When Jeff reached his room he felt the need of writing to Cynthia, with
whatever obscure intention of atonement. He told her of the college tea
he had just come from, and made fun of it, and the kind of people he had
met, especially the affected girl who had tried to rattle him; he said
he guessed she did not think she had rattled him a great deal.
While he wrote he kept thinking how this Miss Lynde was nearer his early
ideal of fashion, of high life, which Westover had pretty well snubbed
out of him, than any woman he had seen yet; she seemed a girl who would
do what she pleased, and would not be afraid if it did not please
other people. He liked her having tried to rattle him, and he smiled to
himself in recalling her failure. It was as if she had laid hold of him
with her little hands to shake him, and had shaken herself. He laughed
out in the dark when this image came into his mind; its intimacy
flattered him; and he believed that it was upon some hint from her that
Mrs. Bevidge had asked his address. She must be going to ask him to her
house, and very soon, for it was part of Jeff's meagre social experience
that this was the way swells did; they might never ask you twice, but
they would ask you promptly.
The thing that Mrs. Bevidge asked Jeff to, when her note reached him the
second day after the tea, was a meeting to interest young people in
the work at the North End, and Jeff swore under his breath at the
disappointment and indignity put upon him. He had reckoned upon an
afternoon tea, at least, or even, in the flights of fancy which he now
disowned to himself, a dance after the Mid-Years, or possibly an
earlier reception of some sort. He burned with shame to think of a
theatre-party, which he had fondly specialized, with a seat next Miss
Lynde.
He tore Mrs. Bevidge's note to pieces, and decided not to answer it at
all, as the best way of showing how he had taken her invitation. But
Mrs. Bevidge's benevolence was not wanting in courage; she believed that
Jeff should pay his footing in society, such as it was, and should allow
himself to be made use of, the first thing; when she had no reply from
him, she wrote him again, asking him to an adjourned meeting of the
first convocation, which had been so successful in everything but
numbers. This time she baited her hook, in hoping that the young men
would feel something of the interest the young ladies had already shown
in the matter. She expressed the fear that Mr. Durgin had not got her
earlier letter, and she sent this second to the care of the man who had
given the tea.
Jeff's resentment was now so far past that he would have civilly
declined to go to the woman's house; but all his hopes of seeing that
girl, as he always called Miss Lynde in his thought, were revived by the
mention of the young ladies interested in the cause. He accepted, though
all the way into Boston he laid wagers with himself that she would not
be there; and up to the moment of taking her hand he refused himself any
hope of winning.
There was not much business before the meeting; that had really been all
transacted before; it was mainly to make sure of the young men, who were
present in the proportion of one to five young ladies at least. Mrs.
Bevidge explained that she had seen the wastefulness of amateur effort
among the poor, and announced that hereafter she was going to work with
the established charities. These were very much in want of visitors,
especially young men, to go about among the applicants for relief, and
inquire into their real necessities, and get work for them. She was hers
self going to act as secretary for the meetings during the coming month,
and apparently she wished to signalize her accession to the regular
forces of charity by bringing into camp as large a body of recruits as
she could.
But Jeff had not come to be made use of, or as a jay who was willing to
work for his footing in society. He had come in the hope of meeting Miss
Lynde, and now that he had met her he had no gratitude to Mrs. Bevidge
as a means, and no regret for the defeat of her good purposes so far as
she intended their fulfilment in him. He was so cool and self-possessed
in excusing himself, for reasons that he took no pains to make seem
unselfish, that the altruistic man who had got him asked to the college
tea as a friendless jay felt it laid upon him to apologize for Mrs.
Bevidge's want of tact.
“She means well, and she's very much in earnest, in this work; but I
must say she can make herself very offensive--when she doesn't try! She
has a right to ask our help, but not to parade us as the captives of her
bow and spear.”
“Oh, that's all right,” said Jeff. He perceived that the amiable fellow
was claiming for all an effect that Jeff knew really implicated himself
alone. “I couldn't load up with anything of that sort, if I'm to work
off my conditions, you know.”
“Are you in that boat?” said the altruist, as if he were, too; and he
put his hand compassionately on Jeff's iron shoulder, and left him to
Miss Lynde, whose side he had not stirred from since he had found her.
“It seems to me,” she said, “that where there are so many of you in the
same boat, you might manage to get ashore somehow.”
“Yes, or all go down together.” Jeff laughed, and ate Mrs. Bevidge's
bread-and-butter, and drank her tea, with a relish unaffected by his
refusal to do what she asked him. He was right, perhaps, and perhaps she
deserved nothing better at his hands, but the altruist, when he glanced
at him from the other side of the room, thought that he had possibly
wasted his excuses upon Jeff's self-complacence.
He went away in a halo of young ladies; several of the other girls
grouped themselves in their departure; and it happened that Miss
Lynde and Jeff took leave together. Mrs. Bevidge said to her, with the
caressing tenderness of one in the same set, “Good-bye, dear!” To Jeff
she said, with the cold conscience of those whom their nobility obliges,
“I am always at home on Thursdays, Mr. Durgin.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Jeff. He understood what the words and the manner
meant together, but both were instantly indifferent to him when he got
outside and found that Miss Lynde was not driving. Something, which was
neither look, nor smile, nor word, of course, but nothing more at most
than a certain pull and tilt of the shoulder, as she turned to walk away
from Mrs. Bevidge's door, told him from her that he might walk home with
her if he would not seem to do so.
It was one of the pink evenings, dry and clear, that come in the Boston
December, and they walked down the sidehill street, under the delicate
tracery of the elm boughs in the face of the metallic sunset. In the
section of the Charles that the perspective of the street blocked out,
the wrinkled current showed as if glazed with the hard color. Jeff's
strong frame rejoiced in the cold with a hale pleasure when he looked
round into the face of the girl beside him, with the gray film of her
veil pressed softly against her red mouth by her swift advance. Their
faces were nearly on a level, as they looked into each other's eyes,
and he kept seeing the play of the veil's edge against her lips as they
talked.
“Why sha'n't you go to Mrs. Bevidge's Thursdays?” she asked. “They're
very nice.”
“How do you know I'm not going?” he retorted.
“By the way you thanked her.”
“Do you advise me to go?”
“I haven't got anything to do with it. What do mean by that?”
“I don't know. Curiosity, I suppose.”
“Well, I do advise you to go,” said the girl. “Shall you be there next
Thursday?”
“I? I never go to Mrs. Bevidge's Thursdays!”
“Touche,” said Jeff, and they both laughed. “Can you always get in at an
enemy that way?”
“Enemy?”
“Well, friend. It's the same thing.”
“I see,” said the girl. “You belong to the pessimistic school of
Seniors.”
“Why don't you try to make an optimist of me?”
“Would it be worth while?”
“That isn't for me to say.”
“Don't be diffident! That's staler yet.”
“I'll be anything you like.”
“I'm not sure you could.” For an instant Jeff did not feel the point,
and he had not the magnanimity, when he did, to own himself touched
again. Apparently, if this girl could not rattle him, she could beat him
at fence, and the will to dominate her began to stir in him. If he could
have thought of any sarcasm, no matter how crushing, he would have come
back at her with it. He could not think of anything, and he walked at
her side, inwardly chafing for the chance which would not come.
When they reached her door there was a young man at the lock with a
latch-key, which he was not making work, for, after a bated blasphemy of
his failure, he turned and twitched the bell impatiently.
Miss Lynde laughed provokingly, and he looked over his shoulder at her
and at Jeff, who felt his injury increased by the disadvantage this
young man put him at. Jeff was as correctly dressed; he wore a silk hat
of the last shape, and a long frock-coat; he was properly gloved and
shod; his clothes fitted him, and were from the best tailor; but
at sight of this young man in clothes of the same design he felt
ill-dressed. He was in like sort aware of being rudely blocked out
physically, and coarsely colored as to his blond tints of hair and
eye and cheek. Even the sinister something in the young man's look had
distinction, and there was style in the signs of dissipation in his
handsome face which Jeff saw with a hunger to outdo him.
Miss Lynde said to Jeff, “My brother, Mr. Durgin,” and then she added
to the other, “You ought to ring first, Arthur, and try your key
afterward.”
“The key's all right,” said the young man, without paying any attention
to Jeff beyond a glance of recognition; he turned his back, and waited
for the door to be opened.
His sister suggested, with an amiability which Jeff felt was meant in
reparation to him, “Perhaps a night latch never works before dark--or
very well before midnight.” The door was opened, and she said to Jeff,
with winning entreaty, “Won't you come in, Mr. Durgin?”
Jeff excused himself, for he perceived that her politeness was not so
much an invitation to him as a defiance to her brother; he gave her
credit for no more than it was worth, and he did not wish any the less
to get even with her because of it.