XVIII.
They were going to have some theatricals at one of the cottages, and thelady at whose house they were to be given made haste to invite all thepicnic party before it dispersed. Mrs. Pasmer accepted with a mentalreservation, meaning to send an excuse later if she chose; and beforeshe decided the point she kept her husband from going after dinner intothe reading-room, where he spent nearly all his time over a paper and acigar, or in sitting absolutely silent and unoccupied, and made him goto their own room with her.
"There is something that I must speak to you about," she said, closingthe door, "and you must decide for yourself whether you wish to let itgo any further."
"What go any further?" asked Mr. Pasmer, sitting down and putting hishand to the pocket that held his cigar-case with the same series ofmotions.
"No, don't smoke," she said, staying his hand impatiently. "I want youto think."
"How can I think if I don't smoke?"
"Very well; smoke, then. Do you want this affair with young Mavering togo any farther?"
"Oh!" said Pasmer, "I thought you had been looking after that." He hadin fact relegated that to the company of the great questions exterior tohis personal comfort which she always decided.
"I have been looking after it, but now the time has come when you must,as a father, take some interest in it."
Pasmer's noble mask of a face, from the point of his full white beard tohis fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressedall the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such anaffair; but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have tointervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" he asked.
"Why, I don't know that he's going to ask you anything. I don't knowwhether he's said anything to Alice yet," said Mrs. Pasmer, with someexasperation.
Her husband was silent, but his silence insinuated a degree of wonderthat she should approach him prematurely on such a point.
"They have been thrown together all day, and there is no use to concealfrom ourselves that they are very much taken with each other?"
"I thought," Pasmer said, "that you said that from the beginning. Didn'tyou want them to be taken with each other?"
"That is what you are to decide."
Pasmer silently refused to assume the responsibility.
"Well?" demanded his wife, after waiting for him to speak.
"Well what?"
"What do you decide?"
"What is the use of deciding a thing when it is all over?"
"It isn't over at all. It can be broken off at any moment."
"Well, break it off, then, if you like."
Mrs. Pasmer resumed the responsibility with a sigh. She felt the burden,the penalty, of power, after having so long enjoyed its sweets, and shewould willingly have abdicated the sovereignty which she had spent herwhole married life in establishing. But there was no one to take it up."No, I shall not break it off," she said resentfully; "I shall let it goon." Then seeing that her husband was not shaken by her threat from hislong-confirmed subjection, she added: "It isn't an ideal affair, but Ithink it will be a very good thing for Alice. He is not what I expected,but he is thoroughly nice, and I should think his family was nice. I'vebeen talking with Mr. Munt about them to-day, and he confirms allthat Etta Saintsbury said. I don't think there can be any doubt of hisintentions in coming here. He isn't a particularly artless young man,but he's been sufficiently frank about Alice since he's been here." Herhusband smoked on. "His father seems to have taken up the business fromthe artistic side, and Mr. Mavering won't be expected to enter intothe commercial part at once. If it wasn't for Alice, I don't believe hewould think of the business for a moment; he would study law. Of courseit's a little embarrassing to have her engaged at once before she's seenanything of society here, but perhaps it's all for the best, after all:the main thing is that she should be satisfied, and I can see thatshe's only too much so. Yes, she's very much taken with him; and I don'twonder. He is charming."
It was not the first time that Mrs. Pasmer had reasoned in this round;but the utterance of her thoughts seemed to throw a new light on them,and she took a courage from them that they did not always impart. Shearrived at the final opinion expressed, with a throb of tenderness forthe young fellow whom she believed eager to take her daughter from her,and now for the first time she experienced a desolation in the prospect,as if it were an accomplished fact. She was morally a bundle offinesses, but at the bottom of her heart her daughter was all the worldto her. She had made the girl her idol, and if, like some other heathen,she had not always used her idol with the greatest deference, if shehad often expected the impossible from it, and made it pay for herdisappointment, still she had never swerved from her worship of it. Shesuddenly asked herself, What if this young fellow, so charming and sogood, should so wholly monopolise her child that she should no longerhave any share in her? What if Alice, who had so long formed her firstcare and chief object in life, should contentedly lose herself in thelove and care of another, and both should ignore her right to her? Sheanswered herself with a pang that this might happen with any one Alicemarried, and that it would be no worse, at the worst, with Dan Maveringthan with another, while her husband remained impartially silent. Alwayskeeping within the lines to which his wife's supremacy had driven him,he felt safe there, and was not to be easily coaxed out of them.
Mrs. Pasmer rose and left him, with his perfect acquiescence, and wentinto her daughter's room. She found Alice there, with a pretty eveningdress laid out on her bed. Mrs. Pasmer was very fond of that dress, andat the thought of Alice in it her spirits rose again.
"Oh, are you going, Alice?"
"Why, yes," answered the girl. "Didn't you accept?"
"Why, yes," Mrs. Pasmer admitted. "But aren't you tired?"
"Oh, not in the least. I feel as fresh as I did this morning. Don't youwant me to go?"
"Oh yes, certainly, I want you to go--if you think you'll enjoy it."
"Enjoy it? Why, why shouldn't I enjoy it, mamma!"
"What are you thinking about? It's going to be the greatest kind offun."
"But do you think you ought to look at everything simply as fun?" askedthe mother, with unwonted didacticism.
"How everything? What are you thinking about, mamma?"
"Oh, nothing! I'm so glad you're going to wear that dress."
"Why, of course! It's my best. But what are you driving at, mamma?"
Mrs. Pasmer was really seeking in her daughter that comfort of adistinct volition which she had failed to find in her husband, and shewished to assure herself of it more and more, that she might share withsome one the responsibility which he had refused any part in.
"Nothing. But I'm glad you wish so much to go." The girl dropped herhands and stared. "You must have enjoyed yourself to-day," she added, asif that were an explanation.
"Of course I enjoyed myself! But what has that to do with my wanting togo to-night?"
"Oh, nothing. But I hope, Alice, that there is one thing you have lookedfully in the face."
"What thing?" faltered the girl, and now showed herself unable toconfront it by dropping her eyes.
"Well, whatever you may have heard or seen, nobody else is in doubtabout it. What do you suppose has brought Mr. Mavering here!"
"I don't know." The denial not only confessed that she did know, but itinformed her mother that all was as yet tacit between the young people.
"Very well, then, I know," said Mrs. Pasmer; "and there is one thingthat you must know before long, Alice."
"What?" she asked faintly.
"Your own mind," said her mother. "I don't ask you what it is, and Ishall wait till you tell me. Of course I shouldn't have let him stayhere if I had objected--"
"O mamma!" murmured the girl, dyed with shame to have the facts soboldly touched, but not, probably, too deeply displeased.
"Yes. And I know that he would never have thought of going into thatbusiness if he had not expected--hoped--"
"Mamma!"
"And you ought to consider--"
"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" implored the girl.
"That's all," said her mother, turning from Alice, who had hidden herface in her hands, to inspect the costume on the bed. She lifted onepiece of it after another, turned it over, looked at it, and laid itdown. "You can never get such a dress in this country."
She went out of the room, as the girl dropped her face in the pillow.An hour later they met equipped for the evening's pleasure. To the keenglance that her mother gave her, the daughter's eyes had the brightnessof eyes that have been weeping, but they were also bright with thatknowledge of her own mind which Mrs. Pasmer had desired for her. Shemet her mother's glance fearlessly, even proudly, and she carried herstylish costume with a splendour to which only occasions could stimulateher. They dramatised a perfect unconsciousness to each other, but Mrs.Pasmer was by no means satisfied with the decision which she had readin her daughter's looks. Somehow it did not relieve her of theresponsibility, and it did not change the nature of the case. It wasgratifying, of course, to see Alice the object of a passion so sincereand so ardent; so far the triumph was complete, and there was reallynothing objectionable in the young man and his circumstances, thoughthere was nothing very distinguished. But the affair was altogetherdifferent from anything that Mrs. Pasmer had imagined. She had supposedand intended that Alice should meet some one in Boston, and go througha course of society before reaching any decisive step. There was to be awhole season in which to look the ground carefully over, and the groundwas to be all within certain well-ascertained and guarded precincts. Butthis that had happened was outside of these precincts, of at least ontheir mere outskirts. Class Day, of course, was all right; and she couldnot say that the summer colony at Campobello was not thoroughly andessentially Boston; and yet she felt that certain influences, certainsanctions, were absent. To tell the truth, she would not have cared forthe feelings of Mavering's family in regard to the matter, except asthey might afterward concern Alice, and the time had not come when shecould recognise their existence in regard to the affair; and yet shecould have wished that even as it was his family could have seen andapproved it from the start. It would have been more regular.
With Alice it was a simpler matter, and of course deeper. For her itwas only a question of himself and herself; no one else existed to thesublime egotism of her love. She did not call it by that name; she didnot permit it to assert itself by any name; it was a mere formless joyin her soul, a trustful and blissful expectance, which she now no morebelieved he could disappoint than that she could die within that hour.All the rebellion that she had sometimes felt at the anomalous attitudeexacted of her sex in regard to such matters was gone. She no longerthought it strange that a girl should be expected to ignore theadmiration of a young man till he explicitly declared it, and shouldthen be fully possessed of all the materials of a decision on the mostmomentous question in life; for she knew that this state of ignorancecould never really exist; she had known from the first moment that hehad thought her beautiful. To-night she was radiant for him. Her eyesshone with the look in which they should meet and give themselves toeach other before they spoke--the look in which they had met already, inwhich they had lived that whole day.
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