the faint music of the band in the Yard, all the afternoon. From time to
time, men dashed in to leave or get tickets, to eat something, or to
find some one who never was there. They always said:--
“You here on Class Day, Beverly? I thought you weren’t going to stay.”
Then they would rush out into the heat again to find their families and
take them to the Tree. Occasionally fellows brought their fathers in to
see the club and rest awhile. It amused Beverly to watch the “infants”
do the honours. Prescott--six feet two--saying, “What’ll you have,
Papa?” to a nice, little, old bald-headed thing, was almost as
irresistible as Prescott père, when he patted his head with his
handkerchief and replied, apologetically:--
“The day has been so fatiguing, and we have so much more to do later on,
that I think I should like a little, a very little, rye whiskey and
water.”
Sears Wolcott, followed by an astonishingly young-looking gentleman who
might have been Sears’s older brother, if he hadn’t happened to be his
father, was characteristic when he remarked indifferently:--
“I suppose you want something to drink?”
Mr. Wolcott’s answer struck Beverly as being equally in character:--
“Yes,” he said, with a twinkle, “give me some champagne in a long glass
with ice, if you think you can afford it; I can’t.”
No one stayed long, and by six o’clock the club, except for Beverly and
the sleeping Lauriston, was again deserted. When the steward came in to
draw the curtains and turn on the lights, Lauriston awoke and asked
vaguely if it was time to go to Beck.
“I suppose so,” answered Beverly. “Everybody seems to have gone
somewhere.”
“Then I must go too,” mused Lauriston, fumbling sleepily at his
disordered necktie, and making a feeble attempt to smooth his hair.
“Oh, I wouldn’t run away and leave me,” suggested Beverly, “I’m all
alone.” He wasn’t in the least anxious for Lauriston’s society, but for
the public good he was willing to endure it. Lauriston’s nap hadn’t
proved as beneficial as it might have; the fellow was in no condition to
go to Beck and talk to people.
“Sorry, old man. Can’t stay. Got to find my mothers and sisters, and
give them ‘Morial tickets.” He searched his pockets, and drew out an
envelope. Then he arose laboriously from the divan, and, standing before
Beverly, said something that sounded like “Delookawrite.” Beverly
adjusted his glasses:--
“No, candidly, you don’t look all right,” he declared, “and if you’re
going out to hunt for your mother and sisters, I sincerely trust you
won’t find them.” Lauriston stared stupidly at the tickets in his hand.
“Got to havvem. Promised,” he muttered. Beverly gently extracted the
tickets from his fingers.
“I’ll see that they get them,” he said. He had some difficulty in
persuading Lauriston that he knew Mrs. Lauriston intimately, and would
have no trouble in finding her; for the fellow insisted that his mother
was a most reserved woman whom very few people knew intimately.
“She’s a reserved woman without a parasol,” he said by way of
identification, when he finally allowed Beverly to depart with the
tickets.
The crowd on the lawn at Beck was less objectionable to Beverly, only
because it was unhoused. He stopped at the top of the steps leading down
to the little enclosure packed with white frocks and the startling flora
and fauna of summer millinery. It wasn’t easy to recognise any one in
the soft half light of the lanterns swinging in long festoons overhead;
and it took him some time to discover Mrs. Lauriston and the girls
seated around a table very near him at the foot of the steps on which he
was standing. They had seen him the moment he appeared. The Millstone,
sitting just behind them at the next table, with two freshmen,--distant
cousins of Billy’s,--also saw him.
“So you decided not to catch the train,” said Mrs. Lauriston when
Beverly went down to her.
“It’s harder to tear one’s self away from Class Day than I thought,” he
said, feelingly, for he had just caught sight of Cousin Marguerite. But
he made Mrs. Lauriston a nice little bow as he spoke.
“That’s very pretty,” the lady smiled up at him; “but I should remember
it longer if we’d seen anything of you all day.” Beverly was about to
reply with the least inane of the two inanities that came into his mind
when one of Cousin Marguerite’s freshmen stood up and delivered a
message in a low tone.
“Tell her I’m very sorry, but I can’t,” answered Beverly, changing his
position to one that defied the laws of optics to make his eyes meet
those of the Millstone. The freshman, he noticed, passed rapidly on up
the steps and out of Beck. Beverly went on talking to Mrs. Lauriston. He
gave her the tickets, and explained her son’s failure to appear as
glibly as he could; but he was filled with horrid apprehensions,--Cousin
Marguerite’s penetrating voice rose and fell coquettishly behind him
without a pause,--and he became noticeably ill at ease. When, in a very
few minutes, he heard the Millstone call his own name with all the
sickening languor and affectation its three syllables could carry, he
ignored the summons, and felt himself growing rigid with anger. She
called him again, a trifle louder this time--and pronounced the word
“Bevaleh.”
“Some one wishes to speak to you,” said Mrs. Lauriston. Beverly didn’t
turn. “It’s the lady you were with at the Pudding; she’s sitting just
behind you, and has called you twice. Don’t let me keep you.” Beverly
turned and bowed stiffly.
“_Mauvais sujet_,” said Cousin Marguerite. Mrs. Lauriston and the girls
glanced at her involuntarily. Beverly left them abruptly and stood near
the Millstone. If she would insist on talking to him, he preferred her
playful sallies to be inaudible to the whole of Boston and its adjacent
suburbs. As she turned to tap the vacant chair on her left invitingly
with her red fan, the second freshman stole craftily away.
“Are you waiting for Billy?” asked Beverly in a tone that just escaped
being savage.
“I wasn’t waiting for Billy,” she answered. Her voice was liquid with
subtle meaning. “I sent him away,--dear Billy. I’m to meet him at
Memorial Hall in a quarter of an hour. He hesitated to leave me alone
and introduced two cousins of his--sweet boys. Then I drove him off. And
now you come; kismet, I suppose.”
“I came because you called me,” said Beverly, bluntly. “Thank you, no, I
prefer to stand; I can only stay a moment.” He couldn’t bring himself to
the point of being deliberately rude to any woman,--much less to a
cousin of Billy’s. But he was very much annoyed at this fatuous bore,
and couldn’t help showing it. His manner was decidedly icy. Whether the
Millstone realised that he was thoroughly in earnest when he declared he
couldn’t stay, or whether Class Day had really been too much for her,
Beverly couldn’t make up his mind until afterwards; at any rate Cousin
Marguerite suddenly let fall her fan, gave a little gasp, and proceeded
to faint. Beverly sprang forward to prevent the rickety chair on which
she sat from upsetting, and, this done, he looked helplessly about, as
if for suggestions. He had a hazy idea that he ought to do something to
her hands and feet, and pour water down the front of her dress; he had
once seen that done with success. But Cousin Marguerite’s feet were down
in the grass under the table somewhere; her hands too seemed rather
inaccessible,--she had fallen forward and hidden them. If he should
leave her to go for a glass of water, she would undoubtedly slide off
her chair and get walked on. In his distress, Beverly called to Mrs.
Lauriston. Mrs. Lauriston brought some apollinaris from her table, held
it to the Millstone’s lips, and dabbed it on her temples with a
handkerchief.
“Oughtn’t I--oughtn’t you to ‘loosen something’?” asked Beverly, giving
the crimson necktie a wrench. Cousin Marguerite’s eyelids fluttered with
returning life. All she needed was air, she said, looking about her in
bewilderment.
“If Mr. Beverly will kindly take me to the street--to the open--How very
stupid of me; I haven’t done it since I was a girl,” she added. So
Beverly thanked Mrs. Lauriston hastily, and left the Beck spread with
Cousin Marguerite on his arm. Outside she leaned against the great red
letter-box on the corner, gasped a little, arranged her necktie and
dried her temples. Then she passed her arm through Beverly’s again and
started for Memorial--to find Billy. Consciousness had returned, but it
had not brought to the Millstone strength enough to enable her to walk
alone. There was simply no pretext on which Beverly could leave Billy’s
cousin now. For although he was convinced that her indisposition was
what he called “a cheap bluff at dying,” he couldn’t very well act on
that assumption. He accepted the fact that he would have to stay by her,
maddening as she was, until they found Billy.
She was maddening. She insisted on going to Memorial by way of the Yard,
and loitered shamelessly on the way--she said she felt strangely
faint--to enjoy the crowd, the music, and the glow of the lanterns among
the elms. She watched the dancing at Memorial until Beverly wondered
audibly why Billy didn’t come; at which she announced blandly:--
“He said he would meet me at the steps--right near the mandolins and
banjos. I haven’t seen any, have you?”
The mandolins and banjos were, of course, on the steps of the Law
School, as Cousin Marguerite very well knew.
“I wish you had told me that sooner,” said Beverly, controlling himself.
“Billy has probably tired of waiting and gone away.”
“Oh, well--” she sighed. Ever since the two had left Beck, the Millstone
had hovered shrewdly between apoplexy and intense enjoyment of
everything she saw; she relied on the one to disarm criticism of the
other. Billy wasn’t in front of the Law School; but his cousin thought
it best to wait a few minutes longer for him, besides, the Mandolin Club
was just about to play. She closed her eyes when the music began--the
piece was a Spanish something or other through which a tambourine
shivered at intervals--and clung to Beverly’s arm.
“The Italians are so passionate,” she murmured at the end.
“Billy isn’t coming,” said Beverly.
“I’m afraid we’ve missed him,” she assented.
“And the evening is almost over; you’ve seen everything,” Beverly went
on. “It _is_ over,” he added joyously; a drop of rain had fallen on his
hand.
“Class Day is dead; the angels weep,” mused Cousin Marguerite,
sentimentally. “‘I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It
sinks--’”
“And are you ‘ready to depart’?” asked Beverly, eagerly; Cousin
Marguerite had shied at the really vital clause of the quotation.
“‘Come, chaos--I have seen the best,’” was her answer.
But Beverly didn’t consider that he had seen the best, until the bridge
car that was to bear away Cousin Marguerite appeared in Harvard Square.
He would have rushed off--the rain had begun in earnest--as soon as his
companion of the afternoon and evening was seated, had she not extended
her plump hand for a last, lingering pressure.
“Good-bye,” she said, softly. “There are some things one cannot express;
they are here,” she touched her chest lightly with the finger-tips of
her left hand. “Good-bye. Oh,--I forgot to tell you,” she added
abruptly, in another tone; “Billy and I discovered that we don’t spell
our names the same way. We spell ours with an ‘e.’ We found it out just
after he had refreshed me at Beck Hall and introduced those two sweet
boys. So you see, Billy is more than a cousin; he is a friend.”
The Millstone’s good-bye smile was an inscrutable performance, in which
Beverly thought he detected pity, amusement, and a sort of devilish
self-satisfaction. He turned, without a word, to find Billy.
THE END
THIS BOOK IS PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
DURING DECEMBER 1897
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
He was probaby feeling=> He was probably feeling {pg 85}
I was glad we’d bitched=> I was glad we’d ditched {pg 223}
him away to somebody’s else room=> him away to somebody else’s room {pg
228}