April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XXI.

  Mavering kept up until he took leave of the party of young people whohad come over on the ferry-boat to Eastport for the frolic of seeing himoff. It was a tremendous tour de force to accept their company as ifhe were glad of it, and to respond to all their gay nothings gaily; tomaintain a sunny surface on his turbid misery. They had tried to makeAlice come with them, but her mother pleaded a bad headache for her;and he had to parry a hundred sallies about her, and from his sick hearthumour the popular insinuation that there was an understanding betweenthem, and that they had agreed together she should not come. He had tostand about on the steamboat wharf and listen to amiable innuendoes fornearly an hour before the steamer came in from St. John. The fond adieuxof his friends, their offers to take any message back, lasted during theinterminable fifteen minutes that she lay at her moorings, and then heshowed himself at the stern of the boat, and waved his handkerchief inacknowledgment of the last parting salutations on shore.

  When it was all over, he went down into his state-room, and shut himselfin, and let his misery rollover him. He felt as if there were a flood ofit, and it washed him to and fro, one gall of shame, of self-accusal,of bitterness, from head to foot. But in it all he felt no resentmenttoward Alice, no wish to wreak any smallest part of his suffering uponher. Even while he had hoped for her love, it seemed to him that he hadnot seen her in all that perfection which she now had in irreparableloss. His soul bowed itself fondly over the thought of her; and, stungas he was by that last cruel word of hers, he could not upbraid her.That humility which is love casting out selfishness, the most egotisticof the passions triumphing over itself--Mavering experienced it tothe full. He took all the blame. He could not see that she had everencouraged him to hope for her love, which now appeared a treasureheaven--far beyond his scope; he could only call himself fool, and fool,and fool, and wonder that he could have met her in the remoteness ofthat morning with the belief that but for the follies of last night shemight have answered him differently. He believed now that, whateverhad gone before, she must still have rejected him. She had treated hispresumption very leniently; she had really spared him.

  It went on, over and over. Sometimes it varied a little, as when hethought of how, when she should tell her mother, Mrs. Pasmer must laugh.He pictured them both laughing at him; and then Mr. Pasmer--he hadscarcely passed a dozen words with him-coming in and asking what theywere laughing at, and their saying, and his laughing too.

  At other times he figured them as incensed at his temerity, which mustseem to them greater and greater, as now it seemed to him. He had neverthought meanly of himself, and the world so far had seemed to think wellof him; but because Alice Pasmer was impossible to him, he felt that itwas an unpardonable boldness in him to have dreamed of her. Whatmust they be saying of his having passed from the ground of societycompliments and light flirtation to actually telling Alice that he lovedher?

  He wondered what Mrs. Pasmer had thought of his telling her that he hadcome to Campobello to consider the question whether he should study lawor go into business, and what motive she had supposed he had in tellingher that. He asked himself what motive he had, and tried to pretend thathe had none. He dramatised conversations with Mrs. Pasmer in which helaughed it off.

  He tried to remember all that had passed the day before at the picnic,and whether Alice had done or said anything to encourage him, and hecould not find that she had. All her trust and freedom was because shefelt perfectly safe with him from any such disgusting absurdity ashe had been guilty of. The ride home through the mist, with its sweetintimacy, that parting which had seemed so full of tender intelligence,were parts of the same illusion. There had been nothing of it on herside from the beginning but a kindliness which he had now flung away forever.

  He went back to the beginning, and tried to remember the point where hehad started in this fatal labyrinth of error. She had never misled him,but he had misled himself from the first glimpse of her.

  Whatever was best in his light nature, whatever was generous andself-denying, came out in this humiliation. From the vision of herderision he passed to a picture of her suffering from pity for him, andwrung with a sense of the pain she had given him. He promised himself towrite to her, and beg her not to care for him, because he was not worthyof that. He framed a letter in his mind, in which he posed in some nobleattitudes, and brought tears into his eyes by his magnanimous appealto her not to suffer for the sake of one so unworthy of her seriousthought. He pictured her greatly moved by some of the phrases, and hecomposed for her a reply, which led to another letter from him, and soto a correspondence and a long and tender friendship. In the end hedied suddenly, and then she discovered that she had always loved him.He discovered that he was playing the fool again, and he rose from theberth where he had tumbled himself. The state-room had that smell ofparboiled paint which state-rooms have, and reminded him of the steamerin which he had gone to Europe when a boy, with the family, just afterhis mother's health began to fail.

  He went down on the deck near the ladies' saloon, where the second-classpassengers were gathered listening to the same band of plantationnegroes who had amused him so much on the eastward trip. The passengerswere mostly pock marked Provincials, and many of them were women; theylounged on the barrels of apples neatly piled up, and listened to themusic without smiling. One of the negroes was singing to the banjo, andanother began to do the rheumatic uncle's breakdown. Mavering said tohimself: "I can't stand that. Oh, what a fool I am! Alice, I love you. Omerciful heavens! O infernal jackass! Ow! Gaw!"

  At the bow of the boat he found a gang of Italian labourers returning tothe States after some job in the Provinces. They smoked their pipesand whined their Neapolitan dialect together. It made Mavering thinkof Dante, of the Inferno, to which he passed naturally from hisself-denunciation for having been an infernal jackass. The inscriptionon the gate of hell ran through his mind. He thought he would make hislife--his desolate, broken life--a perpetual exile, like Dante's. At thesame time he ground his teeth, and muttered: "Oh, what a fool I am! Oh,idiot! beast! Oh! oh!" The pipes reminded him to smoke, and he tookout his cigarette case. The Italians looked at him; he gave all thecigarettes among them, without keeping any for himself. He determinedto spend the miserable remnant of his life in going about doing good andbestowing alms.

  He groaned aloud, so that the Italians noticed it, and doubtless spokeof it among themselves. He could not understand their dialect, but hefeigned them saying respectfully compassionate things. Then he gnashedhis teeth again, and cursed his folly. When the bell rang for supper hefound himself very hungry, and ate heavily. After that he went out infront of the cabin, and walked up and down, thinking, and trying notto think. The turmoil in his mind tired him like a prodigious physicalexertion.

  Toward ten o'clock the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescentthat it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bowsand wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves inflashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat cameand hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the waterwas reflected on their faces, and showed them to each other.

  "Well, I never saw anything like this before. Looks like hell; don'tit?" said the officer.

  "Yes," said Mavering. "Is it uncommon?"

  "Well, I should say so. I guess we're going to have a picnic."

  Mavering thought of blueberries, but he did not say anything.

  "I guess it's going to be a regular circus."

  Mavering did not care. He asked incuriously, "How do you find yourcourse in such weather?"

  "Well, we guess where we are, and then give her so many turns of thewheel." The officer laughed, and Mavering laughed too. He was struck bythe hollow note in his laugh; it seemed to him pathetic; he wondered ifhe should now always laugh so, and if people would remark it. He triedanother laugh; it sounded mechanical.

  He went to bed, and was so worn out that he fell asleep and began todream. A face came up o
ut of the sea, and brooded over the waters, as inthat picture of Vedder's which he calls "Memory," but the hair was notblond; it was the colour of those phosphorescent flames, and the eyeswere like it. "Horrible! horrible!" he tried to shriek, but he cried,"Alice, I love you." There was a burglar in the room, and he was runningafter Miss Pasmer. Mavering caught him, and tried to beat him; his fistsfell like bolls of cotton; the burglar drew his breath in with a long,washing sound like water.

  Mavering woke deathly sick, and heard the sweep of the waves. The boatwas pitching frightfully. He struggled out into the saloon, and saw thatit was five o'clock. In five hours more it would be a day since he toldAlice that he loved her; it now seemed very improbable. There were agood many half-dressed people in the saloon, and a woman came runningout of her state-room straight to Mavering. She was in her stockingfeet, and her hair hung down her back.

  "Oh! are we going down?" she implored him. "Have we struck? Oughtn't weto pray--somebody? Shall I wake the children?"

  "Mavering reassured her, and told her there was no danger.

  "Well, then," she said, "I'll go back for my shoes."

  "Yes, better get your shoes."

  The saloon rose round him and sank. He controlled his sickness byplanting a chair in the centre and sitting in it with his eyes shut. Ashe grew more comfortable he reflected how he had calmed that woman, andhe resolved again to spend his life in doing good. "Yes, that's the onlyticket," he said to himself, with involuntary frivolity. He thoughtof what the officer had said, and he helplessly added, "Circusticket--reserved seat." Then he began again, and loaded himself withexecration.

  The boat got into Portland at nine o'clock, and Mavering left her,taking his hand-bag with him, and letting his trunk go on to Boston.

  The officer who received his ticket at the gangplank noticed thedestination on it, and said, "Got enough?"

  "Yes, for one while." Mavering recognised his acquaintance of the nightbefore.

  "Don't like picnics very much."

  "No," said Mavering, with abysmal gloom. "They don't agree with me.Never did." He was aware of trying to make his laugh bitter. The officerdid not notice.

  Mavering was surprised, after the chill of the storm at sea, to find itrather a warm, close morning in Portland. The restaurant to which thehackman took him as the best in town was full of flies; they bit himawake out of the dreary reveries he fell into while waiting for hisbreakfast. In a mirror opposite he saw his face. It did not lookhaggard; it looked very much as it always did. He fancied playing a partthrough life--hiding a broken heart under a smile. "O you incorrigibleass!" he said to himself, and was afraid he had said it to the younglady who brought him his breakfast, and looked haughtily at him fromunder her bang. She was very thin, and wore a black jersey.

  He tried to find out whether he had spoken aloud by addressing herpleasantly. "It's pretty cold this morning."

  "What say?"

  "Pretty cool."

  "Oh yes. But it's pretty clo-ose," she replied, in her Yankeecantillation. She went away and left him to the bacon and eggs he hadordered at random. There was a fly under one of the slices of bacon, andMavering confined himself to the coffee.

  A man came up in a white cap and jacket from a basement in the front ofthe restaurant, where confectionery was sold, and threw down a mass ofmalleable candy on a marble slab, and began to work it. Mavering watchedhim, thinking fuzzily all the time of Alice, and holding long, fatiguingdialogues with the people at the Ty'n-y-Coed, whose several voices heheard.

  He said to himself that it was worse than yesterday. He wondered if itwould go on getting worse every day.

  He saw a man pass the door of the restaurant who looked exactly likeBoardman as he glanced in. The resemblance was explained by the man'scoming back, and proving to be really Boardman.