Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “And did she rush?” asked Boardman, filling up a pause which Mavering made in wiping his face.

  “How infernally hot you have it in here!” He went to the window and threw it up; and then did not sit down again, but continued to walk back and forth as he talked. “She didn’t seem to know who they were at first, and when I made her understand she hung back, and said, ‘Those showy things?’ and I must say I think she was wrong; they were dressed as quietly as nine-tenths of the people there; only they are rather large, handsome women. I said I thought we ought to go and speak to them, they seemed stranded there; but she didn’t seem to see it; and, when I persisted, she said, ‘Well, you go if you think best; but take me to mamma.’ And I supposed it was all right; and I told Mrs. Pasmer I’d be back in a minute, and then I went off to those women. And after I’d talked with them a while I saw Mrs. Brinkley sitting with old Bromfield Corey in another corner, and I got them across and introduced them; after I’d explained to Mrs. Brinkley who they were; and they began to have a good time, and I — didn’t.”

  “Just so,” said Boardman.

  “I thought I hadn’t been gone any while at all from Alice; but the weather had changed by the time I had got back. Alice was pretty serious, and she was engaged two or three dances deep; and I could see her looking over the fellows’ shoulders, as she went round and round, pretty pale. I hung about till she was free; but then she couldn’t dance with me; she said her head ached, and she made her mother take her home before supper; and I mooned round like my own ghost a while, and then I went home. And as if that wasn’t enough, I could see by the looks of those other women — old Corey forgot Miss Wrayne in the supper-room, and I had to take her back — that I hadn’t made it right with them, even; they were as hard and smooth as glass. I’d ruined myself, and ruined myself for nothing.”

  Mavering flung Boardman’s chair over, and seated himself on its rungs.

  “I went to bed, and waited for the next thing to happen. I found my thunderbolt waiting for me when I woke up. I didn’t know what it was going to be, but when I felt a ring through the envelope of that note I knew what it was. I mind-read that note before I opened it.”

  “Give it to the Society for Psychical Research,” suggested Boardman. “Been to breakfast?”

  “Breakfast!” echoed Mavering. “Well, now, Boardman, what use do you suppose I’ve got for breakfast under the circumstances?”

  “Well, not very much; but your story’s made me pretty hungry. Would you mind turning your back, or going out and sitting on the top step of the stairs’ landing, or something, while I get up and dress?”

  “Oh, I can go, if you want to get rid of me,” said Mavering, with unresentful sadness. “But I hoped you might have something to suggest, Boardy.’

  “Well, I’ve suggested two things, and you don’t like either. Why not go round and ask to see the old lady?”

  “Mrs. Pasmer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I thought of that. But I didn’t like to mention it, for fear you’d sit on it. When would you go?”

  “Well, about as quick as I could get there. It’s early for a call, but it’s a peculiar occasion, and it’ll show your interest in the thing. You can’t very well let it cool on your hands, unless you mean to accept the situation.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Mavering, getting up and standing over Boardman. “Do you think I could accept the situation, as you call it, and live?”

  “You did once,” said Boardman. “You couldn’t, unless you could fix it up with Mrs. Frobisher’s sister.”

  Mavering blushed. “It was a different thing altogether then. I could have broken off then, but I tell you it would kill me now. I’ve got in too deep. My whole life’s set on that girl. You can’t understand, Boardman, because you’ve never been there; but I couldn’t give her up.”

  “All right. Better go and see the old lady without loss of time; or the old man, if you prefer.”

  Mavering sat down on the edge of the bed again. “Look here, Boardman, what do you mean?”

  “By what?”

  “By being so confoundedly heartless. Did you suppose that I wanted to pay those women any attention last night from an interested motive?”

  “Seems to have been Miss Pasmer’s impression.”

  “Well, you’re mistaken. She had no such impression. She would have too much self-respect, too much pride — magnanimity. She would know that after such a girl as she is I couldn’t think of any other woman; the thing is simply impossible.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “Theory? It’s the practice!”

  “Certain exceptions.”

  “There’s no exception in my case. No, sir! I tell you this thing is for all time — for eternity. It makes me or it mars me, once for all. She may listen to me or she may not listen, but as long as she lives there’s no other woman alive for me.”

  “Better go and tell her so. You’re wasting your arguments on me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m convinced already. Because people always marry their first and only loves. Because people never marry twice for love. Because I’ve never seen you hit before, and I know you never could be again. Now go and convince Miss Pasmer. She’ll believe you, because she’ll know that she can never care for any one but you, and you naturally can’t care for anybody but her. It’s a perfectly clear case. All you’ve got to do is to set it before her.”

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t try to work that cynical racket, Boardman,” said Mavering. He rose, but he sighed drearily, and regarded Boardman’s grin with lack-lustre absence. But he went away without saying anything more; and walked mechanically toward the Cavendish. As he rang at the door of Mrs. Pasmer’s apartments he recalled another early visit he had paid there; he thought how joyful and exuberant he was then, and how crushed and desperate now. He was not without youthful satisfaction in the disparity of his different moods; it seemed to stamp him as a man of large and varied experience.

  XXXVIII.

  Mrs. Pasmer was genuinely surprised to see Mavering, and he pursued his advantage — if it was an advantage — by coming directly to the point. He took it for granted that she knew all about the matter, and he threw himself upon her mercy without delay.

  “Mrs. Pasmer, you must help me about this business with Alice,” he broke out at once. “I don’t know what to make of it; but I know I can explain it. Of course,” he added, smiling ruefully, “the two statements don’t hang together; but what I mean is that if I can find out what the trouble is, I can make it all right, because there’s nothing wrong about it; don’t you see?”

  Mrs. Pasmer tried to keep the mystification out of her eye; but she could not even succeed in seeming to do so, which she would have liked almost as well.

  “Don’t you know what I mean?” asked Dan.

  Mrs. Pasmer chanced it. “That Alice was a little out of sorts last night?” she queried leadingly.

  “Yes,” said Mavering fervently. “And about her — her writing to me.”

  “Writing to you?” Mrs. Pasmer was going to ask, when Dan gave her the letter.

  “I don’t know whether I ought to show it, but I must. I must have your help, and I can’t, unless you understand the case.”

  Mrs. Pasmer had begun to read the note. It explained what the girl herself had refused to give any satisfactory reason for — her early retirement from the reception, her mysterious disappearance into her own room on reaching home, and her resolute silence on the way. Mrs. Pasmer had known that there must be some trouble with Dan, and she had suspected that Alice was vexed with him on account of those women; but it was beyond her cheerful imagination that she should go to such lengths in her resentment. She could conceive of her wishing to punish him, to retaliate her suffering on him; but to renounce him for it was another thing; and she did not attribute to her daughter any other motive than she would have felt herself. It was always this way with Mrs. Pasmer: she followed her d
aughter accurately up to a certain point; beyond that she did not believe the girl knew herself what she meant; and perhaps she was not altogether wrong. Girlhood is often a turmoil of wild impulses, ignorant exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really represent no intelligent purpose, and come from disordered nerves, ill-advised reading, and the erroneous perspective of inexperience. Mrs. Pasmer felt this, and she was tempted to break into a laugh over Alice’s heroics; but she preferred to keep a serious countenance, partly because she did not feel the least seriously. She was instantly resolved not to let this letter accomplish anything more than Dan’s temporary abasement, and she would have preferred to shorten this to the briefest moment possible. She liked him, and she was convinced that Alice could never do better, if half so well. She would now have preferred to treat him with familiar confidence, to tell him that she had no idea of Alice’s writing him that nonsensical letter, and he was not to pay the least attention to it; for of course it meant nothing; but another principle of her complex nature came into play, and she silently folded the note and returned it to Dan, trembling before her.

  “Well?” he quavered.

  “Well,” returned Mrs. Pasmer judicially, while she enjoyed his tremor, whose needlessness inwardly amused her— “well, of course, Alice was—”

  “Annoyed, I know. And it was all my fault — or my misfortune. But I assure you, Mrs. Pasmer, that I thought I was doing something that would please her — in the highest and noblest way. Now don’t you know I did?”

  Mrs. Pasmer again wished to laugh, but in the face of Dan’s tragedy she had to forbear. She contented herself with saying: “Of course. But perhaps it wasn’t the best time for pleasing her just in that way.”

  “It was then or never. I can see now — why, I could see all the time — just how it might look; but I supposed Alice wouldn’t care for that, and if I hadn’t tried to make some reparation then to Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, I never could. Don’t you see?”

  “Yes, certainly. But—”

  “And Alice herself told me to go and look after them,” interposed Mavering. He suppressed, a little uncandidly, the fact of her first reluctance.

  “But you know it was the first time you had been out together?”

  “Yes.”

  “And naturally she would wish to have you a good deal to herself, or at least not seeming to run after other people.”

  “Yes, yes; I know that.”

  “And no one ever likes to be taken at their word in a thing like that.”

  “I ought to have thought of that, but I didn’t. I wish I had gone to you first, Mrs. Pasmer. Somehow it seems to me as if I were very young and inexperienced; I didn’t use to feel so. I wish you were always on hand to advise me, Mrs. Pasmer.” Dan hung his head, and his face, usually so gay, was blotted with gloom.

  “Will you take my advice now?” asked Mrs. Pasmer.

  “Indeed I will!” cried the young fellow, lifting his head. “What is it?”

  “See Alice about this.”

  Dan jumped to his feet, and the sunshine broke out over his face again. “Mrs. Pasmer, I promised to take your advice, and I’ll do it. I will see her. But how? Where? Let me have your advice on that point too.”

  They began to laugh together, and Dan was at once inexpressibly happy. Those two light natures thoroughly comprehended each other.

  Mrs. Pasmer had proposed his seeing Alice with due seriousness, but now she had a longing to let herself go; she felt all the pleasure that other people felt in doing Dan Mavering a pleasure, and something more, because he was so perfectly intelligible to her. She let herself go.

  “You might stay to breakfast.”

  “Mrs. Pasmer, I will — I will do that too. I’m awfully hungry, and I put myself in your hands.”

  “Let me see,” said Mrs. Pasmer thoughtfully, “how it can be contrived.”

  “Yes;” said Mavering, ready for a panic. “How? She wouldn’t stand a surprise?”

  “No; I had thought of that.”

  “No behind-a-screen or next-room business?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a light sigh. “Alice is peculiar. I’m afraid she wouldn’t like it.”

  “Isn’t there any little ruse she would like?”

  “I can’t think of any. Perhaps I’d better go and tell her you’re here and wish to see her.”

  “Do you think you’d better?” asked Dan doubtfully. “Perhaps she won’t come.”

  “She will come,” said Mrs. Pasmer confidently.

  She did not say that she thought Alice would be curious to know why he had come, and that she was too just to condemn him unheard.

  But she was right about the main point. Alice came, and Dan could see with his own weary eyes that she had not slept either.

  She stopped just inside the portiere, and waited for him to speak. But he could not, though a smile from his sense of the absurdity of their seriousness hovered about his lips. His first impulse was to rush upon her and catch her in his arms, and perhaps this might have been well, but the moment for it passed, and then it became impossible.

  “Well?” she said at last, lifting her head, and looking at him with impassioned solemnity. “You wished to see me? I hoped you wouldn’t. It would have spared me something. But perhaps I had no right to your forbearance.”

  “Alice, how can you say such things to me?” asked the young fellow, deeply hurt.

  She responded to his tone. “I’m sorry if it wounds you. But I only mean what I say.”

  “You’ve a right to my forbearance, and not only that, but to my — my life; to everything that I am,” cried Dan, in a quiver of tenderness at the sight of her and the sound of her voice. “Alice, why did you write me that letter? — why did you send me back my ring?”

  “Because,” she said, looking him seriously in the face— “because I wished you to be free, to be happy.”

  “Well, you’ve gone the wrong way about it. I can never be free from you; I never can be happy without you.”

  “I did it for your good, then, which ought to be above your happiness. Don’t think I acted hastily. I thought it over all night long. I didn’t sleep—”

  “Neither did I,” interposed Dan.

  “And I saw that I had no claim to you; that you never could be truly happy with me—”

  “I’ll take the chances,” he interrupted. “Alice, you don’t suppose I cared for those women any more than the ground under your feet, do you? I don’t suppose I should ever have given them a second thought if you hadn’t seemed to feel so badly about my neglecting them; and I thought you’d be pleased to have me try to make it up to them if I could.”

  “I know your motive was good — the noblest. Don’t think that I did you injustice, or that I was vexed because you went away with them.”

  “You sent me.”

  “Yes; and now I give you up to them altogether. It was a mistake, a crime, for me to think we could be anything to each other when our love began with a wrong to some one else.”

  “With a wrong to some one else?”

  “You neglected them on Class Day after you saw me.”

  “Why, of course I did. How could I help it?”

  A flush of pleasure came into the girl’s pale face; but she banished it, and continued gravely, “Then at Portland you were with them all day.”

  “You’d given me up — you’d thrown me over, Alice,” he pleaded.

  “I know that; I don’t blame you. But you made them believe that you were very much interested in them.”

  “I don’t know what I did. I was perfectly desperate.”

  “Yes; it was my fault. And then, when they came to meet you at the Museum, I had made you forget them; I’d made you wound them and insult them again. No. I’ve thought it all out, and we never could be happy. Don’t think that I do it from any resentful motive.”

  “Alice? how could I think that? — Of you!”

  “I have tried — prayed — to be purified from that, and I beli
eve that I have been.”

  “You never had a selfish thought.”

  “And I have come to see that you were perfectly right in what you did last night. At first I was wounded.”

  “Oh, did I wound you, Alice?” he grieved.

  “But afterward I could see that you belonged to them, and not me, and — and I give you up to them. Yes, freely, fully.”

  Alice stood there, beautiful, pathetic, austere; and Dan had halted in the spot to which he had advanced, when her eye forbade him to approach nearer. He did not mean to joke, and it was in despair that he cried out: “But which, Alice? There are two of them.”

  “Two?” she repeated vaguely.

  “Yes; Mrs. Frobisher and Miss Wrayne. You can’t give me up to both of them.”

  “Both?” she repeated again. She could not condescend to specify; it would be ridiculous, and as it was, she felt her dignity hopelessly shaken. The tears came into her eyes.

  “Yes. And neither of them wants me — they haven’t got any use for me. Mrs. Frobisher is married already, and Miss Wrayne took the trouble last night to let me feel that, so far as she was concerned, I hadn’t made it all right, and couldn’t. I thought I had rather a cold parting with you, Alice, but it was quite tropical to what you left me to.” A faint smile, mingled with a blush of relenting, stole into her face, and he hurried on. “I don’t suppose I tried very hard to thaw her out. I wasn’t much interested. If you must give me up, you must give me up to some one else, for they don’t want me, and I don’t want them.” Alice’s head dropped lover, and he could come nearer now without her seeming to know it. “But why need you give me up? There’s really no occasion for it, I assure you.”