The men looked smilingly at each other without saying anything; and the
younger took in due form the introduction which the young lady gave him.
“My mother, Mr. Mavering.”
“Mr. Mavering!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, in a pure astonishment, before
she had time to colour it with a polite variety of more conventional
emotions. She glanced at the two men, and gave a little “Oh?” of inquiry
and resignation, and then said, demurely, “Let me introduce you to Mr.
Mavering, Alice,” while the young fellow laughed nervously, and pulled
out his handkerchief, partly to hide the play of his laughter, and
partly to wipe away the perspiration which a great deal more laughing
had already gathered on his forehead. He had a vein that showed
prominently down its centre, and large, mobile, girlish blue eyes under
good brows, an arched nose, and rather a long face and narrow chin. He
had beautiful white teeth; as he laughed these were seen set in a jaw
that contracted very much toward the front. He was tall and slim, and he
wore with elegance the evening dress which Class Day custom prescribes
for the Seniors; in his button-hole he had a club button.
“I shall not have to ask an introduction to Mr. Mavering; and you've
robbed me of the pleasure of giving him one to you, Mrs. Pasmer,” he
said.
She heard the young man in the course of a swift review of what she had
said to his father, and with a formless resentment of the father's not
having told her he had a son there; but she answered with the flattering
sympathy she had the use of, “Oh, but you won't miss one pleasure out
of so many to-day, Mr. Mavering; and think of the little dramatic
surprise!”
“Oh, perfect,” he said, with another laugh. “I told Miss Pasmer as we
came up.”
“Oh, then you were in the surprise, Alice!” said Mrs. Pasmer, searching
her daughter's eyes for confession or denial of this little community
of interest. The girl smiled slightly upon the young man, but not
disapprovingly, and made no other answer to her mother, who went on:
“Where in the world have you been? Did Mr. Munt find you? Who told you
where I was? Did you see me? How did you know I was here? Was there ever
anything so droll?” She did not mean her questions to be answered, or at
least not then; for, while her daughter continued to smile rather more
absently, and young Mavering broke out continuously in his nervous
laugh, and his father stood regarding him with visible satisfaction, she
hummed on, turning to the young man: “But I'm quite appalled at Alice's
having monopolised even for a few minutes a whole Senior--and probably
an official Senior at that,” she said, with a glance at the pink and
white club button in his coat lapel, “and I can't let you stay another
instant, Mr. Mavering. I know very well how many demands you have upon
you and you must go back directly to your sisters and your cousins and
your aunts, and all the rest of them; you must indeed.”
“Oh no! Don't drive me away, Mrs. Pasmer,” pleaded the young man,
laughing violently, and then wiping his face. “I assure you that I've
no encumbrances of any kind here except my father, and he seems to have
been taking very good care of himself.” They all laughed at this, and
the young fellow hurried on: “Don't be alarmed at my button; it only
means a love of personal decoration, if that's where you got the notion
of my being an official Senior. This isn't my spread; I shall hope to
welcome you at Beck Hall after the Tree; and I wish you'd let me be
of use to you. Wouldn't you like to go round to some of the smaller
spreads? I think it would amuse you. And have you got tickets to the
Tree, to see us make fools of ourselves? It's worth seeing, Mrs. Pasmer,
I assure you.”
He rattled on very rapidly but with such a frankness in his urgency,
such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was
pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the
transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and
as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which
one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by the
fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of
white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same simple
combination of colours was carried up into her hat, which surmounted
darker hair than Mrs. Pasmer's, and a complexion of wholesome pallor;
her eyes were grey and grave, with black brows, and her face, which was
rather narrow, had a pleasing irregularity in the sharp jut of the nose;
in profile the parting of the red lips showed well back into the cheek.
“I don't know,” said Mrs. Pasmer, in her own behalf; and she added in
his, “about letting you take so much trouble,” so smoothly that it
would have been quite impossible to detect the point of union in the two
utterances.
“Well, don't call it names, anyway, Mrs. Pasmer,” pleaded the young man.
“I thought it was nothing but a pleasure and a privilege--”
“The fact is,” she explained, neither consenting nor refusing, “that
we were expecting to meet some friends who had tickets for us”--young
Mavering's face fell--“and I can't imagine what's happened.”
“Oh, let's hope something dreadful,” he cried.
“Perhaps you know them,” she delayed further. “Professor Saintsbury!”
“Well, rather! Why, they were here about an hour ago--both of them. They
must have been looking for you.”
“Yes; we were to meet them here. We waited to come out with other
friends, and I was afraid we were late.” Mrs. Pasmer's face expressed a
tempered disappointment, and she looked at her daughter for indications
of her wishes in the circumstances; seeing in her eye a willingness to
accept young Mavering's invitation, she hesitated more decidedly than
she had yet done, for she was, other things being equal, quite willing
to accept it herself. But other things were not equal, and the whole
situation was very odd. All that she knew of Mr. Mavering the elder was
that he was the old friend of John Munt, and she knew far too little of
John Munt, except that he seemed to go everywhere, and to be welcome,
not to feel that his introduction was hardly a warrant for what looked
like an impending intimacy. She did not dislike Mr. Mavering; he was
evidently a country person of great self-respect, and no doubt of entire
respectability. He seemed very intelligent, too. He was a Harvard man;
he had rather a cultivated manner, or else naturally a clever way of
saying things. But all that was really nothing, if she knew no more
about him, and she certainly did not. If she could only have asked her
daughter who it was that presented young Mavering to her, that might
have formed some clew, but there was no earthly chance of asking this,
and, besides, it was probably one of those haphazard introductions that
people give on such occasions. Young Mavering's behaviour gave her still
greater question: his self-possession, his entire absence of anxiety;
or any expectation of rebuff or snub, might be the ease of unimpeachable
social acceptance, or it might be merely adventurous effrontery; only
something ingenuous and good in the young fellow's handsome face forbade
this conclusion. That his face was so handsome was another of the
complications. She recalled, in the dreamlike swiftness with which all
these things passed through her mind, what her friends had said to Alice
about her being sure to meet her fate on Class Day, and she looked at
her again to see if she had met it.
“Well, mamma?” said the girl, smiling at her mother's look.
Mrs. Pasmer thought she must have been keeping young Mavering waiting
a long time for his answer. “Why, of course, Alice. But I really don't
know what to do about the Saintsburys.” This was not in the least true,
but it instantly seemed so to Mrs. Pasmer, as a plausible excuse will
when we make it.
“Why, I'll tell you what, Mrs. Pasmer,” said young Mavering, with a
cordial unsuspicion that both won and reassured her, “we'll be sure to
find them at some of the spreads. Let me be of that much use, anyway;
you must.”
“We really oughtn't to let you,” said Mrs. Pasmer, making a last effort
to cling to her reluctance, but feeling it fail, with a sensation that
was not disagreeable. She could not help being pleased with the pleasure
that she saw in her daughter's face.
Young Mavering's was radiant. “I'll be back in just half a minute,” he
said, and he took a gay leave of them in running to speak to another
student at the opposite end of the hall.