“And we thought the Beck Hall spread was the crowning glory of the whole
affair. We owe ever so much to your kindness.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Mavering.
“But we were talking afterward, Alice and I, about the sudden
transformation of all that disheveled crew around the Tree into the
imposing swells--may I say howling swells?--”
“Yes, do say 'howling,' Mrs. Pasmer!” implored the young man.
“--whom we met afterward at the spread,” she concluded. “How did you
manage it all? Mr. Irving in the 'Lyons Mail' was nothing to it. We
thought we had walked directly over from the Tree; and there you were,
all ready to receive us, in immaculate evening dress.”
“It was pretty quick work,” modestly admitted the young man. “Could you
recognise any one in that hurly-burly round the Tree?”
“We didn't till you rose, like a statue of Victory, and began grabbing
for the spoils from the heads and shoulders of your friends. Who was
your pedestal?”
Mavering put his hand on his friend's broad shoulder, and gave him a
playful push.
Boardman turned up his little black eyes at him, with a funny gleam in
them.
“Poor Mr. Boardman!” said Mrs. Pasmer.
“It didn't hurt him a bit,” said Mavering, pushing him. “He liked it.”
“Of course he did,” said Mrs. Pasmer, implying, in flattery of Mavering,
that Boardman might be glad of the distinction; and now Boardman looked
as if he were not. She began to get away in adding, “But I wonder you
don't kill each other.”
“Oh, we're not so easily killed,” said Mavering.
“And what a fairy scene it was at the spread!” said Mrs. Pasmer, turning
to Boardman. She had already talked its splendours over with Mavering
the same evening. “I thought we should never get out of the Hall; but
when we did get out of the window upon that tapestried platform, and
down on the tennis-ground, with Turkey rugs to hide the bare spots in
it--” She stopped as people do when it is better to leave the effect to
the listener's imagination.
“Yes, I think it was rather nice,” said Boardman.
“Nice?” repeated Mrs. Pasmer; and she looked at Mavering. “Is that the
famous Harvard Indifferentism?”
“No, no, Mrs. Pasmer! It's just his personal envy. He wasn't in the
spread, and of course he doesn't like to hear any one praise it. Go on!”
They all laughed.
“Well, even Mr. Boardman will admit,” said Mrs. Pasmer; “that nothing
could have been prettier than that pavilion at the bottom of the lawn,
and the little tables scattered about over it, and all those charming
young creatures under that lovely evening sky.”
“Ah! Even Boardman can't deny that. We did have the nicest crowd; didn't
we?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Pasmer, playfully checking herself in a ready
adhesion, “that depends a good deal upon where Mr. Boardman's spread
was.”
“Thank you,” said Boardman.
“He wasn't spreading anywhere,” cried his friend. “Except himself--he
was spreading himself everywhere.”
“Then I think I should prefer to remain neutral,” said Mrs. Pasmer,
with a mock prudence which pleased the young men. In the midst of the
pleasure the was giving and feeling she was all the time aware that her
daughter had contributed but one remark to the conversation, and that
she must be seeming very stiff and cold. She wondered what that meant,
and whether she disliked this little Mr. Boardman, or whether she was
again trying to punish Mr. Mavering for something, and, if so, what it
was. Had he offended her in some way the other day? At any rate, she had
no right to show it. She longed for some chance to scold the girl,
and tell her that it would not do, and make her talk. Mr. Mavering
was merely a friendly acquaintance, and there could be no question
of anything personal. She forgot that between young people the social
affair is always trembling to the personal affair.
In the little pause which these reflections gave her mother, the girl
struck in, with the coolness that always astonished Mrs. Pasmer, and as
if she had been merely waiting till some phase of the talk interested
her.
“Are many of the students going to the race?” she asked Boardman.
“Yes; nearly everybody. That is--”
“The race?” queried Mrs. Pasmer.
“Yes, at New London,” Mavering broke in. “Don't you know? The University
race--Harvard and Yale.”
“Oh--oh yes,” cried Mrs. Pasmer, wondering how her daughter should know
about the race, and she not. “Had they talked it over together on Class
Day?” she asked herself. She felt herself, in spite of her efforts to
keep even with them; left behind and left out, as later age must be
distanced and excluded by youth. “Are you gentlemen going to row?” she
asked Mavering.
“No; they've ruled the tubs out this time; and we should send anything
else to the bottom.”
Mrs. Pasmer perceived that he was joking, but also that they were not of
the crew; and she said that if that was the case the should not go.
“Oh, don't let that keep you away! Aren't you going? I hoped you were
going,” continued the young man, speaking with his eyes on Mrs. Pasmer,
but with his mind, as she could see by his eyes, on her daughter.
“No, no.”
“Oh, do go, Mrs. Pasmer!” he urged: “I wish you'd go along to chaperon
us.”
Mrs. Pasmer accepted the notion with amusement. “I should think you
might look after each other. At any rate, I think I must trust you to
Mr. Boardman this time.”
“Yes; but he's going on business,” persisted Mavering, as if for the
pleasure he found in fencing with the air, “and he can't look after me.”
“On business?” said Mrs. Pasmer, dropping her outspread fan on her lap,
incredulously.
“Yes; he's going into journalism--he's gone into it,” laughed Mavering;
“and he's going down to report the race for the 'Events'.”
“Really!” asked Mrs. Pasmer, with a glance at Boardman, whose droll
embarrassment did not contradict his friend's words. “How splendid!”
she cried. “I had, heard that a great many Harvard men were taking up
journalism. I'm so glad of it! It will do everything to elevate its
tone.”
Boardman seemed to suffer under these expectations a little, and he
stole a glance of comical menace at his friend.
“Yes,” said Mavering; “you'll see a very different tone about the fires,
and the fights, and the distressing accidents, in the 'Events' after
this.”
“What does he mean?” she asked Boardman, giving him unavoidably the
advantage of the caressing manner which was in her mind for Mavering.
“Well, you see,” said Boardman, “we have to begin pretty low down.”
“Oh, but all departments of our press need reforming, don't they?” she
inquired consolingly. “One hears such shocking things about our papers
abroad. I'm sure that the more Harvard men go into them the better. And
how splendid it is to have them going into politics the way they are!
They're going into politics too, aren't they?” She looked from one young
man to the other with an idea that she was perhaps shooting rather wild,
and an amiable willingness to be laughed at if she were. “Why don't you
go into politics, Mr. Mavering?”
“Well, the fact is--”
“So many of the young University men do in England,” said Mrs. Pasmer,
fortifying her position.
“Well, you see, they haven't got such a complete machine in England--”
“Oh yes, that dreadful machine!” sighed Mrs. Pasmer, who had heard of
it, but did not know in the least what it was.
“Do you think the Harvard crew will beat this time?” Alice asked of
Boardman.
“Well, to tell you the truth--”
“Oh, but you must never believe him when he begins that way!” cried
Mavering. “To be sure they will beat. And you ought to be there to see
it. Now, why won't you come, Mrs. Pasmer?” he pleaded, turning to her
mother.
“Oh, I'm afraid we must be getting away from Boston by that time. It's
very tiresome, but there seems to be nobody left; and one can't stay
quite alone, even if you're sick of moving about. Have you ever been--we
think of going there--to Campobello?”
“No; but I hear that it's charming, there. I had a friend who was there
last year, and he said it was charming. The only trouble is it's so far.
You're pretty well on the way to Europe when you get there. You know
it's all hotel life?”
“Yes. It's quite a new place, isn't it?”
“Well, it's been opened up several years. And they say it isn't like
the hotel life anywhere else; it's charming. And there's the very nicest
class of people.”
“Very nice Philadelphia people, I hear,” said Mrs. Pasmer; “and
Baltimore. Don't you think it's well;” she asked deferentially, and
under correction, if she were hazarding too much, “to see somebody
besides Boston people sometimes--if they're nice? That seems to be one
of the great advantages of living abroad.”
“Oh, I think there are nice people everywhere,” said the young man, with
the bold expansion of youth.
“Yes,” sighed Mrs. Pasmer. “We saw two such delightful young people
coming in and out of the hotel in Rome. We were sure they were English.
And they were from Chicago! But there are not many Western people at
Campobello, are there?”
“I really don't know,” said Mavering. “How is it, Boardman? Do many of
your people go there?”
“You know you do make it so frightfully expensive with your money,” said
Mrs. Pasmer, explaining with a prompt effect of having known all along
that Boardman was from the West, “You drive us poor people all away.”
“I don't think my money would do it,” said Boardman quietly.
“Oh, you wait till you're a Syndicate Correspondent,” said, Mavering,
putting his hand on his friend's shoulder, and rising by aid of it. He
left Mrs. Pasmer to fill the chasm that had so suddenly yawned between
her and Boardman; and while she tumbled into every sort of flowery
friendliness and compliment, telling him she should look out for his
account of the race with the greatest interest, and expressing the hope
that he would get as far as Campobello during the summer, Mavering found
some minutes for talk with Alice. He was graver with her--far graver
than with her mother--not only because she was a more serious nature,
but because they were both young, and youth is not free with youth
except by slow and cautious degrees. In that little space of time
they talked of pictures, 'a propos' of some on the wall, and of books,
because of those on the table.
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer when they paused, and she felt that her piece
of difficult engineering had been quite successful, “Mrs. Saintsbury was
telling me what a wonderful connoisseur of etchings your father is.”
“I believe he does know something about them,” said the young man
modestly.
“And he's gone back already?”
“Oh yes. He never stays long away from my mother. I shall be going home
myself as soon as I get back from the race.”
“And shall you spend the summer there?”
“Part of it. I always like to do that.”
“Perhaps when you get away you'll come as far as Campobello--with Mr.
Boardman,” she added.
“Has Boardman promised to go?” laughed Mavering. “He will promise
anything. Well, I'll come to Campobello if you'll come to New London. Do
come, Mrs. Pasmer!”
The mother stood watching the two young men from the window as they made
their way across the square together. She had now, for some reason; no
apparent scruple in being seen to do so.
“How ridiculous that stout little Mr. Boardman is with him!” said Mrs.
Pasmer. “He hardly comes up to his shoulder. Why in the world should he
have brought him?”
“I thought he was very pleasant,” said the girl.
“Yes, yes, of course. And I suppose he'd have felt that it was rather
pointed coming alone.”
“Pointed?”
“Young men are so queer! Did you like that kind of collar he had on?”
“I didn't notice it.”
“So very, very high.”
“I suppose he has rather a long neck.”
“Well, what did you think of his urging us to go to the race? Do you
think he meant it? Do you think he intended it for an invitation?”
“I don't think he meant anything; or, if he did, I think he didn't know
what.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer vaguely; “that must be what Mrs. Saintsbury
meant by the artistic temperament.”
“I like people to be sincere, and not to say things they don't mean, or
don't know whether they mean or not,” said Alice.
“Yes, of course, that's the best way,” admitted Mrs. Pasmer. “It's the
only way,” she added, as if it were her own invariable practice. Then
she added further, “I wonder what he did mean?”
She began to yawn, for after her simulation of vivid interest in them
the visit of the young men had fatigued her. In the midst of her yawn
her daughter went out of the room, with an impatient gesture, and she
suspended the yawn long enough to smile, and then finished it.