sounded amiable rather than otherwise, for, on the whole, Beverly liked
to be teased by the fellows. Some of them were clever at it--Billy
especially. It pleased Beverly to think it was the little penalty he
paid for being mature enough to know definitely what did and didn’t
amuse him, and to act accordingly. He was sincere in his dislike of
Class Day, and didn’t intend to go near it. He objected to having the
Yard enclosed in Christmas-trees and festooned with paper lanterns,--to
its “pretending to be a beer garden with Hamlet left out.” He considered
it undignified to throw open the University to a rabble of women, to
invite them to “kick up their heels” in Memorial Hall, and see them
described in the evening papers as “Harvard’s Fair Invaders.” During
breakfast, he enlarged on these views to a scornful audience that
finally arose in its might, tore off his necktie, ruined his coiffure,
threw him out of the club into his cab, and then retreated and locked
itself in. Even this didn’t make Beverly really angry, he was used to
differences of opinion followed by popular uprisings.
He had intended to say good-bye to Cambridge the next morning, and take
the one-o’clock train for New York. But the next morning, after
breakfasting at the Holly Tree,--there is no place else to breakfast on
Class Day except the Oak Grove, and Beverly disliked the high stools of
that place and the condescending services of the dethroned empresses
who wait on one there,--he found it was too late to catch the one
o’clock without more effort than he was able to make on so warm a day.
So, in a moment of tolerance induced perhaps by the realisation that
this was, after all, “good-bye,” he strolled over to the Yard.
The exercises in Sanders Theatre had just ended, and the “fair invaders”
were beginning to invade by the hundreds. They streamed in brilliant
procession along the walks, and swarmed over the shady lawns,--glorified
groups of summer millinery, trailing after them the pale pink odour of
sachet powder and blond hair. They took possession of the parapet of
Matthews, the chairs and benches and doorsteps in front of Hollis and
Stoughton and Holworthy, stretching the length of the Yard in a many
coloured border that resembled the horticultural orgies of the Public
Garden. Celestial companies of maidens in diaphanous drapery floated
past Beverly, in the wake of panting but determined ladies richly
upholstered.
“‘On, on to the Pudding spread,
My daughters must be--shall be fed,’”
the leaders seemed to say, as they elbowed through the crowd at the
exit. Seniors in fluttering gowns and wilted collars, with proud mothers
and satisfied fathers and eager sisters and observant aunts, seniors
with one another, and lonely, unattached seniors Beverly had never seen
before, who looked as if they didn’t quite know whether they were
enjoying themselves or not, sauntered by, mopping their foreheads. The
Yard was alive, not with the customary sprinkling of business-like young
men hastening, note-book in hand, to lectures, but with a riot of
colour, a swishing of skirts, a vague, babbling gaiety that rose in
places to an acute trebleness. And there was the smell of festivity in
the hot air,--a smell of pine branches and Chinese lanterns.
Beverly walked once around the Yard, staring severely at the various
factors of the gigantic picnic, and was passing Matthews on his way out,
when a sudden gust of wind blew a newspaper from the lap of a woman
seated on the steps of the building. He strolled after it until it
stopped flapping over the grass, picked it up, and, hat in hand,
returned it to its owner. He had no difficulty in identifying the lady,
although she was one of many resting on the steps, for she waved the
remaining sheets of the paper at him as he approached, and smiled
largely.
“I never was so embarrassed,” she declared, beaming up at him.
“There is no need to be, I assure you,” said Beverly, with a little bow.
“Oh, but I am--you know I am,” she continued archly. Beverly would have
walked on, had not the strange woman suddenly leaned forward,--still
looking up at him,--with the air of one about to impart a confidence.
The action would have made retreat at that moment rather rude, or at
least abrupt, so the senior hesitated deferentially, and returned her
look by one of inquiry.
She was a stout, middle-aged woman with short, curly, dark hair. Her
upturned face was round, red, unlined, and perspiring. She wore a
black-satin skirt, under which Beverly could see her low shoes of yellow
leather resting firmly, with their toes well turned out, on the step
below. Where black skirt and white linen shirt-waist met, a crimson
belt circumscribed her buxomness as with a band of flame. Under one of
her chins perched a crimson cravat of another shade; and a crimson
ribbon repeated the note in a tiny sailor hat that was almost upside
down with coquetry. On her lap lay a red fan of the circular kind that
appears and disappears at the pull of a silken cord. Beverly considered
her absurd.
“I just know you’re a Harvard man,” she said engagingly. “Now aren’t
you?”
“Yes, I am,” admitted Beverly.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” she clapped her hands with all the glee of a little
girl of fifty. “You can help me--you can explain everything; the
newspapers take so much for granted.” Beverly looked a trifle wild.
“Now here’s a Yard ticket,” she fumbled a moment among black-satin
intricacies, “and here’s a Tree ticket, and here’s one for Memorial
Hall. I have an invitation for Beck Hall, too,” she added, drawing out
some envelopes. “Oh, and this is my ticket to Poughkeepsie!” She
unfolded a long strip of green pasteboard. “I’m going to be at that
race; oh, I’m going to be there! You see--I’m a regular Harvard girl.”
“And what can I do for you?” asked Beverly, politely.
“I hate to trouble you,” she said, almost diffidently; “but I’m so
afraid of missing something. If you would explain the tickets to
me--tell me of the gates to which they are the key; if you would be so
good--and I know you will be. _Ah--je connais mes âmes._” Her eyelids
fluttered up, then down. She pressed the tickets into Beverly’s hand.
The senior, somewhat astonished, explained their respective uses as
rapidly as possible.
“And now the invitation to Beck Hall; you’ve forgotten that,” she said,
with a little side glance of reproach.
“Why, it’s just an invitation to a spread,--a sort of garden party. You
go there any time after the Tree exercises,” explained Beverly.
“Ah--but that’s not all,” said the lady.
“If she only wouldn’t look at me that way,” thought Beverly.
“I have a cousin,” she went on, “the dearest boy in all the world.
Look--this is he.” Beverly, with a slight feeling of apprehension,
followed her stubby finger down the first column of names engraved on
the invitation, until it stopped at “William Paxton Fields.”
“Do you know him?” she asked. Beverly wavered a moment; he felt what was
coming.
“Yes, I know Fields,” he said, restraining a panic-stricken impulse to
dart away in the crowd.
“I felt that you did--something told me. He’s a dear boy, isn’t he?”
“He’s a very good fellow,” replied Beverly.
“Ah, I like that,” she said heartily, straightening her dumpy shoulders
and expanding her chest with enthusiasm. “I love the way you great,
loyal college men stand up for each other. It’s beautiful. Now I must
find him,” she went on rapidly, with a keen sense of opportunity, “and
tell him I’m here--give myself over to him. He lives--where does he
live?” For his own sake, Beverly would have cheerfully told her that he
didn’t know, or that Billy had moved, or that he didn’t have a room at
all; but he hesitated to separate Billy from his family, when a word
might unite them, so he said:--
“He rooms in Claverly Hall; but I doubt if you can find him there now.”
“But we can try,” she exclaimed with eager optimism. “Which is
Claverly?” she looked blandly up and down the Yard.
“It isn’t here; it’s down there on Mt. Auburn Street.” Beverly indicated
the direction.
“Not on the ‘campus’? Oh, dear!” said Billy’s cousin. There was dismay
in her tone and on her broad disc of a face.
“No; but it’s very easy to find. Anybody will show you,” Beverly
answered. He thought it was an excellent moment in which to bow himself
away.
“Anybody?” she said softly, transfixing him with one of her oblique
leers. She was a terribly arch woman.
Her kinship with Fields, and the assumable respectability that went with
it, together with her abandoned trust in Harvard chivalry, didn’t make
her any less awful in Beverly’s eyes. They were merely the complement of
her already well-developed genius for imposition; they made her
impossible to evade,--a something inevitable.
“I’m sure he won’t be there now,” repeated Beverly, helplessly. “We’re
all so busy to-day; we haven’t a moment to ourselves,” he added
furtively.
“Yes, yes, I know,” assented Billy’s cousin; “but it’s my only way to
find him before evening. I can leave my card and arrange a rendezvous. I
wouldn’t interfere with his plans for the world; I have a horror of
being a burden. I’m such a perfectly independent little body!” She arose
and gave Beverly the fan with the gesture of a lady fair bestowing her
colours upon a knight who yearned. “Is it far?” she asked.
“No,” answered Beverly, shortly. “It isn’t far.”
“Then let us saunter--oh, so slowly--and drink it in.” She closed her
eyes and breathed as one overcome by the sensuous beauty of the
surroundings.
“I’m afraid I shall have to hurry,” said the senior, with unmistakable
decision. He looked at his watch ostentatiously. “I’m going away, and I
have to pack.” She ignored the suggestion.
“Which of these mellow, world-old buildings do you live in?” she asked
dreamily, stopping in the path.
“I don’t live in any of them,” said Beverly. He was extremely angry.
“Recluse,” she murmured.
It was irritating enough, Beverly thought, to be inveigled into towing
the fatuous old frump through the public streets; but the thought that
his acquaintance with the lady might not end at Claverly was maddening.
Billy wouldn’t be there, of course; and it was impossible to put an
unattached female cousin into his room and leave her. That particular
quarter of town was not, as a rule, the most decorous on Class Day.
There is always more or less, what is technically known as “trouble” in
Claverly and its vicinity on Class Day afternoon. It takes the harmless
form of young men with wisps of pink mosquito netting in their
buttonholes, to whom the world for the time being is not such a dreary
place after all; or perhaps it merely consists of innocently garbed
swimming parties running foot races down the long corridors on their way
to the tank. But at any rate Beverly hesitated to turn Billy’s cousin
adrift there. It would be difficult to explain his having done so to
Billy. He meant to abandon her somewhere and quickly, but not there.
They passed out of the crowded Yard. In his earnest desire to reach
Claverly without delay, Beverly thoughtlessly turned into Holyoke
Street. It was thronged with carriages and summery looking girls making
for a common objective point, half-way down on the left-hand side. He
didn’t realise his mistake in having chosen that particular route until
it was too late.
“How allegro life is,” remarked his companion.
“It’s very warm,” answered Beverly, increasing his pace.
“Cynic,” was the reply. Beverly stared straight ahead, but he knew the
sort of expression that had accompanied the imputation.
“They all seem to be going in there,” said Billy’s cousin, stopping on
the curbstone opposite the Pudding building. “What is it?”
“That? Oh, somebody’s spread, I suppose.” Beverly went on a step or
two; but his companion didn’t follow him. Just then a lady with two
girls bowed to him from a victoria waiting its turn across the street.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she called. Beverly went over to speak to them.
The girls were exquisite creatures; he would have given his soul at that
moment to be able to leave his burden on the sidewalk opposite and join
them. But he was “catching a train,” he explained. When he turned away,
with the feeling of one about to resume a millstone, Billy’s cousin was
where he had left her. As he approached, she lifted a forefinger to her
lips, raised her eyes mysteriously, and stood for some moments in what
she probably fancied was the attitude of a listening faun.
“Music,” she whispered.
“I shall certainly strangle this woman before we reach Claverly,”
thought Beverly.
“There is an orchestra inside,” he said.
“Oh, I could just die waltzing!” she exclaimed. She crossed the street,
undulating ecstatically to the music that came gaily through the open
doors and windows of the Pudding.
“I really must hurry,” said Beverly, very firmly.
“Just a moment,” she pleaded, resting her hand on his arm and swaying
ponderously from side to side in time to the waltz.
“Could anything have been more odious?” Beverly said to the fellows
afterwards, when trying to explain his presence in Cambridge on Class
Day. “The Pudding steps--the whole street--swarming with people on their
way to the spread; a line of carriages, a block long, full of girls I
knew,--_girls I knew_; and I, standing there, a ridiculous little red
fan in my hand--the thing popped out, and I couldn’t pull it back
again--with a moon-faced tub of a woman I’d never seen before, rigged
out in a crimson harness, hanging on to me as if she’d brought me into
the world, and doing some sort of a can-can on the sidewalk, like a
hypnotised old cobra.”
“Let’s go in,” pleaded Billy’s cousin, impulsively. Beverly drew away
from her.
“It’s simply impossible,” he said sternly. “The spread is a private
one, and I haven’t even my own ticket here; I’ve lost it.”
The note of irritation and despair in his voice was overheard by a
fellow in a cap and gown who had come up behind them just then, on his
way into the Pudding.
“That doesn’t make any difference, Beverly,” he said, touching his cap
to the lady; “you can come in with me all right.” Beverly turned in
anguish. It was Freddy Benson, who was helping to give the spread.
Billy’s cousin became strangely radiant; she darted a glance at Freddy
that impaled him. Beverly, she not only impaled, but crucified.
“I haven’t time to go in,” said Beverly abruptly. He was beginning to
look flushed and obstinate. Freddy opened his eyes in polite
astonishment; he was afraid he had intruded upon a family quarrel. The
Millstone edged half way up the Pudding steps and pouted coyly. They
stood there a moment,--Beverly, dangerous, explosive; Freddy, mystified
and uncomfortable; the Millstone, with her “lady fair” expression once
more, as if waiting expectantly for one of the stalwart males to defeat
the other in mortal combat and claim her for his own. People brushed by
them--people Beverly knew--with glances of concern.
“You might just as well come in, you know,” said Freddy, pacifically.
“You don’t understand,” answered Beverly, angrily.
“Just for a minute,--I promise,” chimed in the Millstone; “we may find
my cousin in here,” she added. That possibility hadn’t occurred to
Beverly; it was quite likely that Billy would be there at that hour. So
he set his teeth and went up the steps. Freddy passed them before the
big, white-gloved policeman at the door, and they pushed through the
crowd in the vestibule. After a parting flutter of the eyelids at
Freddy, Billy’s cousin looked up at Beverly in fond disapproval.
“Naughty, naughty,” she said.
The crush in the theatre of the Pudding was appalling on so warm an
afternoon. But Beverly surveyed it with an exultant smile. Once
separated from Billy’s cousin in that jam of people, escape would be
easy, pursuit impossible.
“Now follow me,” he commanded, dexterously wriggling away from the arm
that sought his. He meant to lead the Millstone to the corner of the
room farthest away from the exit, and there, among the palms surrounding
the orchestra, “wander” her like a cat in a strange wood.
“If you will be so good as to stand here,” he suggested, when they had
fought their way to the other end of the room, “I’ll look for Fields. It
may take me some time, there’s such a crowd.” He almost softened toward
her for an instant, he was so elated at the thought of leaving her there
forever in the exotic bushes,--like Ruth “in tears amid the alien corn.”
Then he returned her red fan, and once more became part of the crowd. He
loved the crowd now as he had hated it before; it was a friendly,
favouring, protecting crowd,--a crowd that rendered his movements
invisible, a crowd through which large, opacous bodies in black satin
could attain no velocity. Beverly made a conscientious search for Billy.
He struggled around the theatre, inspected the piazza and the tent and
the front rooms, and finally went upstairs to the library. But Billy
was chatting in none of the little alcove nooks, made cosey for the
occasion with a prodigal display of Turkish rugs, and Beverly descended
the stairs to the exit with a light heart.
The Millstone, dishevelled, apoplectic, and breathing hard, was waiting
for him at the door.
“I grew faint and sought air,” she explained. “Do you know what to do
when a lady faints?” she went on, fanning nervously.
“Oh, yes,” said Beverly, grimly; “I think I know what I should do if you
fainted.”
“You’re giving me a very happy day,” she murmured.
“It is a memorable one for me,” he answered savagely.
They went out and on toward Claverly. If every man Beverly knew in
college had arranged to meet him on Holyoke Street at that hour, Beverly
would not have had to take off his hat many more times than he did. He
bowed gravely, and had to hang on to himself to keep from calling out
as every new group of wondering faces approached:--
“This woman doesn’t belong to me; I never saw her before, and I hate
her.”
There were little knots of men talking on the piazzas of the clubs on
Mount Auburn Street when he turned the corner. Out of the tail of his
eye, he could see the agitation that seized them as he and the Millstone
came into view. Then he heard windows opening upstairs and down, and
knew, without turning around, that from every window craned a neck or
two. He held his breath, and prayed to Heaven that his companion
wouldn’t take it into her head to stop and rest, or gaze dreamily up and
down the street, or slap him with her fan. Once safely inside Claverly,
he didn’t wait to listen to her exclamations of surprise and admiration,
but left her purring to herself at the foot of the stairs and dashed up
to Billy’s room. Billy wasn’t there, but his door was unlatched and his
room strewn with garments. His cap and gown were hanging over the back
of a chair. Billy was somewhere in the building, probably in the tank,
as unsuspicious of impending catastrophe as a playful dolphin. So
Beverly hurried down the back stairs to the tank. As he opened the door,
Billy, lying on his back on the marble ledge, shot suddenly into view
like a long white projectile.
“I’ve invented a new game,” he gasped; “you make the marble all wet, and
lie on your back with your feet against the wall, and then give yourself
a push and--zip! You could go miles if there wasn’t a partition. But you
have to lift up when you get to this crack, or you’ll tear your
shoulder-blades out by the roots. Now watch me--”
“Shut up, Billy, and listen; your cousin is out here in the hall waiting
for you.” Beverly mopped his forehead.
“My cousin?” Billy struggled to his feet.
“Yes, your cousin,--a lady. Now hurry up and get dry. I’ve got to go.
She’s at the foot of the stairs. No, I’m not fooling, I swear to God I’m
not. It’s the cousin you invited to Beck.”
“Wait, wait, don’t leave me, man. It’ll take me hours to dress,” said
Billy, piteously, dabbing himself with a bath towel. “I haven’t any
cousin; I never invited one to Beck; my family is away--they’re abroad.
I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he went on. But he continued to
dry himself frantically nevertheless.
“I’m simply telling you what I know,” answered Beverly, calmly. “A
person, female, aged--say forty-five; of abundant tonnage and affable
manners, would like to meet blond gentleman named Fields about to
graduate from Harvard; object, a family reunion. Oh, never mind your
hair. Here, put on your wrapper and come on.” He helped Billy, half dry,
with his hair dripping stringily over his eyes, into a striped blanket
covering, and pushed him gently into the hall.
The Millstone, who had been sauntering up and down the corridors in
Beverly’s absence, received them as they emerged.
“Oh,” she said, and peered at them over the rim of her circular fan.
“Allow me to present your cousin,” said Beverly, gravely.
“Cousin Marguerite,” simpered the Millstone. “Can this be the little boy
I used to know?” she continued, holding out her hand. “You used to wear
knickerbockers.” Billy drew the drapery of his striped blanket more
closely about him. Shaking hands was quite out of the question. “Dear
me, how you’ve changed.”
“I’m very glad to see you,” gasped Billy. “I--I wish I had my clothes
on. If you’ll just wait with Mr. Beverly a minute--” he turned to
Beverly. “You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
“Yes, I am,” said the other, frankly. “I have to go to my room and then
catch a train.” Billy gave him the look of an offended water-spaniel.
“If I could rest somewhere until you come,” suggested Cousin Marguerite.
“Couldn’t you take her to your room, if you’re going there anyhow?”
pleaded Billy, with a tragic “I’ll-do-something-for-you-some-day”
expression. “If you’re going there anyhow,” he repeated. And once more
Beverly took up his burden and set out.
He went to Beck by back streets; and he walked as fast as he possibly
could, because it was hot and dusty--there were no sidewalks and no
shade--and he wished to give Cousin Marguerite pain. He didn’t actually
want to kill her, he told himself, and marvelled, as he did so, at his
own sweetness of disposition. But he hoped to succeed in disabling her
in some way, by the time they reached his room, “give her a headache or
break something,” so that she couldn’t go to the Tree, or to the Beck
spread, or to Memorial Hall. For he felt that otherwise she would go to
them all, and he would, for some hideous reason he couldn’t then
foresee, have to escort her. So he tore along, with Cousin Marguerite
panting hoarsely at his elbow, until her shoes became untied, and he had
to kneel in the dust at her feet. He tied them up again--with three
hard, vicious knots in each, and hurried on. Every time she placed a
restraining hand on his arm, he drew out his watch, showed it to her
silently, and then remarked, “my train.” He dragged her past Plympton
Street, around by Bow Street, up the little hill back of Quincy, across
to Beck, up the stairs two at a time and into his room, where she fell
exhausted on his divan.
“Now I am going to leave you,” he announced, triumphantly. She motioned
to him feebly with her hand, and opened her mouth as if to speak.
“You just ought to see my room at home,” she whispered, breathlessly.
“It’s a perfect bower of crimson.” But Beverly didn’t wait to hear about
it. He ran out, slamming the door behind him, and never stopped nor
looked behind until he reached the club, where he called for the
longest, coldest drink the steward could make.
“I shall never, never, see that woman again,” he said. But he did.
The club was deserted except for Lauriston, who didn’t really belong
there. Lauriston was asleep on a divan. He had a wisp of pink mosquito
netting in his button-hole, and when Beverly roused him, he was unable
to tell where every one had gone to so suddenly. He blinked a moment in
the light, as if he didn’t even know where he was himself, and then went
to sleep again. He was, as Beverly said, “unfit for publication.”
Just as Beverly became comfortably settled with a gin fizz on a small
table in front of him, and a palm-leaf fan in his hand, Billy, in cap
and gown, fluttered into the club.
“Awfully good of you to take my cousin down to your room,” he said,
nervously. He knew with what joy Beverly must have escorted her,
although he couldn’t very well allude to it.
“Don’t mention it--charming woman--charming,” murmured Beverly,
politely.
“I’m sure I don’t know who she can be,” went on Billy; “unless she was
on the list of people my mother sent me to invite. I know I never asked
her. Are you walking down that way?” he ventured, casually. Somehow or
other, Cousin Marguerite seemed to him to belong as much to Beverly as
to himself.
“Certainly not,” answered the other, with decision. “I shall sit here
until it’s time to catch the midnight train.”
“And not go to the Tree or Beck or the Yard in the evening?”
“I have spoken,” said Beverly, placidly.
“Well, then, good-bye.” Billy held out his hand, “And don’t forget
you’re coming to us on the tenth.” He looked troubled, and left
reluctantly to find his cousin.