Mavering came to lunch the next day, and had a word with Mrs. Pasmer
before Alice came in. Mr. Pasmer usually lunched at the club.
“We don't see much of Mrs. Saintsbury nowadays,” he suggested.
“No; it's a great way to Cambridge,” said Mrs. Pasmer, stifling, in a
little sigh of apparent regret for the separation, the curiosity she
felt as to Dan's motive in mentioning Mrs. Saintsbury. She was very
patient with him when he went on.
“Yes, it is a great way. And a strange thing about it is that when
you're living here it's a good deal further from Boston to Cambridge
than it is from Cambridge to Boston.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pasmer; “every one notices that.”
Dan sat absently silent for a time before he said, “Yes, I guess I must
go out and see Mrs. Saintsbury.”
“Yes, you ought. She's very fond of you. You and Alice ought both to
go.”
“Does Mrs. Saintsbury like me?” asked Dan. “Well, she's awfully nice.
Don't you think she's awfully fond of formulating people?”
“Oh, everybody in Cambridge does that. They don't gossip; they merely
accumulate materials for the formulation of character.”
“And they get there just the same!” cried Dan. “Mrs. Saintsbury used to
think she had got me down pretty fine,” he suggested.
“Yes!” said Mrs. Pasmer, with an indifference which they both knew she
did not feel.
“Yes. She used to accuse me of preferring to tack, even in a fair wind.”
He looked inquiringly at Mrs. Pasmer; and she said, “How ridiculous!”
“Yes, it was. Well, I suppose I am rather circuitous about some things.”
“Oh, not at all!”
“And I suppose I'm rather a trial to Alice in that way.”
He looked at Mrs. Pasmer again, and she said: “I don't believe you are,
in the least. You can't tell what is trying to a girl.”
“No,” said Dan pensively, “I can't.” Mrs. Pasmer tried to render the
interest in her face less vivid. “I can't tell where she's going to
bring up. Talk about tacking!”
“Do you mean the abstract girl; or Alice?”
“Oh, the abstract girl,” said Dan, and they laughed together. “You think
Alice is very straightforward, don't you?”
“Very,” said Mrs. Pasmer, looking down with a smile--“for a girl.”
“Yes, that's what I mean. And don't you think the most circuitous kind
of fellow would be pretty direct compared with the straight-forwardest
kind of girl?”
There was a rueful defeat and bewilderment in Dan's face that made Mrs.
Pasmer laugh. “What has she been doing now?” she asked.
“Mrs. Pasmer,” said Dan, “you and I are the only frank and open people I
know. Well, she began to talk last night about influence--the influence
of other people on us; and she killed off nearly all the people I like
before I knew what she was up to, and she finished with Mrs. Brinkley.
I'm glad she didn't happen to think of you, Mrs. Pasmer, or I shouldn't
be associating with you at the present moment.” This idea seemed to give
Mrs. Pasmer inexpressible pleasure. Dan went on: “Do you quite see
the connection between our being entirely devoted to each other and my
dropping Mrs. Brinkley?”
“I don't know,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “Alice doesn't like satirical people.”
“Well, of course not. But Mrs. Brinkley is such an admirer of hers.”
“I dare say she tells you so.”
“Oh, but she is!”
“I don't deny it,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “But if Alice feels something
inimical--antipatico--in her atmosphere, it's no use talking.”
“Oh no, it's no use talking, and I don't know that I want to talk.”
After a pause, Mavering asked, “Mrs. Pasmer, don't you think that
where two people are going to be entirely devoted to each other, and
self-sacrificing to each other, they ought to divide, and one do all the
devotion, and the other all the self-sacrifice?”
Mrs. Pasmer was amused by the droll look in Dan's eyes. “I think they
ought to be willing to share evenly,” she said.
“Yes; that's what I say--share and share alike. I'm not selfish about
those little things.” He blew off a long sighing breath. “Mrs. Pasmer,
don't you think we ought to have an ideal of conduct?”
Mrs. Pasmer abandoned herself to laughter. “O Dan! Dan! You will be the
death of me.”
“We will die together, then, Mrs. Pasmer. Alice will kill me.” He
regarded her with a sad sympathy in his eye as she laughed and laughed
with delicious intelligence of the case. The intelligence was perfect,
from their point of view; but whether it fathomed the girl's whole
intention or aspiration is another matter. Perhaps this was not very
clear to herself. At any rate, Mavering did not go any more to see Mrs.
Brinkley, whose house he had liked to drop into. Alice went several
times, to show, she said, that she had no feeling in the matter; and
Mrs. Brinkley, when she met Dan, forbore to embarrass him with questions
or reproaches; she only praised Alice to him.
There were not many other influences that Alice cut him off from;
she even exposed him to some influences that might have been thought
deleterious. She made him go and call alone upon certain young ladies
whom she specified, and she praised several others to him, though she
did not praise them for the same things that he did. One of them was a
girl to whom Alice had taken a great fancy, such as often buds into a
romantic passion between women; she was very gentle and mild, and she
had none of that strength of will which she admired in Alice. One night
there was a sleighing party to a hotel in the suburbs, where they had
dancing and then supper. After the supper they danced “Little Sally
Waters” for a finale, instead of the Virginia Reel, and Alice would not
go on the floor with Dan; she said she disliked that dance; but she
told him to dance with Miss Langham. It became a gale of fun, and in the
height of it Dan slipped and fell with his partner. They laughed it off,
with the rest, but after a while the girl began to cry; she had received
a painful bruise. All the way home, while the others laughed and sang
and chattered, Dan was troubled about this poor girl; his anxiety became
a joke with the whole sleighful of people.
When he parted with Alice at her door, he said, “I'm afraid I hurt Miss
Langham; I feel awfully about it.”
“Yes; there's no doubt of that. Good night!”
She left him to go off to his lodging, hot and tingling with indignation
at her injustice. But kindlier thoughts came to him before he slept, and
he fell asleep with a smile of tenderness for her on his lips. He could
see how he was wrong to go out with any one else when Alice said
she disliked the dance; he ought not to have taken advantage of her
generosity in appointing him a partner; it was trying for her to see him
make that ludicrous tumble, of course; and perhaps he had overdone the
attentive sympathy on the way home. It flattered him that she could not
help showing her jealousy--that is flattering, at first; and Dan
was able to go and confess all but this to Alice. She received his
submission magnanimously, and said that she was glad it had happened,
because his saying this showed that now they understood each other
perfectly. Then she fixed her eyes on his, and said, “I've just been
round to see Lilly, and she's as well as ever; it was only a nervous
shock.”
Whether Mavering was really indifferent to Miss Langham's condition,
or whether the education of his perceptions had gone so far that he
consciously ignored her, he answered, “That was splendid of you, Alice.”
“No,” she said; “it's you that are splendid; and you always are. Oh, I
wonder if I can ever be worthy of you!”
Their mutual forgiveness was very sweet to them, and they went on
praising each other. Alice suddenly broke away from this weakening
exchange of worship, and said, with that air of coming to business which
he lad learned to recognise and dread a little, “Dan, don't you think I
ought to write to your mother?”
“Write to my mother?”
“Why, you have written to her. You wrote as soon as you got back, and
she answered you.”
“Yes; but write regularly?--Show that I think of her all the time?
When I really think I'm going to take you from her, I seem so cruel and
heartless!”
“Oh, I don't look at it in that light, Alice.”
“Don't joke! And when I think that we're going away to leave her, for
several years, perhaps, as soon as we're married, I can't make it seem
right. I know how she depends upon your being near her, and seeing
her every now and then; and to go off to Europe for years, perhaps--Of
course you can be of use to your father there; but do you think it's
right toward your mother? I want you to think.”
Dan thought, but his thinking was mainly to the effect that he did not
know what she was driving at. Had she got any inkling of that plan of
his mother's for them to come and stay a year or two at the Falls after
their marriage? He always expected to be able to reconcile that plan
with the Pasmer plan of going at once; to his optimism the two were not
really incompatible; but he did not wish them prematurely confronted in
Alice's mind. Was this her way of letting him know that she knew what
his mother wished, and that she was willing to make the sacrifice? Or
was it just some vague longing to please him by a show of affection
toward his family, an unmeditated impulse of reparation? He had an
impulse himself to be frank with Alice, to take her at her word, and to
allow that he did not like the notion of going abroad. This was Dan's
notion of being frank; he could still reserve the fact that he had given
his mother a tacit promise to bring Alice home to live, but he postponed
even this. He said: “Oh, I guess that'll be all right, Alice. At
any rate, there's no need to think about it yet awhile. That can be
arranged.”
“Yes,” said Alice; “but don't you think I'd better get into the habit of
writing regularly to your mother now, so that there needn't be any break
when we go abroad?” He could see now that she had no idea of giving that
plan up, and he was glad that he had not said anything. “I think,” she
continued, “that I shall write to her once a week, and give her a full
account of our life from day to day; it'll be more like a diary; and
then, when we get over there, I can keep it up without any effort, and
she won't feel so much that you've gone.”
She seemed to refer the plan to him, and he said it was capital. In
fact, he did like the notion of a diary; that sort of historical view
would involve less danger of precipitating a discussion of the two
schemes of life for the future. “It's awfully kind of you, Alice, to
propose such a thing, and you mustn't make it a burden. Any sort of
little sketchy record will do; mother can read between the lines, you
know.”
“It won't be a burden,” said the girl tenderly. “I shall seem to be
doing it for your mother, but I know I shall be doing it for you. I do
everything for you. Do you think it's right?”
“Oh; it must be,” said Dan, laughing. “It's so pleasant.”
“Oh,” said the girl gloomily; “that's what makes me doubt it.”