April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  Produced by David Widger and Pat Castevens

  APRIL HOPES

  1887

  by William Dean Howells

  I.

  From his place on the floor of the Hemenway Gymnasium Mr. Elbridge G.Mavering looked on at the Class Day gaiety with the advantage which hisstature, gave him over most people there. Hundreds of these were prettygirls, in a great variety of charming costumes, such as the eclecticismof modern fashion permits, and all sorts of ingenious compromisesbetween walking dress and ball dress. It struck him that the young menon whose arms they hung, in promenading around the long oval within thecrowd of stationary spectators, were very much younger than studentsused to be, whether they wore the dress-coats of the Seniors or thecut-away of the Juniors and Sophomores; and the young girls themselvesdid not look so old as he remembered them in his day. There was a bandplaying somewhere, and the galleries were well filled with spectatorsseated at their ease, and intent on the party-coloured turmoil of thefloor, where from time to time the younger promenaders broke away fromthe ranks into a waltz, and after some turns drifted back, smiling andcontrolling their quick breath, and resumed their promenade. Theplace was intensely light, in the candour of a summer day which had noreserves; and the brilliancy was not broken by the simple decorations.Ropes of wild laurel twisted up the pine posts of the aisles, and swungin festoons overhead; masses of tropical plants in pots were set alongbetween the posts on one side of the room; and on the other were thelunch tables, where a great many people were standing about, eatingchicken and salmon salads, or strawberries and ice-cream, and drinkingclaret-cup. From the whole rose that blended odour of viands, offlowers, of stuff's, of toilet perfumes, which is the characteristicexpression of, all social festivities, and which exhilarates ordepresses--according as one is new or old to it.

  Elbridge Mavering kept looking at the faces of the young men as if heexpected to see a certain one; then he turned his eyes patiently upon.the faces around him. He had been introduced to a good many persons, buthe had come to that time of life when an introduction; unless chargedwith some special interest, only adds the pain of doubt to the wearisomeencounter of unfamiliar people; and he had unconsciously put on theseverity of a man who finds himself without acquaintance whereothers are meeting friends, when a small man, with a neatly trimmedreddish-grey beard and prominent eyes, stepped in front of him, andsaluted him with the "Hello, Mavering!" of a contemporary.

  His face, after a moment of question, relaxed into joyful recognition."Why, John Munt! is that you?" he said, and he took into his large moistpalm the dry little hand of his friend, while they both broke out intothe incoherencies of people meeting after a long time. Mr. Maveringspoke in it voice soft yet firm, and with a certain thickness of tongue;which gave a boyish charm to his slow, utterance, and Mr. Munt used thesort of bronchial snuffle sometimes cultivated among us as a chest tone.But they were cut short in their intersecting questions and exclamationsby the presence of the lady who detached herself from Mr. Munt's arm asif to leave him the freer for his hand-shaking.

  "Oh!" he said, suddenly recurring to her; "let me introduce you toMrs. Pasmer, Mr. Mavering," and the latter made a bow that creased hiswaistcoat at about the height of Mrs. Pasmer's pretty little nose.

  His waistcoat had the curve which waistcoats often describe at his age;and his heavy shoulders were thrown well back to balance this curve.His coat hung carelessly open; the Panama hat in his hand suggested acertain habitual informality of dress, but his smoothly shaven largehandsome face, with its jaws slowly ruminant upon nothing, intimated theconsequence of a man accustomed to supremacy in a subordinate place.

  Mrs. Pasmer looked up to acknowledge the introduction with a sort ofpseudo-respectfulness which it would be hard otherwise to describe.Whether she divined or not that she was in the presence of a magnate ofsome sort, she was rather superfluously demure in the first two or threethings she said, and was all sympathy and interest in the meeting ofthese old friends. They declared that they had not seen each other fortwenty years, or, at any rate, not since '59. She listened while theydisputed about the exact date, and looked from time to time at Mr. Munt,as if for some explanation of Mr. Mavering; but Munt himself, when shesaw him last, had only just begun to commend himself to society, whichhad since so fully accepted him, and she had so suddenly, the momentbefore, found her self hand in glove with him that she might well haveappealed to a third person for some explanation of Munt. But she was nota woman to be troubled much by this momentary mystification, and shewas not embarrassed at all when Munt said, as if it had all beenpre-arranged, "Well, now, Mrs. Pasmer, if you'll let me leave you withMr. Mavering a moment, I'll go off and bring that unnatural child toyou; no use dragging you round through this crowd longer."

  He made a gesture intended, in the American manner, to be at once politeand jocose, and was gone, leaving Mrs. Pasmer a little surprised, andMr. Mavering in some misgiving, which he tried to overcome pressing hisjaws together two or three times without speaking. She had no troublein getting in the first remark. "Isn't all this charming, Mr. Mavering?"She spoke in a deep low voice, with a caressing manner, and stoodlooking up, at Mr. Mavering with one shoulder shrugged and theother drooped, and a tasteful composition of her fan and hands andhandkerchief at her waist.

  "Yes, ma'am, it is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am toher with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mindfluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressmanfrom a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president?railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?--no, Mr.Munt said Mister," and then to return to her pretty blue eyes, and tocentre there in that pseudo-respectful attention under the arch of herneat brows and her soberly crinkled grey-threaded brown hair and hervery appropriate bonnet. A bonnet, she said, was much more than half thebattle after forty, and it was now quite after forty with Mrs. Pasmer;but she was very well dressed otherwise. Mr. Mavering went on to say,with a deliberation that seemed an element of his unknown dignity,whatever it might be, "A number of the young fellows together can give amuch finer spread, and make more of the day, in a place like this, thanwe used to do in our rooms."

  "Ah, then you're a Harvard man too!" said Mrs. Primer to herself, withsurprise, which she kept to herself, and she said to Mavering: "Oh yes,indeed! It's altogether better. Aren't they nice looking fellows?" shesaid, putting up her glass to look at the promenaders.

  "Yes," Mr. Mavering assented. "I suppose," he added, out of theconsciousness of his own relation to the affair--"I suppose you've a sonsomewhere here?"

  "Oh dear, no!" cried Mrs. Primer, with a mingling, superhuman, butfor her of ironical deprecation and derision. "Only a daughter, Mr.Mavering."

  At this feat of Mrs. Pasmer's, Mr. Mavering looked at her with questionas to her precise intention, and ended by repeating, hopelessly, "Only adaughter?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of the same irony, "only a poor,despised young girl, Mr. Mavering."

  "You speak," said Mr. Mavering, beginning to catch on a little, "as ifit were a misfortune," and his, dignity broke up into a smile that hadits queer fascination.

  "Why, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Pasmer.

  "Well, I shouldn't have thought so."

  "Then you don't believe that all that old-fashioned chivalry anddevotion have gone out? You don't think the young men are all spoilednowadays, and expect the young ladies to offer them attentions?"

  "No," said Mr. Mavering slowly, as if recovering from the shock of thenovel ideas. "Do you?"

  "Oh, I'm such a stranger in Boston--I've lived abroad so long--that Idon't know. One hears all kinds of things. But I'm so glad you're notone of those--pessimists!"

  "Well," said Mr. Mavering, still thoughtfully, "I don't know tha
t I canspeak by the card exactly. I can't say how it is now. I haven't beenat a Class Day spread since my own Class Day; I haven't even been atCommencement more than once or twice. But in my time here we didn'texpect the young ladies to show us attentions; at any rate, we didn'twait for them to do it. We were very glad, to be asked to meet them, andwe thought it an honour if the young ladies would let us talk or dancewith them, or take them to picnics. I don't think that any of them couldcomplain of want of attention."

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, "that's what I preached, that's what Iprophesied, when I brought my daughter home from Europe. I told her thata girl's life in America was one long triumph; but they say now thatgirls have more attention in London even than in Cambridge. One hearssuch dreadful things!"

  "Like what?" asked Mr. Mavering, with the unserious interest which Mrs.Primer made most people feel in her talk.

  "Oh; it's too vast a subject. But they tell you about charming girlsmoping the whole evening through at Boston parties, with no young men totalk with, and sitting from the beginning to the end of an assembly andnot going on the floor once. They say that unless a girl fairly throwsherself at the young men's heads she isn't noticed. It's this terribledisproportion of the sexes that's at the root of it, I suppose; itreverses everything. There aren't enough young men to go half round, andthey know it, and take advantage of it. I suppose it began in the war."

  He laughed, and, "I should think," he said, laying hold of a singleidea out of several which she had presented, "that there would always beenough young men in Cambridge to go round."

  Mrs. Pasmer gave a little cry. "In Cambridge!"

  "Yes; when I was in college our superiority was entirely numerical."

  "But that's all passed long ago, from what I hear," retorted Mrs.Pasmer. "I know very well that it used to be thought a great advantagefor a girl to be brought up in Cambridge, because it gave herindependence and ease of manner to have so many young men attentiveto her. But they say the students all go into Boston now, and if theCambridge girls want to meet them, they have to go there too. Oh, Iassure you that, from what I hear, they've changed all that since ourtime, Mr. Mavering."

  Mrs. Pasmer was certainly letting herself go a little more than shewould have approved of in another. The result was apparent in thejocosity of this heavy Mr. Mavering's reply.

  "Well, then, I'm glad that I was of our time, and not of this wickedgeneration. But I presume that unnatural supremacy of the young men isbrought low, so to speak, after marriage?"

  Mrs. Primer let herself go a little further. "Oh, give us an equalchance," she laughed, "and we can always take care of ourselves, andsomething more. They say," she added, "that the young married women nowhave all the attention that girls could wish."

  "H'm!" said Mr. Mavering, frowning. "I think I should be tempted to boxmy boy's ears if I saw him paying another man's wife attention."

  "What a Roman father!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, greatly amused, and lettingherself go a little further yet. She said to herself that she reallymust find out who this remarkable Mr. Mavering was, and she cast her eyeover the hall for some glimpse of the absent Munt, whose arm she meantto take, and whose ear she meant to fill with questions. But she did notsee him, and something else suggested itself. "He probably wouldn't letyou see him, or if he did, you wouldn't know it."

  "How not know it?"

  Mrs. Primer did not answer. "One hears such dreadful things. What do yousay--or you'll think I'm a terrible gossip--"

  "Oh no;" said Mr. Mavering, impatient for the dreadful thing, whateverit was.

  Mrs. Primer resumed: "--to the young married women meeting last winterjust after a lot of pretty girls had came out, and magnanimouslyresolving to give the Buds a chance in society?"

  "The Buds?"

  "Yes, the Rose-buds--the debutantes; it's an odious little word, buteverybody uses it. Don't you think that's a strange state of thingsfor America? But I can't believe all those things," said Mrs. Pasmer,flinging off the shadow of this lurid social condition. "Isn't this apretty scene?"

  "Yes, it is," Mr. Mavering admitted, withdrawing his mind gradually froma consideration of Mrs. Pasmer's awful instances. "Yes!" he added, infinal self-possession. "The young fellows certainly do things in a greatdeal better style nowadays than we used to."

  "Oh yes, indeed! And all those pretty girls do seem to be having such agood time!"

  "Yes; they don't have the despised and rejected appearance that you'dlike to have one believe."

  "Not in the least!" Mrs. Pasmer readily consented. "They look radiantlyhappy. It shows that you can't trust anything that people say to you."She abandoned the ground she had just been taking without apparent shamefor her inconsistency. "I fancy it's pretty much as it's always been: ifa girl is attractive, the young men find it out."

  "Perhaps," said Mr. Mavering, unbending with dignity, "the young marriedwomen have held another meeting, and resolved to give the Buds one morechance."

  "Oh, there are some pretty mature Roses here," said Mrs. Pasmer,laughing evasively. "But I suppose Class Day can never be taken from theyoung girls."

  "I hope not," said Mr. Mavering. His wandering eye fell upon someyoung men bringing refreshments across the nave toward them, and he wasreminded to ask Mrs. Pasmer, "Will you have something to eat?" He hadhimself had a good deal to eat, before he took up his position at theadvantageous point where John Munt had found him.

  "Why, yes, thank you," said Mrs. Pasmer. "I ought to say, 'An ice,please,' but I'm really hungry, and--"

  "I'll get you some of the salad," said Mr. Mavering, with the increasedliking a man feels for a woman when she owns to an appetite. "Sit downhere," he added, and he caught a vacant chair toward her. When he turnedabout from doing so, he confronted a young gentleman coming up toMrs. Pasmer with a young lady on his arm, and making a very low bow ofrelinquishment.