April Hopes

W >> William Dean Howells >> April Hopes


"Yes," said the mother thoughtfully.

"There! he's laughing with that other student. But don't look!"

Mrs. Pasmer saw well enough out of the corner of her eye the joking that
went on between Mavering and his friend, and it did not displease her to
think that it probably referred to Alice. While the young man came
hurrying back to them she glanced at the girl standing near her with a
keenly critical inspection, from which she was able to exclude all
maternal partiality, and justly decided that she was one of the most
effective girls in the place. That costume of hers was perfect. Mrs.
Pasmer wished now that she could have compared it more carefully with
other costumes; she had noticed some very pretty ones; and a feeling of
vexation that Alice should have prevented this by being away so long just
when the crowd was densest qualified her satisfaction. The people were
going very fast now. The line of the oval in the nave was broken into
groups of lingering talkers, who were conspicuous to each other, and Mrs.
Pasmer felt that she and her daughter were conspicuous to all the rest
where they stood apart, with the two Maverings converging upon them from
different points, the son nodding and laughing to friends of both sexes
as he came, the father wholly absorbed in not spilling the glass of
claret punch which he carried in one hand, and not falling down on the
slippery floor with the plate of salad which he bore in the other. She
had thoughts of feigning unconsciousness; she would have had no scruple
in practising this or any other social stratagem, for though she kept a
conscience in regard to certain matters--what she considered
essentials--she lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her
daughter by precept and example to do the same. You must seem to be
looking one way when you were really looking another; you must say this
when you meant that; you must act as if you were thinking one thing when
you were thinking something quite different; and all to no end, for, as
she constantly said, people always know perfectly well what you were
about, whichever way you looked or whatever you said, or no matter how
well you acted the part of thinking what you did not think. Now, although
she seemed not to look, she saw all that has been described at a glance,
and at another she saw young Mavering slide easily up to his father and
relieve him of the plate and glass, with a laugh as pleasant and a show
of teeth as dazzling as he bestowed upon any of the ladies he had passed.
She owned to her recondite heart that she liked this in young Mavering,
though at the same time she asked herself what motive he really had in
being so polite to his father before people. But she had no time to
decide; she had only time to pack the question hurriedly away for future
consideration, when young Mavering arrived at her elbow, and she turned
with a little "Oh!" of surprise so perfectly acted that it gave her the
greatest pleasure.




IV.

"I don't think my father would have got here alive with these things,"
said young Mavering. "Did you see how I came to his rescue?"

Mrs. Pasmer instantly threw away all pretext of not having seen. "Oh yes!
my heart was in my mouth when you bore down upon him, Mr. Mavering. It
was a beautiful instance of filial devotion."

"Well, do sit down now, Mrs. Pasmer, and take it comfortably," said the
young fellow; and he got her one of the many empty chairs, and would not
give her the things, which he put in another, till she sat down and let
him spread a napkin over her lap.

"Really," she said, "I feel as if I were stopping all the wheels of Class
Day. Am I keeping them from closing the Gymnasium, Mr. Mavering?"

"Not quite," said the young man, with one of his laughs. "I don't believe
they will turn us out, and I'll see that they don't lock us in. Don't
hurry, Mrs. Pasmer. I'm only sorry you hadn't something sooner."

"Oh, your father proposed getting me something a good while ago."

"Did he? Then I wonder you haven't had it. He's usually on time."

"You're both very energetic, I think," said Mrs. Pasmer.

"He's the father of his son," said the young fellow, assuming the merit
with a bow of burlesque modesty.

It went to Mrs. Pasmer's heart. "Let's hope he'll never forget that," she
said, in an enjoyment of the excitement and the salad that was beginning
to leave her question of these Maverings a light, diaphanous cloud on the
verge of the horizon.

The elder Mavering had been trying, without success, to think of
something to say to Miss Pasmer, he had twice cleared his throat for that
purpose. But this comedy between his son and the young lady's mother
seemed so much lighter and brighter than anything he could have said,
that he said nothing, and looked on with his mouth set in its queer
smile, while the girl listened with the gravity of a daughter who sees
that her mother is losing her head. Mrs. Pasmer buzzed on in her badinage
with the young man, and allowed him to go for a cup of coffee before she
rose from her chair, and shook out her skirts with an air of pleasant
expectation of whatever should come next.

He came back without it. "The coffee urn has dried up here, Mrs. Pasmer.
But you can get some at the other spreads; they'd be inconsolable if you
didn't take something everywhere."

They all started toward the door, but the elder Mavering said, holding
back a little, "Dan, I think I'll go and see--"

"Oh no, you mustn't, father," cried the young man, laying his hand with
caressing entreaty on his father's coat sleeve. "I don't want you to go
anywhere till you've seen Professor Saintsbury. We shall be sure to meet
him at some of the spreads. I want you to have that talk with him--" He
corrected himself for the instant's deflection from the interests of his
guest, and added, "I want you to help me hunt him up for Mrs. Pasmer.
Now, Mrs. Pasmer, you're not to think it's the least trouble, or anything
but a boon, much less say it," he cried, turning to the deprecation in
Mrs. Pasmer's face. He turned away from it to acknowledge the smiles and
bows of people going out of the place, and he returned their salutations
with charming heartiness.

In the vestibule they met the friends they were going in search of.




V.

"With Mr. Mavering, of course!" exclaimed Mrs. Saintsbury: "I might have
known it." Mrs. Pasmer would have given anything she could think of to be
able to ask why her friend might have known it; but for the present they
could only fall upon each other with flashes of self-accusal and
explanation, and rejoicing for their deferred and now accomplished
meeting. The Professor stood by with the satirical smile with which men
witness the effusion of women. Young Mavering, after sharing the ladies'
excitement fully with them, rewarded himself by an exclusive moment with
Miss Pasmer.

"You must get Mrs. Pasmer to let me show you all of Class Day that a
Senior can. I didn't know what a perfect serpent's tooth it was to be one
before. Mrs. Saintsbury," he broke off, "have you got tickets for the
Tree? Ah, she doesn't hear me!"

Mrs. Saintsbury was just then saying to the elder Mavering, "I'm so glad
you decided to come today. It would have been a shame if none of you were
here." She made a feint of dropping her voice, with a glance at Dan
Mavering. "He's such a nice boy," which made him laugh, and cry out--

"Oh, now? Don't poison my father's mind, Mrs. Saintsbury."

"Oh, some one would be sure to tell him," retorted the Professor's wife,
"and he'd better hear it from a friend."

The young fellow laughed again, and then he shook hands with some ladies
going out, and asked were they going so soon, from an abstract
hospitality, apparently, for he was not one of the hosts; and so turned
once more to Miss Pasmer. "We must get away from here, or the afternoon
will get away from us, and leave us nothing to show for it. Suppose we
make a start, Miss Pasmer?"

He led the way with her out of the vestibule, banked round with pots of
palm and fern, and down the steps into the glare of the Cambridge
sunshine, blown full, as is the case on Class Day, of fine Cambridge
dust, which had drawn a delicate grey veil over the grass of the
Gymnasium lawn, and mounted in light clouds from the wheels powdering it
finer and finer in the street. Along the sidewalks dusty hacks and
carriages were ranged, and others were driving up to let people dismount
at the entrances to the college yard. Within the temporary picket-fences,
secluding a part of the grounds for the students and their friends, were
seen stretching from dormitory to dormitory long lines of Chinese
lanterns, to be lit after nightfall, swung between the elms. Groups of
ladies came and went, nearly always under the escort of some student; the
caterers' carts, disburdened of their ice-creams and salads, were
withdrawn under the shade in the street, and their drivers lounged or
drowsed upon the seats; now and then a black waiter, brilliant as a
bobolink in his white jacket and apron, appeared on some errand; the
large, mild Cambridge policemen kept the entrances to the yard with a
benevolent vigilance which was not harsh with the little Irish children
coming up from the Marsh in their best to enjoy the sight of other
people's pleasure.

"Isn't it a perfect Class Day?" cried young Mavering, as he crossed
Kirkland Street with Miss Pasmer, and glanced down its vaulted
perspective of elms, through which the sunlight broke, and lay in the
road in pools and washes as far as the eye reached. "Did you ever see
anything bluer than the sky to-day? I feel as if we'd ordered the
weather, with the rest of the things, and I had some credit for it as
host. Do make it a little compliment, Miss Pasmer; I assure you I'll be
very modest about it."

"Ah, I think it's fully up to the occasion," said the girl, catching the
spirit of his amiable satisfaction. "Is it the usual Class Day weather?"

"You spoil everything by asking that," cried the young man; "it obliges
me to make a confession--it's always good weather on Class Day. There
haven't been more than a dozen bad Class Days in the century. But you'll
admit that there can't have been a better Class Day than this?"

"Oh yes; it's certainly the pleasantest Class Day I've seen;" said the
girl; and now when Mavering laughed she laughed too.

"Thank you so much for saying that! I hope it will pass off in unclouded
brilliancy; it will, if I can make it. Why, hallo! They're on the other
side of the street yet, and looking about as if they were lost."

He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and waved it at the others of
their party.

They caught sight of it, and came hurrying over through the dust.

Mrs. Saintsbury said, apparently as the sum of her consultations with
Mrs. Pasmer: "The Tree is to be at half-past five; and after we've seen a
few spreads, I'm going to take the ladies hone for a little rest."

"Oh no; don't do that," pleaded the young man. After making this protest
he seemed not to have anything to say immediately in support of it. He
merely added: "This is Miss Pasmer's first Class Day, and I want her to
see it all."

"But you'll have to leave us very soon to get yourself ready for the
Tree," suggested the Professor's lady, with a motherly prevision.

"I shall want just fifteen minutes for that."

"I know, better, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Saintsbury, with finality. "You
will want a good three-quarters of an hour to make yourself as
disreputable as you'll look at the Tree; and you'll have to take time for
counsel and meditation. You may stay with us just half an hour, and then
we shall part inexorably. I've seen a great many more Class Days than you
have, and I know what they are in their demands upon the Seniors."

"Oh; well! Then we won't think about the time," said the young man,
starting on with Miss Pasmer.

"Well, don't undertake too much," said the lady. She came last in the
little procession, with the elder Mavering, and her husband and Mrs
Pasmer preceded her.

"What?" young Mavering called back, with his smiling face over his
shoulder.

"She says not to bite off more than you can chew," the professor answered
for her.

Mavering broke into a conscious laugh, but full of delight, and with his
handkerchief to his face had almost missed the greeting of some ladies
who bowed to him. He had to turn round to acknowledge it, and he was
saluting and returning salutations pretty well all along the line of
their progress.

"I'm afraid you'll think I'm everybody's friend but my own, Miss Pasmer,
but I assure you all this is purely accidental. I don't know so many
people, after all; only all that I do know seem to be here this morning."

"I don't think it's a thing to be sorry for," said the girl. "I wish we
knew more people. It's rather forlorn--"

"Oh, will you let me introduce some of the fellows to you? They'll be so
glad."

"If you'll tell them how forlorn I said I was," said the girl, with a
smile.

"Oh, no, no, no! I understand that. And I assure you that I didn't
suppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluous
reassurance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only there
are some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you'll
allow me--"

"We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behind
him.

"Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for another
burst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication of
youth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in the
young faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between the
different dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged with people
coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, the
prettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, at once
sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of the
Renaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old university
town, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly and
almost pathetically beautiful under the leafage of her hovering elms and
in, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youth
that overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poets
who have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of the
humanities who has left her.

"Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to her
daughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor's, "did you ever see so
many pretty costumes?"

"Never," said the girl, with equal intensity.

"Well, it makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighed
Mrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You see
splendid dressing abroad, but it's mostly upon old people who ought to be
sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it's the young
girls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charming in
the Gymnasium, but I see you must get them out-of-doors to have the full
effect. Mr. Mavering, are they always so prettily dressed on Class Day?"

"Well, I'm beginning to feel as if it wouldn't be exactly modest for me
to say so, whatever I think. You'd better ask Mrs. Saintsbury; she
pretends to know all about it."

"No, I'm bound to say they're not," said the Professor's wife candidly.
"Your daughter," she added, in a low tone for all to hear, "decides that
question."

"I'm so glad you said that, Mrs. Saintsbury," said the young man. He
looked at the girl; who blushed with a pleasure that seemed to thrill to
the last fibre of her pretty costume.

She could not say anything, but her mother asked, with an effort at
self-denial: "Do you think so really? It's one of those London things.
They have so much taste there now," she added yielding to her own pride
in the dress.

"Yes; I supposed it must be," said Mrs. Saintsbury, "We used to come in
muslins and tremendous hoops--don't you remember?"

"Did you look like your photographs?" asked young Mavering, over his
shoulder.

"Yes; but we didn't know it then," said the Professor's wife.

"Neither did we," said the Professor. "We supposed that there had never
been anything equal to those hoops and white muslins."

"Thank you, my dear," said his wife, tapping him between the shoulders
with her fan. "Now don't go any further."

"Do you mean about our first meeting here on Class Day?" asked her
husband.

"They'll think so now," said Mrs. Saintsbury patiently, with a playful
threat of consequences in her tone.

"When I first saw the present Mrs. Saintsbury," pursued the Professor--it
was his joking way, of describing her, as if there had been several other
Mrs. Saintsburys--"she was dancing on the green here."

"Ah, they don't dance on the green any more, I hear," sighed Mrs. Pasmer.

"No, they don't," said the other lady; "and I think it's just as well. It
was always a ridiculous affectation of simplicity."

"It must have been rather public," said young Mavering, in a low voice,
to Miss Pasmer.

"It doesn't seem as if it could ever have been in character quite," she
answered.

"We're a thoroughly indoors people," said the Professor. "And it seems as
if we hadn't really begun to get well as a race till we had come in out
of the weather."

"How can you say that on a day like this?" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I didn't
suppose any one could be so unromantic."

"Don't flatter him," cried his wife.

"Does he consider that a compliment?"

"Not personally," he answered: "But it's the first duty of a Professor of
Comparative Literature to be unromantic."

"I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Pasmer.

"He will be happy to explain, at the greatest possible length," said Mrs.
Saintsbury. "But you shan't spoil our pleasure now, John."

They all laughed, and the Professor looked proud of the wit at his
expense; the American husband is so, and the public attitude of the
American husband and wife toward each other is apt to be amiably
satirical; their relation seems never to have lost its novelty, or to
lack droll and surprising contrasts for them.

Besides these passages with her husband, Mrs. Saintsbury kept up a full
flow of talk with the elder Mavering, which Mrs. Pasmer did her best to
overhear, for it related largely to his son, whom, it seemed, from the
father's expressions, the Saintsburys had been especially kind to.

"No, I assure you," Mrs. Pasmer heard her protest, "Mr. Saintsbury has,
been very much interested in him. I hope he has not put any troublesome
ideas into his head. Of course he's very much interested in literature,
from his point of view, and he's glad to find any of the young men
interested in it, and that's apt to make him overdo matters a little."

"Dan wished me to talk with him, and I shall certainly be glad to do so,"
said the father, but in a tone which conveyed to Mrs. Pasmer the
impression that though he was always open to conviction, his mind was
made up on this point, whatever it was.




VI.

The party went to half a dozen spreads, some of which were on a scale of
public grandeur approaching that of the Gymnasium, and others of a
subdued elegance befitting the more private hospitalities in the
students' rooms. Mrs. Pasmer was very much interested in these rooms,
whose luxurious appointments testified to the advance of riches and of
the taste to apply them since she used to visit students' rooms in
far-off Class Days. The deep window nooks and easy-chairs upholstered in
the leather that seems sacred alike to the seats and the shelves of
libraries; the aesthetic bookcases, low and topped with bric-a-brac; the
etchings and prints on the walls, which the elder Mavering went up to
look at with a mystifying air of understanding such things; the foils
crossed over the chimney, and the mantel with its pipes, and its
photographs of theatrical celebrities tilted about over it--spoke of
conditions mostly foreign to Mrs. Pasmer's memories of Harvard. The
photographed celebrities seemed to be chosen chiefly for their beauty,
and for as much of their beauty as possible, Mrs. Pasmer perceived, with
an obscure misgiving of the sort which an older generation always likes
to feel concerning the younger, but with a tolerance, too, which was
personal to herself; it was to be considered that the massive thought and
honest amiability of Salvini's face, and the deep and spiritualized power
of Booth's, varied the effect of these companies of posturing nymphs.

At many places she either met old friends with whom she clamoured over
the wonder of their encounter there, or was made acquainted with new
people by the Saintsburys. She kept a mother's eye on her daughter, to
whom young Mavering presented everybody within hail or reach, and whom
she could see, whenever she looked at her, a radiant centre of
admiration. She could hear her talk sometimes, and she said to herself
that really Alice was coming out; she had never heard her say so many
good things before; she did not know it was in her. She was very glad
then that she had let her wear that dress; it was certainly
distinguished, and the girl carried it off, to her mother's amusement,
with the air of a superb lady of the period from which it dated. She
thought what a simple child Alice really was, all the time those other
children, the Seniors, were stealing their glances of bold or timid
worship at her, and doubtless thinking her a brilliant woman of the
world. But there could be no mistake that she was a success.

Part of her triumph was of course due to Mrs. Saintsbury; whose
chaperonage; Mrs. Pasmer could see, was everywhere of effect. But it was
also largely due to the vigilant politeness of young Mavering, who seemed
bent on making her have good time, and who let no chance slip him. Mrs.
Pasmer felt his kindness truly; and she did not feel it the less because
she knew that there was but one thing that could, at his frankly selfish
age, make a young fellow wish to make a girl have a good time; except for
that reason he must be bending the whole soul of egotistic youth to
making some other girl have a good time. But all the same, it gave her
pause when some one to whom she was introduced spoke to her of her
friends the Maverings, as if they were friends of the oldest standing
instead of acquaintances of very recent accident. She did not think of
disclaiming the intimacy, but "Really I shall die of these Maverings,"
she said to herself, "unless I find out something about them pretty
soon."

"I'm not going to take you to the Omicron spread, Mrs. Pasmer," said
young Mavering, coming up to her with such an effect of sympathetic
devotion that she had to ask herself, "Are they my friends, the
Maverings?" "The Saintsburys have been there already, and it is a little
too common." The tone of superiority gave Mrs. Pasmer courage. "They're
good fellows; and all that, but I want you to see the best. I suppose it
will get back to giving the spreads all in the fellows' rooms again. It's
a good deal pleasanter, don't you think?"

"Oh yes, indeed," assented Mrs. Pasmer, though she had really been
thinking the private spreads were not nearly so amusing as the large
spread she had seen at the Gymnasium. She had also wondered where all Mr.
Mavering's relations and friends were, and the people who had social
claims on him, that he could be giving up his Class Day in this reckless
fashion to strangers. Alice would account for a good deal, but she would
not account for everything. Mrs. Pasmer would have been willing to take
him from others, but if he were so anomalous as to have no one to be
taken from, of course it lessened his value as a trophy. These things
went in and out of her mind, with a final resolution to get a full
explanation from Mrs. Saintsbury, while she stood and smiled her winning
assent up into the young man's handsome face.

Mrs. Saintsbury, caught sight of them, and as if suddenly reminded of a
forgotten duty, rushed vividly upon him.

"Mr. Mavering, I shall not let you stay with us another minute. You must
go to your room now and get ready. You ought to have a little rest."

He broke out in his laugh. "Do you think I want to go and lie down
awhile, like a lady before a party?"

"I'm sure you'd be the stronger for it," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "But go,
upon any theory. Don't you see there isn't a Senior left?"

He would not look round. "They've gone to other spreads," he said. "But
now I'll tell you: it is pretty, near time, and if you'll take me to my
room, I'll go."

"You're a spoiled boy," said Mrs. Saintsbury.

"But I want Mrs. Pasmer to see the room of a real student--a reading man,
and all that--and we'll come, to humour you."

"Well, come upon any theory," said young Mavering.

His father, and Professor Saintsbury, who had been instructed by his wife
not to lose sight of her, were at hand, and they crossed to that old hall
which keeps its favour with the students in spite of the rivalry of the
newer dormitories--it would be hard to say why.

Mrs. Pasmer willingly assented to its being much better, out of pure
complaisance, though the ceilings were low and the windows small, and it
did not seem to her that the Franklin stove and the aesthetic papering
and painting of young Mavering's room brought it up to the level of those
others that she had seen. But with her habit of saying some friendly
lying thing, no matter what her impressions were, she exclaimed; "Oh, how
cosy!" and glad of the word, she went about from one to another, asking,
"Isn't this cosy?"