Before the end of the first week after Dan came back to town, that which was likely to happen whenever chance brought him and Alice together had taken place.
It was one of the soft days that fall in late October, when the impending winter seems stayed, and the warm breath of the land draws seaward and over a thousand miles of Indian summer. The bloom came and went in quick pulses over the girl's temples as she sat with her head thrown back in the corner of the car, and from moment to moment she stirred slightly as if some stress of rapture made it hard for her to get her breath; a little gleam of light fell from under her fallen eyelids into the eyes of the young man beside her, who leaned forward slightly and slanted his face upward to meet her glances. They said some words, now and then, indistinguishable to the others; in speaking they smiled slightly. Sometimes her hand wavered across her lap; in both their faces there was something beyond happiness—a transport, a passion, the brief splendour of a supreme moment.
They left the car at the Arlington Street corner of the Public Garden, and followed the winding paths diagonally to the further corner on Charles Street.
“How stupid we were to get into that ridiculous horse-car!” she said. “What in the world possessed us to do it?”
“I can't imagine,” he answered. “What a waste of time it was! If we had walked, we might have been twice as long coming. And now you're going to send me off so soon!”
“I don't send you,” she murmured.
“But you want me to go.”
“Oh no! But you'd better.”
“I can't do anything against your wish.”
“I wish it—for your own good.”
“Ah, do let me go home with you, Alice?”
“Don't ask it, or I must say yes.”
“Part of the way, then?”
“No; not a step! You must take the first car for Cambridge. What time is it now?”
“You can see by the clock on the Providence Depot.”
“But I wish you to go by your watch, now. Look!”
“Alice!” he cried, in pure rapture.
“Look!”
“It's a quarter of one.”
“And we've been three hours together already! Now you must simply fly. If you came home with me I should be sure to let you come in, and if I don't see mamma alone first, I shall die. Can't you understand?”
“No; but I can do the next best thing: I can misunderstand. You want to be rid of me.”
“Shall you be rid of me when we've parted?” she asked, with an inner thrill of earnestness in her gay tone.
“Alice!”
“You know I didn't mean it, Dan.”
“Say it again.”
“What?”
“Dan.”
“Dan, love! Dan, dearest!”
“Will that car of yours never come? I've promised myself not to leave you till it does, and if I stay here any longer I shall go wild. I can't believe it's happened. Say it again!”
“Say what?”
“That—”
“That I love you? That we're engaged?”
“I don't believe it. I can't.” She looked impatiently up the street. “Oh, there comes your car! Run! Stop it!”
“I don't run to stop cars.” He made a sign, which the conductor obeyed, and the car halted at the further crossing.
She seemed to have forgotten it, and made no movement to dismiss him. “Oh, doesn't it seem too good to be standing here talking in this way, and people think it's about the weather, or society?” She set her head a little on one side, and twirled the open parasol on her shoulder.
“Yes, it does. Tell me it's true, love!”
“It's true. How splendid you are!” She said it with an effect for the world outside of saying it was a lovely day.
He retorted, with the same apparent nonchalance, “How beautiful you are! How good! How divine!”
The conductor, seeing himself apparently forgotten, gave his bell a vicious snap, and his car jolted away.
She started nervously. “There! you've lost your car, Dan.”
“Have I?” asked Mavering, without troubling himself to look after it.
She laughed now, with a faint suggestion of unwillingness in her laugh. “What are you going to do?”
“Walk home with you.”
“No, indeed; you know I can't let you.”
“And are you going to leave me here alone on the street corner, to be run over by the first bicycle that comes along?”
“You can sit down in the Garden, and wait for the next car.”
“No; I would rather go back to the Art Museum, and make a fresh start.”
“To the Art Museum?” she murmured, tenderly.
“Yes. Wouldn't you like to see it again?”
“Again? I should like to pass my whole life in it!”
“Well, walk back with me a little way. There's no hurry about the car.”
“Dan!” she said, in a helpless compliance, and they paced very, very slowly along the Beacon Street path in the Garden. “This is ridiculous.”
“Yes, but it's delightful.”
“Yes, that's what I meant. Do you suppose any one ever—ever—”
“Made love there before?”
“How can you say such things? Yes. I always supposed it would be—somewhere else.”
“It was somewhere else—once.”
“Oh, I meant—the second time.”
“Then you did think there was going to be a second time?”
“How do I know? I wished it. Do you like me to say that?”
“I wish you would never say anything else.”
“Yes; there can't be any harm in it now. I thought that if you had ever—liked me, you would still—”
“So did I; but I couldn't believe that you—”
“Oh, I could.”
“Alice!”
“Don't you like my confessing it! You asked me to.”
“Like it!”
“How silly we are!”
“Not half so silly as we've been for the last two months. I think we've just come to our senses. At least I have.”
“Two months!” she sighed. “Has it really been so long as that?”
“Two years! Two centuries! It was back in the Dark Ages when you refused me.”
“Dark Ages! I should think so! But don't say refused. It wasn't refusing, exactly.”
“What was it, then?”
“Oh, I don't know. Don't speak of it now.”
“But, Alice, why did you refuse me?”
“Oh, I don't know. You mustn't ask me now. I'll tell you some time.”
“Well, come to think of it,” said Mavering, laughing it all lightly away, “there's no hurry. Tell me why you accepted me to-day.”
“I—I couldn't help it. When I saw you I wanted to fall at your feet.”
“What an idea! I didn't want to fall at yours. I was awfully mad. I shouldn't have spoken to you if you hadn't stopped me and held out your hand.”
“Really? Did you really hate me, Dan?”
“Well, I haven't exactly doted on you since we last met.”
She did not seem offended at this. “Yes, I suppose so. And I've gone on being fonder and fonder of you every minute since that day. I wanted to call you back when you had got half-way to Eastport.”
“I wouldn't have come. It's bad luck to turn back.”
She laughed at his drolling. “How funny you are! Now I'm of rather a gloomy temperament. Did, you know it?”
“You don't look it.”
“Oh, but I am. Just now I'm rather excited and—happy.”
“So glad!”
“Go on! go on! I like you to make fun of me.”
The benches on either side were filled with nursemaids in charge of baby-carriages, and of young children who were digging in the sand with their little beach shovels, and playing their games back and forth across the walk unrebuked by the indulgent policemen. A number of them had enclosed a square in the middle of the path with four of the benches, which they made believe was a fort. The lovers had to walk round it; and the children, chasing one another, dashed into them headlong, or, backing off from pursuit, bumped up against them. They did not seem to know it, but walked slowly on without noticing: they were not aware of an occasional benchful of rather shabby young fellows who stared hard at the stylish girl and well-dressed young man talking together in such intense low tones, with rapid interchange of radiant glances.
“Oh, as to making fun of you, I was going to say—” Mavering began, and after a pause he broke off with a laugh. “I forget what I was going to say.”
“Try to remember.”
“I can't.”
“How strange that we should have both happened to go to the Museum this morning!” she sighed. Then, “Dan,” she broke in, “do you suppose that heaven is any different from this?”
“I hope not—if I'm to go there.”
“Hush, dear; you mustn't talk so.”
“Why, you provoked me to it.”
“Did I? Did I really? Do you think I tempted you to do it? Then I must be wicked, whether I knew I was doing it or not. Yes.”
The break in her voice made him look more keenly at her, and he saw the tears glimmer in her eyes. “Alice!”
“No; I'm not good enough for you. I always said that.”
“Then don't say it any more. That's the only thing I won't let you say.”
“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.”
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.
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.
Dan did not know whether he ought to kiss her or not, but Mrs. Pasmer did not in the abstract seem like a very kissing kind of person, and he let himself be guided by this impression, in the absence of any fixed principle applying to the case. She made some neat remark concerning the probable settlement of the affair with her husband, and began to laugh and joke about it in a manner that was very welcome to Dan; it did not seem to him that it ought to be treated so solemnly.
But though Mrs. Pasmer laughed and joked; he was aware of her meaning business—business in the nicest sort of a way, but business after all, and he liked her for it. He was glad to be explicit about his hopes and plans, and told what his circumstances were so fully that Mrs. Pasmer, whom his frankness gratified and amused, felt obliged to say that she had not meant to ask so much about his affairs, and he must excuse her if she had seemed to do so. She had her own belief that Mavering would understand, but she did not mind that. She said that, of course, till his own family had been consulted, it must not be considered seriously—that Mr. Pasmer insisted upon that point; and when Dan vehemently asserted the acquiescence of his family beforehand, and urged his father's admiration for Alice in proof, she reminded him that his mother was to be considered, and put Mr. Pasmer's scruples forward as her own reason for obduracy. In her husband's presence she attributed to him, with his silent assent, all sorts of reluctances and delicate compunctions; she gave him the importance which would have been naturally a husband's due in such an affair, and ingratiated herself more and more with the young man. She ignored Mr. Pasmer's withdrawal when it took place, after a certain lapse of time, and as the moment had come for that, she began to let herself go. She especially approved of the idea of going abroad and confessed her disappointment with her present experiment of America, where it appeared there was no leisure class of men sufficiently large to satisfy the social needs of Mr. Pasmer's nature, and she told Dan that he might expect them in Europe before long. Perhaps they might all three meet him there. At this he betrayed so clearly that he now intended his going to Europe merely as a sequel to his marrying Alice, while he affected to fall in with all Mrs. Pasmer said, that she grew fonder than ever of him for his ardour and his futile duplicity. If it had been in Dan's mind to take part in the rite, Mrs. Pasmer was quite ready at this point to embrace him with motherly tenderness. Her tough little heart was really in her throat with sympathy when she made an errand for the photograph of an English vicarage, which they had hired the summer of the year before, and she sent Alice back with it alone.
It seemed so long since they had met that the change in Alice did not strike him as strange or as too rapidly operated. They met with the fervour natural after such a separation, and she did not so much assume as resume possession of him. It was charming to have her do it, to have her act as if they had always been engaged, to have her try to press down the cowlick that started capriciously across his crown, and to straighten his necktie, and then to drop beside him on the sofa; it thrilled and awed him; and he silently worshipped the superior composure which her sex has in such matters. Whatever was the provisional interpretation which her father and mother pretended to put upon the affair, she apparently had no reservations, and they talked of their future as a thing assured. The Dark Ages, as they agreed to call the period of despair for ever closed that morning, had matured their love till now it was a rapture of pure trust. They talked as if nothing could prevent its fulfilment, and they did not even affect to consider the question of his family's liking it or not liking it. She said that she thought his father was delightful, and he told her that his father had taken the greatest fancy to her at the beginning, and knew that Dan was in love with her. She asked him about his mother, and she said just what he could have wished her to say about his mother's sufferings, and the way she bore them. They talked about Alice's going to see her.
“Of course your father will bring your sisters to see me first.”
“Is that the way?” he asked: “You may depend upon his doing the right thing, whatever it is.”
“Well, that's the right thing,” she said. “I've thought it out; and that reminds me of a duty of ours, Dan!”
“A duty?” he repeated, with a note of reluctance for its untimeliness.
“Yes. Can't you think what?”
“No; I didn't know there was a duty left in the world.”
“It's full of them.”
“Oh, don't say that, Alice!” He did not like this mood so well as that of the morning, but his dislike was only a vague discomfort—nothing formulated or distinct.
“Yes,” she persisted; “and we must do them. You must go to those ladies you disappointed so this morning, and apologise—explain.”
Dan laughed. “Why, it wasn't such a very ironclad engagement as all that, Alice. They said they were going to drive out to Cambridge over the Milldam, and I said I was going out there to get some of my traps together, and they could pick me up at the Art Museum if they liked. Besides, how could I explain?”
She laughed consciously with him. “Of course. But,” she added ruefully, “I wish you hadn't disappointed them.”
“Oh, they'll get over it. If I hadn't disappointed them, I shouldn't be here, and I shouldn't like that. Should you?”
“No; but I wish it hadn't happened. It's a blot, and I didn't want a blot on this day.”
“Oh, well, it isn't very much of a blot, and I can easily wipe it off. I'll tell you what, Alice! I can write to Mrs. Frobisher, when our engagement comes out, and tell her how it was. She'll enjoy the joke, and so will Miss Wrayne. They're jolly and easygoing; they won't mind.”
“How long have you known them?”
“I met them on Class Day, and then I saw them—the day after I left Campobello.” Dan laughed a little.
“How, saw them?”
“Well, I went to a yacht race with them. I happened to meet them in the street, and they wanted me to go; and I was all broken up, and—I Went.”
“Oh!” said Alice. “The day after I—you left Campobello?”
“Well—yes.”
“And I was thinking of you all that day as—And I couldn't bear to look at anybody that day, or speak!”
“Well, the fact is, I—I was distracted, and I didn't know what I was doing. I was desperate; I didn't care.”
“How did you find out about the yacht race?”
“Boardman told me. Boardman was there.”
“Did he know the ladies? Did he go too?”
“No. He was there to report the race for the Events. He went on the press boat.”
“Oh!” said Alice. “Was there a large party?”
“No, no. Not very. Just ourselves, in fact. They were awfully kind. And they made me go home to dinner with them.”
“They must have been rather peculiar people,” said Alice. “And I don't see how—so soon—” She could not realise that Mavering was then a rejected man, on whom she had voluntarily renounced all claim. A retroactive resentment which she could not control possessed her with the wish to punish those bold women for being agreeable to one who had since become everything to her, though then he was ostensibly nothing.
In a vague way, Dan felt her displeasure with that passage of his history, but no man could have fully imagined it.
“I couldn't tell half the time what I was saying or eating. I talked at random and ate at random. I guess they thought something was wrong; they asked me who was at Campobello.”
“Indeed!”
“But you may be sure I didn't give myself away. I was awfully broken up,” he concluded inconsequently.
She liked his being broken up, but she did not like the rest. She would not press the question further now. She only said rather gravely, “If it's such a short acquaintance, can you write to them in that familiar way?”
“Oh yes! Mrs. Frobisher is one of that kind.”
Alice was silent a moment before she said, “I think you'd better not write. Let it go,” she sighed.
“Yes, that's what I think,” said Dan. “Better let it go. I guess it will explain itself in the course of time. But I don't want any blots around.” He leaned over and looked her smilingly in the face.
“Oh no,” she murmured; and then suddenly she caught him round the neck, crying and sobbing. “It's only—because I wanted it to be—perfect. Oh, I wonder if I've done right? Perhaps I oughtn't to have taken you, after all; but I do love you—dearly, dearly! And I was so unhappy when I'd lost you. And now I'm afraid I shall be a trial to you—nothing but a trial.”
The first tears that a young man sees a woman shed for love of him are inexpressibly sweeter than her smiles. Dan choked with tender pride and pity. When he found his voice, he raved out with incoherent endearments that she only made him more and more happy by her wish to have the affair perfect, and that he wished her always to be exacting with him, for that would give him a chance to do something for her, and all that he desired, as long as he lived, was to do just what she wished.
At the end of his vows and entreaties, she lifted her face radiantly, and bent a smile upon him as sunny as that with which the sky after a summer storm denies that there has ever been rain in the world.
“Ah! you—” He could say no more. He could not be more enraptured than he was. He could only pass from surprise to surprise, from delight to delight. It was her love of him which wrought these miracles. It was all a miracle, and no part more wonderful than another. That she, who had seemed as distant as a star, and divinely sacred from human touch, should be there in his arms, with her head on his shoulder, where his kiss could reach her lips, not only unforbidden, but eagerly welcome, was impossible, and yet it was true.. But it was no more impossible and no truer, than that a being so poised, so perfectly self-centred as she, should already be so helplessly dependent upon him for her happiness. In the depths of his soul he invoked awful penalties upon himself if ever he should betray her trust, if ever he should grieve that tender heart in the slightest thing, if from that moment he did not make his whole life a sacrifice and an expiation.
He uttered some of these exalted thoughts, and they did not seem to appear crazy to her. She said yes, they must make their separate lives offerings to each other, and their joint lives an offering to God. The tears came into his eyes at these words of hers: they were so beautiful and holy and wise. He agreed that one ought always to go to church, and that now he should never miss a service. He owned that he had been culpable in the past. He drew her closer to him—if that were possible—and sealed his words with a kiss.
But he could not realise his happiness then, or afterward, when he walked the streets under the thinly misted moon of that Indian summer night.
He went down to the Events office when he left Alice, and found Boardman, and told him that he was engaged, and tried to work Boardman up to some sense of the greatness of the fact. Boardman shoved his fine white teeth under his spare moustache, and made acceptable jokes, but he did not ask indiscreet questions, and Dan's statement of the fact did not seem to give it any more verity than it had before. He tried to get Boardman to come and walk with him and talk it over; but Boardman said he had just been detailed to go and work up the case of a Chinaman who had suicided a little earlier in the evening.
“Very well, then; I'll go with you,” said Mavering. “How can you live in such a den as this?” he asked, looking about the little room before Boardman turned down his incandescent electric. “There isn't anything big enough to hold me but all outdoors.”
In the street he linked his arm through his friend's, and said he felt that he had a right to know all about the happy ending of the affair, since he had been told of that miserable phase of it at Portland. But when he came to the facts he found himself unable to give them with the fulness he had promised. He only imparted a succinct statement as to the where and when of the whole matter, leaving the how of it untold.
The sketch was apparently enough for Boardman. For all comment, he reminded Mavering that he had told him at Portland it would come out all right.
“Yes, you did, Boardman; that's a fact,” said Dan; and he conceived a higher respect for the penetration of Boardman than he had before.
They stopped at a door in a poor court which they had somehow reached without Mavering's privity. “Will you come in?” asked Boardman.
“What for?”
“Chinaman.”
“Chinaman?” Then Mavering remembered. “Good heavens! no. What have I got to do with him?”
“Both mortal,” suggested the reporter.
The absurdity of this idea, though a little grisly, struck Dan as a good joke. He hit the companionable Boardman on the shoulder, and then gave him a little hug, and remounted his path of air, and walked off in it.