April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XVII.

  The picnic party gathered itself up after the lunch, and while some ofthe men, emulous of Mavering's public spirit, helped some of the ladiesto pack the dishes and baskets away under the wagon seats, others threwa corked bottle into the water, and threw stones at it. A few of theladies joined them, but nobody hit the bottle, which was finally leftbobbing about on the tide.

  Mrs. Brinkley addressed the defeated group, of whom her husband was one,as they came up the beach toward the wagons. "Do you think that displaywas calculated to inspire the lower middle classes with respectfulenvy?"

  Her husband made himself spokesman for the rest: "No; but you can't tellhow they'd have felt if we'd hit it."

  They all now climbed to a higher level, grassy and smooth, on the bluff,from which there was a particular view; and Mavering came, carrying thewraps of Mrs. Pasmer and Alice, with which he associated his overcoat. Abook fell out of one of the pockets when he threw it down.

  Miss Anderson picked the volume up. "Browning! He reads Browning!Superior young man!"

  "Oh, don't say that!" pleaded Mavering.

  "Oh, read something aloud!" cried another of the young ladies.

  "Isn't Browning rather serious for a picnic?" he asked, with a glance atAlice; he still had a doubt of the effect of the rheumatic uncle's danceupon her, and would have been glad to give her some other aestheticimpression of him.

  "Oh no!" said Mrs. Brinkley, "nothing is more appropriate to a picnicthan conundrums; they always have them. Choose a good tough one."

  "I don't know anything tougher than the 'Legend of Pernik'--orlovelier," he said, and he began to read, simply, and with a passionatepleasure in the subtle study, feeling its control over his hearers.

  The gentlemen lay smoking about at their ease; at the end a deepsigh went up from the ladies, cut short by the question which theyimmediately fell into.

  They could not agree, but they said, one after another: "But you readbeautifully, Mr. Mavering!" "Beautifully!" "Yes, indeed!"

  "Well, I'm glad there is one point clear," he said, putting the bookaway, and "I'm afraid you'll think I'm rather sentimental," he added, ina low voice to Alice, "carrying poetry around with me."

  "Oh no!" she replied intensely; "I thank you."

  "I thank you," he retorted, and their eyes met in a deep look.

  One of the outer circle of smokers came up with his watch in his hand,and addressed the company, "Do you know what time it's got to be? It'sfour o'clock."

  They all sprang up with a clamour of surprise.

  Mrs. Pasmer, under cover of the noise, said, in a low tone, to herdaughter, "Alice, I think you'd better keep a little more with me now."

  "Yes," said the girl, in a sympathy with her mother in which she did notalways find herself.

  But when Mavering, whom their tacit treaty concerned, turned towardthem, and put himself in charge of Alice, Mrs. Pasmer found herselfdispossessed by the charm of his confidence, and relinquished her tohim. They were going to walk to the Castle Rocks by the path thatnow loses and now finds itself among the fastnesses of the forest,stretching to the loftiest outlook on the bay. The savage woodland ispenetrated only by this forgetful path, that passes now and then averthe bridge of a ravine, and offers to the eye on either hand the mysterydeepening into wilder and weirder tracts of solitude. The party resolveditself into twos and threes, and these straggled far apart, out ofconversational reach of one another. Mrs. Pasmer found herself walkingand talking with John Munt.

  "Mr. Pasmer hasn't much interest in these excursions," he suggested.

  "No; he never goes," she answered, and, by one of the agile intellectualprocesses natural to women, she arrived at the question, "You and theMaverings are old friends, Mr. Munt?"

  "I can't say about the son, but I'm his father's friend, and I supposethat I'm his friend too. Everybody seems to be so," suggested Munt.

  "Oh Yes," Mrs. Pasmer assented; "he appears to be a universalfavourite."

  "We used to expect great things of Elbridge Mavering in college. We wererather more romantic than the Harvard men are nowadays, and we believedin one another more than they do. Perhaps we idealised one another. But,anyway, our class thought Mavering could do anything. You know about histaste for etchings?"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a sigh of deep appreciation. "What giftedpeople!"

  "I understand that the son inherits all his father's talent."

  "He sketches delightfully."

  "And Mavering wrote. Why, he was our class poet!" cried Munt,remembering the fact with surprise and gratification to himself. "He wasa tremendous satirist."

  "Really? And he seems so amiable now."

  "Oh, it was only on paper."

  "Perhaps he still keeps it up--on wall-paper?" suggested Mrs. Pasmer.

  Munt laughed at the little joke with a good-will that flattered theveteran flatterer. "I should like to ask him that some time. Will youlend it to me?"

  "Yes, if such a sayer of good things will deign to borrow--"

  "Oh, Mrs. Pasmer!" cried Munt, otherwise speechless.

  "And the mother? Do you know Mrs. Mavering?"

  "Mrs. Mavering I've never seen."

  "Oh!" said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried toconsole her.

  "I've never even been at their place. He asked me once a great whileago; but you know how those things are. I've heard that she used to bevery pretty and very gay. They went about a great deal, to Saratoga andCape May and such places--rather out of our beat."

  "And now?"

  "And now she's been an invalid for a great many years. Bedridden, Ibelieve. Paralysis, I think."

  "Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind."

  "Well," said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which thisremark let him understand he had not materially increased, "I think Mrs.Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper--or her money. Mavering waspoor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent."

  "How very interesting! And is that the reason--its being ancestral--thatMr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?"

  "Is he going into it?" asked Munt.

  "He's come up here to think about it."

  "I should suppose it would be a very good thing," said Munt.

  "What a very remarkable forest!" said Mrs. Pasmer, examining it oneither side, and turning quite round. This gave her, from her placein the van of the straggling procession, a glimpse of Alice and DanMavering far in the rear.

  "Don't you know," he was saying to the girl at the same moment, "it'slike some of those Dore illustrations to the Inferno, or the WanderingJew."

  "Oh yes. I was trying to think what it was made me think I had seen itbefore," she answered. "It must be that. But how strange it is!" sheexclaimed, "that sensation of having been there before--in some placebefore where you can't possibly have been."

  "And do you feel it here?" he asked, as vividly interested as ifthey two had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been apsychical consolation to so many young observers.

  "Yes," she cried.

  "I hope I was with you," he said, with a sudden turn of levity, whichdid not displease her, for there seemed to be a tender earnestnesslurking in it. "I couldn't bear to think of your being alone in such ahowling wilderness."

  "Oh, I was with a large picnic," she retorted gaily. "You might havebeen among the rest. I didn't notice."

  "Well, the next time, I wish you'd look closer. I don't like being leftout." They were so far behind the rest that he devoted himself entirelyto her, and they had grown more and more confidential.

  They came to a narrow foot-bridge over a deep gorge. The hand-rail hadfallen away. He sprang forward and gave her his hand for the passage."Who helped you over here?" he demanded. "Don't say I didn't."

  "Perhaps it was you," she murmured, letting him keep the fingers towhich he clung a moment after they had crossed the bridge. Then she tookthem away, and said: "But I can't be sure. There were so many
others."

  "Other fellows?" he demanded, placing himself before her on the narrowpath, so that she could not get by. "Try to remember, Miss Pasmer. Thisis very important. It would break my heart if it was really some oneelse." She stole a glance at his face, but it was smiling, though hisvoice was so earnest. "I want to help you over all the bad places, and Idon't want any one else to have a hand in it."

  The voice and the face still belied each other, and between them thegirl chose to feel herself trifled with by the artistic temperament. "Ifyou'll please step out of the way, Mr. Mavering," she said severely, "Ishall not need anybody's help just here."

  He instantly moved aside, and they were both silent, till she said, asshe quickened her pace to overtake the others in front, "I don't see howyou can help liking nature in such a place as this."

  "I can't--human nature," he said. It was mere folly; and an abstractfolly at that; but the face that she held down and away from him flushedwith sweet consciousness as she laughed.

  On the cliff beetling above the bay, where she sat to look out over thesad northern sea, lit with the fishing sail they had seen before, andthe surge washed into the rocky coves far beneath them, he threw himselfat her feet, and made her alone in the company that came and went andtried this view and that from the different points where the picnichostess insisted they should enjoy it. She left the young couple tothemselves, and Mrs. Pasmer seemed to have forgotten that she had biddenAlice to be a little more with her.

  Alice had forgotten it too. She sat listening to Mavering's talk with acertain fascination, but not so much apparently because the meaning ofthe words pleased her as the sound of his voice, the motion of his lipsin speaking, charmed her. At first he was serious, and even melancholy,as if he were afraid he had offended her; but apparently he soonbelieved that he had been forgiven, and began to burlesque his own mood,but still with a deference and a watchful observance of her changes offeeling which was delicately flattering in its way. Now and then whenshe answered something it was not always to the purpose; he accused herof not hearing what he said, but she would have it that she did, andthen he tried to test her by proofs and questions. It did not matterfor anything that was spoken or done; speech and action of whatever sortwere mere masks of their young joy in each other, so that when he said,after he had quoted some lines befitting the scene they looked out on;"Now was that from Tennyson or from Tupper?" and she answered, "Neither;it was from Shakespeare," they joined, in the same happy laugh, and theylaughed now and then without saying anything. Neither this nor that madethem more glad or less; they were in a trance, vulnerable to nothing butthe summons which must come to leave their dream behind, and issue intothe waking world.

  In hope or in experience such a moment has come to all, and it is sopretty to those who recognise it from the outside that no one has theheart to hurry it away while it can be helped. The affair between Aliceand Mavering had evidently her mother's sanction, and all the rest wereeager to help it on. When the party had started to return, they calledto them, and let them come behind together. At the carriages they hadwhat Miss Anderson called a new deal, and Alice and Mavering foundthemselves together in the rear seat of the last.

  The fog began to come in from the sea, and followed them through thewoods. When they emerged upon the highway it wrapped them densely round,and formed a little world, cosy, intimate, where they two dwelt alonewith these friends of theirs, each of whom they praised for delightfulqualities. The horses beat along through the mist, in which there seemedno progress, and they lived in a blissful arrest of time. Miss Andersoncalled back from the front seat, "My ear buyns; you're talkin' aboutme."

  "Which ear?" cried Mavering.

  "Oh, the left, of couyse."

  "Then it's merely habit, Julie. You ought to have heard the nice thingswe were saying about you," Alice called.

  "I'd like to hear all the nice things you've been saying."

  This seemed the last effect of subtle wit. Mavering broke out in hislaugh, and Alice's laugh rang above it.

  Mrs. Pasmer looked involuntarily round from the carriage ahead.

  "They seem to be having a good time," said Mrs. Brinkley at her side.

  "Yes; I hope Alice isn't overdoing."

  "I'm afraid you're dreadfully tired," said Mavering to the girl, in alow voice, as he lifted her from her place when they reached the hotelthrough the provisional darkness, and found that after all it was onlydinner-time.

  "Oh no. I feel as if the picnic were just beginning."

  "Then you will come to-night?"

  "I will see what mamma says."

  "Shall I ask her?"

  "Oh, perhaps not," said the girl, repressing his ardour, but notseverely.