A family of rich people in the country, apart from intellectual
interests, is apt to gormandise; and the Maverings always sat down to a
luxurious table, which was most abundant and tempting at the meal they
called tea, when the invention of the Portuguese man-cook was taxed
to supply the demands of appetites at once eager and fastidious. They
prolonged the meal as much as possible in winter, and Dan used to like
to get home just in time for tea when he came up from Harvard; it was
always very jolly, and he brought a boy's hunger to its abundance. The
dining-room, full of shining light, and treated from the low-down
grate, was a pleasant place. But now his spirits failed to rise with
the physical cheer; he was almost bashfully silent; he sat cowed in the
presence of his sisters, and careworn in the place where he used to be
so gay and bold. They were waiting to have him begin about himself, as
he always did when he had been away, and were ready to sympathise with
his egotism, whatever new turn it took. He mystified them by asking
about them and their affairs, and by dealing in futile generalities,
instead of launching out with any business that he happened at the time
to be full of. But he did not attend to their answers to his questions;
he was absent-minded, and only knew that his face was flushed, and that
he was obviously ill at ease.
His younger sister turned from him impatiently at last. “Father, what is
the matter with Dan?”
Her bold recognition of their common constraint broke it down. Dan
looked at his father with helpless consent, and his father said quietly,
“He tells me he's engaged.”
“What nonsense!” said his sister Eunice.
“Why, Dan!” cried Minnie; and he felt a reproach in her words which the
words did not express. A silence followed, in which the father along
went on with his supper. The girls sat staring at Dan with incredulous
eyes. He became suddenly angry.
“I don't know what's so very extraordinary about it, or why there should
be such a pother,” he began; and he knew that he was insolently ignoring
abundant reasons for pother, if there had been any pother. “Yes, I'm
engaged.”
He expected now that they would believe him, and ask whom he was engaged
to; but apparently they were still unable to realise it. He was obliged
to go on. “I'm engaged to Miss Pasmer.”
“To Miss Pasmer!” repeated Eunice.
“But I thought--” Minnie began, and then stopped.
Dan commanded his temper by a strong effort, and condescended to
explain. “There was a misunderstanding, but it's all right now; I only
met her yesterday, and--it's all right.” He had to keep on ignoring what
had passed between him and his sisters during the month he spent at home
after his return from Campobello. He did not wish to do so; he would
have been glad to laugh over that epoch of ill-concealed heart-break
with them; but the way they had taken the fact of his engagement made it
impossible. He was forced to keep them at a distance; they forced him.
“I'm glad,” he added bitterly, “that the news seems to be so agreeable
to my family. Thank you for your cordial congratulations.” He swallowed
a large cup of tea, and kept looking down.
“How silly!” said Eunice, who was much the oldest of the three. “Did
you expect us to fall upon your neck before we could believe it wasn't a
hoax of father's?”
“A hoax!” Dan burst out.
“I suppose,” said Minnie, with mock meekness, “that if we're to be
devoured, it's no use saying we didn't roil the brook. I'm sure I
congratulate you, Dan, with all my heart,” she added, with a trembling
voice.
“I congratulate Miss Pasmer,” said Eunice, “on securing such a very
reasonable husband.”
When Eunice first became a young lady she was so much older than Dan
that in his mother's absence she sometimes authorised herself to box his
ears, till she was finally overthrown in battle by the growing boy. She
still felt herself so much his tutelary genius that she could not let
the idea of his engagement awe her, or keep her from giving him a needed
lesson. Dan jumped to his feet, and passionately threw his napkin on his
chair.
“There, that will do, Eunice!” interposed the father. “Sit down, Dan,
and don't be an ass, if you are engaged. Do you expect to come up here
with a bombshell in your pocket, and explode it among us without causing
any commotion? We all desire your happiness, and we are glad if you
think you've found it, but we want to have time to realise it. We had
only adjusted our minds to the apparent fact that you hadn't found it
when you were here before.” His father began very severely, but when he
ended with this recognition of what they had all blinked till then, they
laughed together.
“My pillow isn't dry yet, with the tears I shed for you, Dan,” said
Minnie demurely.
“I shall have to countermand my mourning,” said Eunice, “and wear louder
colours than ever. Unless,” she added, “Miss Pasmer changes her mind
again.”
This divination of the past gave them all a chance for another laugh,
and Dan's sisters began to reconcile themselves to the fact of
his engagement, if not to Miss Pasmer. In what was abstractly so
disagreeable there was the comfort that they could joke about his
happiness; they had not felt free to make light of his misery when he
was at home before. They began to ask all the questions they could think
of as to how and when, and they assimilated the fact more and more in
acquiring these particulars and making a mock of them and him.
“Of course you haven't got her photograph,” suggested Eunice. “You know
we've never had the pleasure of meeting the young lady yet.”
“Yes,” Dan owned, blushing, “I have. She thought I might like to show it
to mother: But it isn't--”
“A very good one--they never are,” said Minnie.
“And it was taken several years ago--they always are,” said Eunice.
“And she doesn't photograph well, anyway.”
“And this one was just after a long fit of sickness.”
Dan drew it out of his pocket, after some fumbling for it, while he
tolerated their gibes.
Eunice put her nose to it. “I hope it's your cigarettes it smells of,”
she said.
“Yes; she doesn't use the weed,” answered Dan.
“Oh, I didn't mean that, exactly,” returned his sister, holding the
picture off at arm's length, and viewing it critically with contracted
eyes.
Dan could not help laughing. “I don't think it's been near any other
cigar-case,” he answered tranquilly.
Minnie looked at it very near to, covering all but the face with her
hand. “Dan, she's lovely!” she cried, and Dan's heart leaped into his
throat As he gratefully met his sister's eyes.
“You'll like her, Min.”
Eunice took the photograph from her for a second scrutiny. “She's
certainly very stylish. Rather a beak of a nose, and a little too
bird--like on the whole. But she isn't so bad. Is it like her?” she
asked with a glance at her father.
“I might say--after looking,” he replied.
“True! I didn't know but Dan had shown it to you as soon as you met. He
seemed to be in such a hurry to let us all know.”
The father said, “I don't think it flatters her,” and he looked at it
more carefully. “Not much of her mother there?” he suggested to Dan.
“No, sir; she's more like her father.”
“Well, after all this excitement, I believe I'll have another cup of
tea, and take something to eat, if Miss Pasmer's photograph doesn't
object,” said Eunice, and she replenished her cup and plate.
“What coloured hair and eyes has she, Dan?” asked Minnie.
He had to think so as to be exact. “Well, you might say they were black,
her eyebrows are so dark. But I believe they're a sort of greyish-blue.”
“Not an uncommon colour for eyes,” said Eunice, “but rather peculiar for
hair.”
They got to making fun of the picture, and Dan told them about Alice and
her family; the father left them at the table, and then came back with
word from Dan's mother that she was ready to see him.