Alice came down to lunch in a dress which reconciled the seaside and the
drawing-room in an effect entirely satisfactory to her mother, and gave
her hand to both the gentlemen without the affectation of surprise at
seeing either.
“I saw Mr. Munt coning up from the boat,” she said in answer to
Mavering's demand for some sort of astonishment from her. “I wasn't
certain that it was you.”
Mrs. Pasmer, whose pretences had been all given away by this simple
confession, did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her
daughter's evident excitement at the young man's having come. Without
being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of
hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the
hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her
there. They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after
a little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their
acquaintance had been making progress in the interval. She took him
about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him
to Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom,
within five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some
winning service. She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with
deep respect and said “Sir” to. She showed him the bowling alley, and
began to play tennis with him.
Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite
attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified
as they went on.
“Alice,” she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the
evening, and then she hesitated for the right word.
“Well; mamma?” said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk
up and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a
Tam-o'-Shanter cap.
“Don't--overdo--the honours.”
“What do you mean, mamma?” asked the girl; dropping her arms before her,
and letting the shawl trail on the floor.
“Don't you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?”
Her mother laughed. “But every one mayn't know it's gratitude.”
Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her
room without speaking to any one.
The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed
for her succeeded one another during Mavering's stay. He did not need
Alice's chaperonage long. By the next morning he seemed to know and to
like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which
at that moment had no exceptions. In the afternoon he began to organise
excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson.
The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with an
authority which every one tacitly admitted, just as every one recognised
that Mavering had come to Campobello because she was there. Such a phase
is perhaps the prettiest in the history of a love affair. All is yet in
solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact. The parties to
it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do;
they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that.
It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American
of all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or
imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any
outside influences.
The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk
between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief,
might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it.
She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his
taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year.
“Oh, I've abandoned Europe altogether for the present,” he said
laughing. “And I don't know but I may go back on the law too.”
“Indeed! Then you are going to be an artist?”
“Oh no; not so bad as that. It isn't settled yet, and I'm off here
to think it over a while before the law school opens in September. My
father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in
designing wall-papers.”
“Oh, how very interesting!” At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the
whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper
maker in it. But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said: it was
manufacturing. This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys
lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge,
though.
“And we shall actually see a young man,” she said finally, “in the act
of deciding his own destiny!”
He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage. “Yes; only don't give me
away. Nobody else knows it.”
“Oh no, indeed. Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering. Shall you let me
know when you've decided? I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too
high-minded to ask.”
It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life,
and Mavering said, “You will learn from the expression of my eyes.”