“She's a cat, Dan,” said his mother quietly, and not without liking,
when he looked in for his goodnight kiss after the rest were gone; “a
perfect tabby. But your Alice is sublime.”
“O mother--”
“She's a little too sublime for me. But you're young, and you can stand
it.”
Dan laughed with delight. “Yes, I think I can, mother. All I ask is the
chance.”
“Oh, you're very much in love, both of you; there's no doubt about
that. What I mean is that she's very high strung, very intense. She has
ideals--any one can see that.”
Dan took it all for praise. “Yes,” he said eagerly, “that's what I told
you. And that will be the best thing about it for me. I have no ideals.”
“Well, you must find out what hers are, and live up to them.”
“Oh, there won't be any trouble about that,” said Dan buoyantly.
“You must help her to find them out too.” He looked puzzled. “You
mustn't expect the child to be too definite at first, nor to be always
right, even when she's full of ideals. You must be very patient with
her, Dan.”
“Oh, I will, mother! You know that. How could I ever be impatient with
Alice?”
“Very forbearing, and very kind, and indefatigably forgiving. Ask your
father how to behave.”
Dan promised to do so, with a laugh at the joke. It had never occurred
to him that his father was particularly exemplary in these things,
or that his mother idolised him for what seemed to Dan simply a
matter-of-course endurance of her sick whims and freaks and moods. He
broke forth into a vehement protest of his good intentions, to which his
mother did not seem very attentive. After a while she asked--
“Is she always so silent, Dan?”
“Well, not with me, mother. Of course she was a little embarrassed; she
didn't know exactly what to say, I suppose--”
“Oh, I rather liked that. At least she isn't a rattle-pate. And we shall
get acquainted; we shall like each other. She will understand me when
you bring her home here to live with us, and--”
“Yes,” said Dan, rising rather hastily, and stooping over to his mother.
“I'm not going to let you talk any more now, or we shall have to suffer
for it to-morrow night.”
He got gaily away before his mother could amplify a suggestion which
spoiled a little of his pleasure in the praises--he thought they were
unqualified and enthusiastic praises--she had been heaping upon Alice.
He wished to go to bed with them all sweet and unalloyed in his thought,
to sleep, to dream upon his perfect triumph.
Mrs. Pasmer was a long time in undressing, and in calming down after
the demands which the different events of the evening had made upon her
resources.
“It has certainly been a very mixed evening, Alice,” she said, as she
took the pins out of her back hair and let it fall; and she continued to
talk as she went back and forth between their rooms. “What do you think
of banjo-playing for young ladies? Isn't it rather rowdy? Decidedly
rowdy, I think. And Dan's Yankee story! I expected to see the old
gentleman get up and perform some trick.”
“I suppose they do it to amuse Mrs. Mavering,” said Alice, with cold
displeasure.
“Oh, it's quite right,” tittered Mrs. Pasmer. “It would be as much as
their lives are worth if they didn't. You can see that she rules them
with a rod of iron. What a will! I'm glad you're not going to come
under her sway; I really think you couldn't be safe from her in the
same hemisphere; it's well you're going abroad at once. They're a very
self-concentrated family, don't you think--very self-satisfied? Of
course that's the danger of living off by themselves as they do: they
get to thinking there's nobody else in the world. You would simply be
absorbed by them: it's a hair-breadth escape.
“How splendidly Dan contrasts with the others! Oh, he's delightful;
he's a man of the world. Give me the world, after all! And he's so
considerate of their rustic conceit! What a house! It's perfectly
baronial--and ridiculous. In any other country it would mean
something--society, entertainments, troops of guests; but here it
doesn't mean anything but money. Not that money isn't a very good thing;
I wish we had more of it. But now you see how very little it can do by
itself. You looked very well, Alice, and behaved with great dignity;
perhaps too much. You ought to enter a little more into the spirit
of things, even if you don't respect them. That oldest girl isn't
particularly pleased, I fancy, though it doesn't matter really.”
Alice replied to her mother from time to time with absent Yeses and
Noes; she sat by the window looking out on the hillside lawn before the
house; the moon had risen, and poured a flood of snowy light over it, in
which the cold statues dimly shone, and the firs, in clumps and singly,
blackened with an inky solidity. Beyond wandered the hills, their bare
pasturage broken here and there by blotches of woodland.
After her mother had gone to bed she turned her light down and resumed
her seat by the window, pressing her hot forehead against the pane, and
losing all sense of the scene without in the whirl of her thoughts.
After this, evening of gay welcome in Dan's family, and those moments
of tenderness with him, her heart was troubled. She now realised her
engagement as something exterior to herself and her own family, and
confronted for the first time its responsibilities, its ties, and its
claims. It was not enough to be everything to Dan; she could not be
that unless she were something to his family. She did not realise this
vividly, but with the remoteness which all verities except those of
sensation have for youth.
Her uneasiness was full of exultation, of triumph; she knew she had been
admired by Dan's family, and she experienced the sweetness of having
pleased them for his sake; his happy eyes shone before her; but she was
touched in her self-love by what her mother had coarsely characterised
in them. They had regarded her liking them as a matter of course; his
mother had ignored her even in pretending to decry Dan to her. But again
this was very remote, very momentary. It was no nearer, no more lasting
on the surface of her happiness, than the flying whiff's of thin cloud
that chased across the moon and lost themselves in the vast blue around
it.