"They seem to be having a good time," said Mrs. Brinkley at her side.
"Yes; I hope Alice isn"t overdoing."
"I"m afraid you"re dreadfully tired," said Mavering to the girl, in a low voice, as he lifted her from her place when they reached the hotel through the provisional darkness, and found that after all it was only dinner-time.
"Oh no. I feel as if the picnic were just beginning."
"Then you will come to-night?"
"I will see what mamma says."
"Shall I ask her?"
"Oh, perhaps not," said the girl, repressing his ardour, but not severely.
XVIII.
They were going to have some theatricals at one of the cottages, and the lady at whose house they were to be given made haste to invite all the picnic party before it dispersed. Mrs. Pasmer accepted with a mental reservation, meaning to send an excuse later if she chose; and before she decided the point she kept her husband from going after dinner into the reading-room, where he spent nearly all his time over a paper and a cigar, or in sitting absolutely silent and unoccupied, and made him go to their own room with her.
"There is something that I must speak to you about," she said, closing the door, "and you must decide for yourself whether you wish to let it go any further."
"What go any further?" asked Mr. Pasmer, sitting down and putting his hand to the pocket that held his cigar-case with the same series of motions.
"No, don"t smoke," she said, staying his hand impatiently. "I want you to think."
"How can I think if I don"t smoke?"
"Very well; smoke, then. Do you want this affair with young Mavering to go any farther?"
"Oh!" said Pasmer, "I thought you had been looking after that." He had in fact relegated that to the company of the great questions exterior to his personal comfort which she always decided.
"I have been looking after it, but now the time has come when you must, as a father, take some interest in it."
Pasmer"s n.o.ble mask of a face, from the point of his full white beard to his fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressed all the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such an affair; but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have to intervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" he asked.
"Why, I don"t know that he"s going to ask you anything. I don"t know whether he"s said anything to Alice yet," said Mrs. Pasmer, with some exasperation.
Her husband was silent, but his silence insinuated a degree of wonder that she should approach him prematurely on such a point.
"They have been thrown together all day, and there is no use to conceal from ourselves that they are very much taken with each other?"
"I thought," Pasmer said, "that you said that from the beginning. Didn"t you want them to be taken with each other?"
"That is what you are to decide."
Pasmer silently refused to a.s.sume the responsibility.
"Well?" demanded his wife, after waiting for him to speak.
"Well what?"
"What do you decide?"
"What is the use of deciding a thing when it is all over?"
"It isn"t over at all. It can be broken off at any moment."
"Well, break it off, then, if you like."
Mrs. Pasmer resumed the responsibility with a sigh. She felt the burden, the penalty, of power, after having so long enjoyed its sweets, and she would willingly have abdicated the sovereignty which she had spent her whole married life in establishing. But there was no one to take it up.
"No, I shall not break it off," she said resentfully; "I shall let it go on." Then seeing that her husband was not shaken by her threat from his long-confirmed subjection, she added: "It isn"t an ideal affair, but I think it will be a very good thing for Alice. He is not what I expected, but he is thoroughly nice, and I should think his family was nice. I"ve been talking with Mr. Munt about them to-day, and he confirms all that Etta Saintsbury said. I don"t think there can be any doubt of his intentions in coming here. He isn"t a particularly artless young man, but he"s been sufficiently frank about Alice since he"s been here." Her husband smoked on. "His father seems to have taken up the business from the artistic side, and Mr. Mavering won"t be expected to enter into the commercial part at once. If it wasn"t for Alice, I don"t believe he would think of the business for a moment; he would study law. Of course it"s a little embarra.s.sing to have her engaged at once before she"s seen anything of society here, but perhaps it"s all for the best, after all: the main thing is that she should be satisfied, and I can see that she"s only too much so. Yes, she"s very much taken with him; and I don"t wonder. He is charming."
It was not the first time that Mrs. Pasmer had reasoned in this round; but the utterance of her thoughts seemed to throw a new light on them, and she took a courage from them that they did not always impart. She arrived at the final opinion expressed, with a throb of tenderness for the young fellow whom she believed eager to take her daughter from her, and now for the first time she experienced a desolation in the prospect, as if it were an accomplished fact. She was morally a bundle of finesses, but at the bottom of her heart her daughter was all the world to her. She had made the girl her idol, and if, like some other heathen, she had not always used her idol with the greatest deference, if she had often expected the impossible from it, and made it pay for her disappointment, still she had never swerved from her worship of it. She suddenly asked herself, What if this young fellow, so charming and so good, should so wholly monopolise her child that she should no longer have any share in her? What if Alice, who had so long formed her first care and chief object in life, should contentedly lose herself in the love and care of another, and both should ignore her right to her? She answered herself with a pang that this might happen with any one Alice married, and that it would be no worse, at the worst, with Dan Mavering than with another, while her husband remained impartially silent. Always keeping within the lines to which his wife"s supremacy had driven him, he felt safe there, and was not to be easily coaxed out of them.
Mrs. Pasmer rose and left him, with his perfect acquiescence, and went into her daughter"s room. She found Alice there, with a pretty evening dress laid out on her bed. Mrs. Pasmer was very fond of that dress, and at the thought of Alice in it her spirits rose again.
"Oh, are you going, Alice?"
"Why, yes," answered the girl. "Didn"t you accept?"
"Why, yes," Mrs. Pasmer admitted. "But aren"t you tired?"
"Oh, not in the least. I feel as fresh as I did this morning. Don"t you want me to go?"
"Oh yes, certainly, I want you to go--if you think you"ll enjoy it."
"Enjoy it? Why, why shouldn"t I enjoy it, mamma!"
"What are you thinking about? It"s going to be the greatest kind of fun."
"But do you think you ought to look at everything simply as fun?" asked the mother, with unwonted didacticism.
"How everything? What are you thinking about, mamma?"
"Oh, nothing! I"m so glad you"re going to wear that dress."
"Why, of course! It"s my best. But what are you driving at, mamma?"
Mrs. Pasmer was really seeking in her daughter that comfort of a distinct volition which she had failed to find in her husband, and she wished to a.s.sure herself of it more and more, that she might share with some one the responsibility which he had refused any part in.
"Nothing. But I"m glad you wish so much to go." The girl dropped her hands and stared. "You must have enjoyed yourself to-day," she added, as if that were an explanation.
"Of course I enjoyed myself! But what has that to do with my wanting to go to-night?"
"Oh, nothing. But I hope, Alice, that there is one thing you have looked fully in the face."