. Mavering — we met — I met him at the Museum, and — we’re engaged! It’s really so. It seems like raving, but it’s true. He came with me to the door; I wouldn’t let him come in. Don’t you believe it? Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma? You know I couldn’t have lived without him.”

  She trembled on the verge of another outbreak.

  Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, and returned quietly: “Glad, Alice! You know that I think he’s the sweetest and best fellow in the world.”

  “O mamma!”

  “But are you sure—”

  “Yes, Yes. I’m not crazy; it isn’t a dream he was there — and I met him — I couldn’t run away — I put out my hand; I couldn’t help it — I thought I should give way; and he took it; and then — then we were engaged. I don’t know what we said: I went in to look at the ‘Joan of Arc’ again, and there was no one else there. He seemed to feel just as I did. I don’t know whether either of us spoke. But we, knew we were engaged, and we began to talk.”

  Mrs. Pasmer began to laugh. To her irreverent soul only the droll side of the statement appeared.

  “Don’t, mamma!” pleaded Alice piteously.

  “No, no; I won’t. But I hope Dan Mavering will be a little more definite about it when I’m allowed to see him. Why couldn’t he have come in with you?”

  “It would have killed me. I couldn’t let him see me cry, and I knew I should break down.”

  “He’ll have to see you cry a great many times, Alice,” said her mother, with almost unexampled seriousness.

  “Yes, but not yet — not so soon. He must think I’m very gloomy, and I want to be always bright and cheerful with him. He knows why I wouldn’t let him come in; he knew I was going to have a cry.”

  Mrs. Pasmer continued to laugh.

  “Don’t, mamma!” pleaded Alice.

  “No, I won’t,” replied her mother, as before. “I suppose he was mystified. But now, if it’s really settled between you, he’ll be coming here soon to see your papa and me.”

  “Yes — to-night.”

  “Well, it’s very sudden,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “Though I suppose these things always seem so.”

  “Is it too sudden?” asked Alice, with misgiving. “It seemed so to me when it was going on, but I couldn’t stop it.”

  Her mother laughed at her simplicity. “No, when it begins once, nothing can stop it. But you’ve really known each other a good while, and for the last six weeks at least you’ve known you own mind about him pretty clearly. It’s a pity you couldn’t have known it before.”

  “Yes, that’s what he says. He says it was such a waste of time. Oh, everything he says is perfectly fascinating!”

  Her mother laughed and laughed again.

  “What is it, mamma? Are you laughing at me?”

  “Oh no. What an idea!”

  “He couldn’t seem to understand why I didn’t say Yes the first time, if I meant it.” She looked down dreamily at her hands in her lap, and then she said, with a blush and a start, “They’re very queer, don’t you think?”

  “Who?”

  “Young men.”

  “Oh, very.”

  “Yes,” Alice went on musingly. “Their minds are so different. Everything they say and do is so unexpected, and yet it seems to be just right.”

  Mrs. Pasmer asked herself if this single-mindedness was to go on for ever, but she had not the heart to treat it with her natural levity. Probably it was what charmed Mavering with the child. Mrs. Pasmer had the firm belief that Mavering was not single-minded, and she respected him for it. She would not spoil her daughter’s perfect trust and hope by any of the cynical suggestions of her own dark wisdom, but entered into her mood, as such women are able to do, and flattered out of her every detail of the morning’s history. This was a feat which Mrs. Pasmer enjoyed for its own sake, and it fully satisfied the curiosity which she naturally felt to know all. She did not comment upon many of the particulars; she opened her eyes a little at the notion of her daughter sitting for two or three hours and talking with a young man in the galleries of the Museum, and she asked if anybody they knew had come in. When she heard that there were only strangers, and very few of them, she said nothing; and she had the same consolation in regard to the walking back and forth in the Garden. She was so full of potential escapades herself, so apt to let herself go at times, that the fact of Alice’s innocent self-forgetfulness rather satisfied a need of her mother’s nature; she exulted in it when she learned that there were only nurses and children in the Garden.

  “And so you think you won’t take up art this winter?” she said, when, in the process of her cross-examination, Alice had left the sofa and got as far as the door, with her hat in her hand and her sacque on her arm.

  “No.”

  “And the Sisters of St. James — you won’t join them either?”

  The girl escaped from the room.

  “Alice! Alice!” her mother called after her; she
came back. “You haven’t told me how he happened to be there.”

  “Oh, that was the most amusing part of it. He had gone there to keep an appointment with two ladies from Portland. They were to take him up in their carriage and drive out to Cambridge, and when he saw me he forgot all about them.”

  “And what became of them?”

  “We don’t know. Isn’t it ridiculous?”

  If it appeared other or more than this to Mrs. Pasmer, she did not say. She merely said, after a moment, “Well, it was certainly devoted, Alice,” and let her go.

  XXVI.

  Mavering came in the evening, rather excessively well dressed, and with a hot face and cold hands. While he waited, nominally alone, in the little drawing room for Mr. Pasmer, Alice flew in upon him for a swift embrace, which prolonged itself till the father’s step was heard outside the door, and then she still had time to vanish by another: the affair was so nicely adjusted that if Mavering had been in his usual mind he might have fancied the connivance of Mrs. Pasmer.

  He did not say what he had meant to say to Alice’s father, but it seemed to serve the purpose, for he emerged presently from the sound of his own voice, unnaturally clamorous, and found Mr. Pasmer saying some very civil things to him about his character and disposition, so far as they had been able to observe it, and their belief and trust in him. There seemed to be something provisional or probational intended, but Dan could not make out what it was, and finally it proved of no practical effect. He merely inferred that the approval of his family was respectfully expected, and he hastened to say, “Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Mr. Pasmer went on with more civilities, and lost himself in dumb conjecture as to whether Mavering’s father had been in the class before him or the class after him in Harvard. He used his black eyebrows a good deal during the interview, and Mavering conceived an awe of him greater than he had felt at Campobello, yet not unmixed with the affection in which the newly accepted lover embraces even the relations of his betrothed. From time to time Mr. Pasmer looked about with the vague glance of a man unused to being so long left to his own guidance; and one of these appeals seemed at last to bring Mrs. Pasmer through the door, to the relief of both the men, for they had improvidently despatched their business, and were getting out of talk. Mr. Pasmer had, in fact, already asked Dan about the weather outside when his wife appeared.