April Hopes. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her daughter's evident excitement at the young man's having come. Without being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her there. They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after a little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their acquaintance had been making progress in the interval. She took him about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him to Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom, within five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some winning service. She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with deep respect and said “Sir” to. She showed him the bowling alley, and began to play tennis with him.

      Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified as they went on.

      “Alice,” she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the evening, and then she hesitated for the right word.

      “Well; mamma?” said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk up and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a Tam-o'-Shanter cap.

      “Don't—overdo—the honours.”

      “What do you mean, mamma?” asked the girl; dropping her arms before her, and letting the shawl trail on the floor.

      “Don't you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?”

      Her mother laughed. “But every one mayn't know it's gratitude.”

      Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her room without speaking to any one.

      The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed for her succeeded one another during Mavering's stay. He did not need Alice's chaperonage long. By the next morning he seemed to know and to like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which at that moment had no exceptions. In the afternoon he began to organise excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson.

      The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with an authority which every one tacitly admitted, just as every one recognised that Mavering had come to Campobello because she was there. Such a phase is perhaps the prettiest in the history of a love affair. All is yet in solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact. The parties to it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do; they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that. It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American of all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any outside influences.

      The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief, might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it.

      She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year.

      “Oh, I've abandoned Europe altogether for the present,” he said laughing. “And I don't know but I may go back on the law too.”

      “Indeed! Then you are going to be an artist?”

      “Oh no; not so bad as that. It isn't settled yet, and I'm off here to think it over a while before the law school opens in September. My father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in designing wall-papers.”

      “Oh, how very interesting!” At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper maker in it. But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said: it was manufacturing. This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge, though.

      “And we shall actually see a young man,” she said finally, “in the act of deciding his own destiny!”

      He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage. “Yes; only don't give me away. Nobody else knows it.”

      “Oh no, indeed. Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering. Shall you let me know when you've decided? I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too high-minded to ask.”

      It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life, and Mavering said, “You will learn from the expression of my eyes.”

      XIII.

      The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody like him were interested in his differentiation of the attentions he offered every age and sex from those he paid Alice. But while they all agreed that there never was a sweeter fellow, they would have been puzzled to say in just what this difference consisted, and much as they liked him, the ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him till they decided that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which was perfectly fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is, he did nice things for others without asking; but with her there was always an explicit pause, and an implicit prayer and permission, first. Upon this condition they consented to the glamour which he had for her, and which was evident to every one probably but him.

      Once agreeing that no one was good enough for Alice Pasmer, whose qualities they felt that only women could really appreciate, they were interested to see how near Mavering could come to being good enough; and as the drama played itself before their eyes, they pleased themselves in analysing its hero.

      “He is not bashful, certainly,” said one of a little group who sat midway of the piazza while Alice and Mavering walked up and down together. “But don't you think he's modest? There's that difference, you know.”

      The lady addressed waited so long before answering that the young couple came abreast of the group, and then she had to wait till they were out of hearing. “Yes,” she said then, with a tender, sighing thoughtfulness, “I've felt that in him. And really think he is a very loveable nature. The only question would be whether he wasn't too loveable.”

      “Yes,” said the first lady, with the same kind of suspiration, “I know what you mean. And I suppose they ought to be something more alike in disposition.”

      “Or sympathies?” suggested the other.

      “Yes, or sympathies.”

      A third lady laughed a little. “Mr. Mavering has so many sympathies that he ought to be like her in some of them.”

      “Do you mean that he's too sympathetic—that he isn't sincere?” asked the first—a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a little knot of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by the unremitting effort of half a century to do and say exactly the truth, and to find it out.

      Mrs. Brinkley, whom she addressed, was of that obesity which seems often to incline people to sarcasm. “No, I don't think he's insincere. I think he always means what he says and does—Well, do you think a little more concentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose—if she has it?”

      “Yes, I see,” said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixed wistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. “I wonder what the men think of him?”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ