April Hopes

by William Dean Howells

  XXIII.

  At his father's agency in Boston he found, the next morning, a letterfrom him saying that he expected to be down that day, and asking Dan tomeet him at the Parker House for dinner. The letter intimated the elderMavering's expectation that his son had reached some conclusion in thematter they had talked of before he left for Campobello.

  It gave Dan a shiver of self-disgust and a sick feeling of hopelessness.He was quite willing now to do whatever his father wished, but he didnot see haw he could face him and own his defeat.

  When they met, his father did not seem to notice his despondency, and heasked him nothing about the Pasmers, of course. That would not have beenthe American way. Nothing had been said between the father and son asto the special advantages of Campobello for the decision of the questionpending when they saw each other last; but the son knew that the fatherguessed why he chose that island for the purpose; and now the elder knewthat if the younger had anything to tell him he would tell it, and ifhe had not he would keep it. It was tacitly understood that there was noobjection on the father's part to Miss Pasmer; in fact, there had been aglimmer of humorous intelligence in his eye when the son said he thoughthe should run down to Bar Harbour, and perhaps to Campobello, but he hadsaid nothing to betray his consciousness.

  They met in the reading-room at Parker's, and Dan said, "Hello, father,"and his father answered, "Well, Dan;" and they shyly touched the handsdropped at their sides as they pressed together in the crowd. The fathergave his boy a keen glance, and then took the lead into the dining-room,where he chose a corner table, and they disposed of their hats on thewindow-seat.

  "All well at home?" asked the young fellow, as he took up the bill offare to order the dinner. His father hated that, and always made him doit.

  "Yes, yes; as usual, I believe. Minnie is off for a week at themountains; Eunice is at home."

  "Oh! How would you like some green goose, with apple-sauce,sweet-potatoes, and succotash?"

  "It seems to me that was pretty good, the last time. All right, if youlike it."

  "I don't know that I care for anything much. I'm a little off my feed.No soup," he said, looking up at the waiter bending over him; and thenhe gave the order. "I think you may bring me half a dozen Blue Points,if they're good," he called after him.

  "Didn't Bar Harbour agree with you--or Campobello?" asked Mr. Mavering,taking the opening offered him.

  "No, not very well," said Dan; and he said no more about it, leavinghis father to make his own inferences as to the kind or degree of thedisagreement.

  "Well, have you made up your mind?" asked the father, resting his elbowson either side of his plate, and putting his hands together softly,while he looked across them with a cheery kindness at his boy.

  "Yes, I have," said Dan slowly.

  "Well?"

  "I don't believe I care to go into the law."

  "Sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, that's all right, then. I wished you to choose freely, and Isuppose you've done so."

  "Oh Yes."

  "I think you've chosen wisely, and I'm very glad. It's a weight off mymind. I think you'll be happier in the business than you would in thelaw; I think you'll enjoy it. You needn't look forward to a great dealof Ponkwasset Falls, unless you like."

  "I shouldn't mind going there," said Dan listlessly.

  "It won't be necessary--at first. In fact, it won't be desirable. I wantyou to look up the business at this end a little."

  Dan gave a start. "In Boston?"

  "Yes. It isn't in the shape I want to have it. I propose to open a placeof our own, and to put you in charge." Something in the young man'sface expressed reluctance, and his father asked kindly, "Would that bedistasteful to you?"

  "Oh no. It isn't the thing I object to, but I don't know that I careto be in Boston." He lifted his face and looked his father full in theeyes, but with a gaze that refused to convey anything definite. Then thefather knew that the boy's love affair had gone seriously wrong.

  The waiter came with the dinner, and made an interruption in which theycould be naturally silent. When he had put the dinner before them, andcumbered them with superfluous service, after the fashion of his kind,he withdrew a little way, and left them to resume their talk.

  "Well," said the elder lightly, as if Dan's not caring to be in Bostonhad no particular significance for him, "I don't know that I care tohave you settle down to it immediately. I rather think I'd like to haveyou look about first a little. Go to New York, go to Philadelphia, andsee their processes there. We can't afford to get old-fashioned in ourways. I've always been more interested by the aesthetic side of thebusiness, but you ought to have a taste for the mechanism, from yourgrandfather; your mother has it."

  "Oh yes, sir. I think all that's very interesting," said Dan.

  "Well, go to France, and see how those fellows do it. Go to London, andlook up William Morris."

  "Yes, that would be very nice," admitted the young fellow, beginning tocatch on. "But I didn't suppose--I didn't expect to begin life with apicnic." He entered upon his sentence with a jocular buoyancy, but atthe last word, which he fatally drifted upon, his voice fell. He saidto himself that he was greatly changed; that, he should never be gay andbright again; there would always be this undercurrent of sadness; he hadnoticed the undercurrent yesterday when he was laughing and joking withthose girls at Portland.

  "Oh, I don't want you to buckle down at once," said his father, smiling."If you'd decided upon the law, I should have felt that you'd betternot lose time. But as you're going into the business, I don't mind yourtaking a year off. It won't be lost time if you keep your eyes open.I think you'd better go down into Italy and Spain. Look up the oldtapestries and stamped leathers. You may get some ideas. How would youlike it?"

  "First-rate. I should like it," said Dan, rising on the waft of hisfather's suggestion, but gloomily lapsing again. Still, it was pleasingto picture himself going about through Europe with a broken heart, andhe did not deny himself the consolation of the vision.

  "Well, there's nobody to dislike it," said his father cheerily. He wassure now that Dan had been jilted; otherwise he would have put forthsome objection to a scheme which must interrupt his lovemaking. "There'sno reason why, with our resources, we shouldn't take the lead in thisbusiness."

  He went on to speak more fully of his plans, and Dan listened witha nether reference of it all to Alice, but still with a surfaceintelligence on which nothing was lost.

  "Are you going home with me to-morrow?" asked his father as they rosefrom the table.

  "Well, perhaps not to-morrow. I've got some of my things to put togetherin Cambridge yet, and perhaps I'd better look after them. But I'vea notion I'd better spend the winter at home, and get an idea of themanufacture before I go abroad. I might sail in January; they say it's agood month."

  "Yes, there's sense in that," said his father.

  "And perhaps I won't break up in Cambridge till I've been to New Yorkand Philadelphia. What do you think? It's easier striking them fromhere."

  "I don't know but you're right," said his father easily.

  They had come out of the dining-room, and Dan stopped to get somecigarettes in the office. He looked mechanically at the theatre billsover the cigar case. "I see Irving's at the 'Boston.'"

  "Oh, you don't say!" said his father. "Let's go and see him."

  "If you wish it, sir," said Dan, with pensive acquiescence. All theMaverings were fond of the theatre, and made any mood the occasion orthe pretext of going to the play. If they were sad, they went; if theywere gay, they went. As long as Dan's mother could get out-of-doors sheused to have herself carried to a box in the theatre whenever she was intown; now that she no longer left her room, she had a dominant passionfor hearing about actors and acting; it was almost a work of piety inher husband and children to see them and report to her.

  His father left him the next afternoon, and Dan, who had spent theday with him looking into business for the first time, wit
h a runningaccompaniment of Alice in all the details, remained to uninterruptedmisery. He spent the evening in his room, too wretched even for thetheatre. It is true that he tried to find Boardman, but Boardman wasagain off on some newspaper duty; and after trying at several housesin the hope, which he knew was vain, of finding any one in town yet, heshut himself up with his thoughts. They did not differ from the thoughtsof the night before, and the night before that, but they were calmer,and they portended more distinctly a life of self-abnegation andsolitude from that time forth. He tested his feelings, and found thatit was not hurt vanity that he was suffering from: it was really woundedaffection. He did not resent Alice's cruelty; he wished that she mightbe happy; he could endure to see her happy.

  He wrote a letter to the married one of the two ladies he had spent theday with in Portland, and thanked them for making pass pleasantly a daywhich he would not otherwise have known how to get through. He let asoft, mysterious melancholy pervade his letter; he hinted darkly attrouble and sorrow of which he could not definitely speak. He had thegood sense to tear his letter up when he had finished it, and to senda short, sprightly note instead, saying that if Mrs. Frobisher and hersister came to Boston at the end of the month, as they had spoken ofdoing, they must be sure to let him know. Upon the impulse given him bythis letter he went more cheerfully to bed, and fell instantly asleep.

  During the next three weeks he bent himself faithfully to the schemesof work his father had outlined for him. He visited New York andPhiladelphia, and looked into the business and the processes there;and he returned to Ponkwasset Falls to report and compare his factsintelligently with those which he now examined in his father'smanufactory for the first time. He began to understand how his father,who was a man of intellectual and artistic interests, should be fond ofthe work.

  He spent a good deal of time with his mother, and read to her, and gotupon better terms with her than they usually were. They were very muchalike, and she objected to him that he was too light and frivolous. Hesat with his sisters, and took an interest in their pursuits. He drovethem about with his father's sorrels, and resumed something of the oldrelations with them which the selfish years of his college life hadbroken off. As yet he could not speak of Campobello or of what hadhappened there; and his mother and sisters, whatever they thought, madeno more allusion to it than his father had done.

  They mercifully took it for granted that matters must have gone wrongthere, or else he would speak about them, for there had been some gaybanter among them concerning the objects of his expedition before heleft home. They had heard of the heroine of his Class Day, and they hadtheir doubts of her, such as girls have of their brothers' heroines.They were not inconsolably sorry to have her prove unkind; and theirmother found in the probable event another proof of their father's totalwant of discernment where women were concerned, for the elder Maveringhad come home from Class Day about as much smitten with this mysteriousMiss Pasmer as Dan was. She talked it over indignantly with herdaughters; they were glad of Dan's escape, but they were incensed withthe girl who could let him escape, and they inculpated her in a highdegree of heartless flirtation. They knew how sweet Dan was, and theybelieved him most sincere and good. He had been brilliantly popular incollege, and he was as bright as he could be. What was it she chose notto like in him? They vexed themselves with asking how or in what way shethought herself better. They would not have had her love Dan, but theywere hot against her for not loving him.

  They did not question him, but they tried in every way to find out howmuch he was hurt, and they watched him in every word and look for signsof change to better or worse, with a growing belief that he was not verymuch hurt.

  It could not be said that in three weeks he forgot Alice, or had begunto forget her; but he had begun to reconcile himself to his fate, aspeople do in their bereavements by death. His consciousness habituateditself to the facts as something irretrievable. He no longer framedin his mind situations in which the past was restored. He knew that heshould never love again, but he had moments, and more and more of them,in which he experienced that life had objects besides love. There weretimes when he tingled with all the anguish of the first moment ofhis rejection, when he stopped in whatever he was doing, or stoodstock-still, as a man does when arrested by a physical pang, breathless,waiting. There were other times when he went about steeped in gloom soblack that all the world darkened with it, and some mornings when hewoke he wished that the night had lasted for ever, and felt as if thedaylight had uncovered his misery and his shame to every one. He neverknew when he should have these moods, and he thought he should have themas long as he lived. He thought this would be something rather fine. Hehad still other moods, in which he saw an old man with a grey moustache,like Colonel Newcome, meeting a beautiful white-haired lady; the man hadnever married, and he had not seen this lady for fifty years. He bentover, and kissed her hand.

  "You idiot!" said Mavering to himself. Throughout he kept a goodappetite. In fact, after that first morning in Portland, he had beenhungry three times a day with perfect regularity. He lost the ideaof being sick; he had not even a furred tongue. He fell asleep prettyearly, and he slept through the night without a break. He had to laugha great deal with his mother and sisters, since he could not very wellmope without expecting them to ask why, and he did not wish to saywhy. But there were some laughs which he really enjoyed with the Yankeeforeman of the works, who was a droll, after a common American pattern,and said things that were killingly funny, especially about women, ofwhom his opinions were sarcastic.

  Dan Mavering suffered, but not solidly. His suffering was short, andcrossed with many gleams of respite and even joy. His disappointmentmade him really unhappy, but not wholly so; it was a genuine sorrow,but a sorrow to which he began to resign himself even in the monotonyof Ponkwasset Falls, and which admitted the thought of Mrs. Frobisher'ssister by the time business called him to Boston.