We must try to help each other to be good. Oh, when I think what a happy girl I am, I feel that I should be the most ungrateful person under the sun not to be good. Let"s try to make our lives perfect--perfect! They can be. And we mustn"t live for each other alone. We must try to do good as well as be good. We must be kind and forbearing with every one."
He answered, with tender seriousness, "My life"s in your hands, Alice.
It shall be whatever you wish."
They were both silent in their deep belief of this. When they spoke again, she began gaily: "I shall never get over the wonder of it. How strange that we should meet at the Museum!" They had both said this already, but that did not matter; they had said nearly everything two or three times. "How did you happen to be there?" she asked, and the question was so novel that she added, "I haven"t asked you before."
He stopped, with a look of dismay that broke up in a hopeless laugh.
"Why, I went there to meet some people--some ladies. And when I saw you I forgot all about them."
Alice laughed to; this was a part of their joy, their triumph.
"Who are they?" she asked indifferently, and only to heighten the absurdity by realising the persons.
"You don"t know them," he said. "Mrs. Frobisher and her sister, of Portland. I promised to meet them there and go out to Cambridge with them."
"What will they think?" asked Alice. "It"s too amusing."
"They"ll think I didn"t come," said Mavering, with the easy conscience of youth and love; and again they laughed at the ridiculous position together. "I remember now I was to be at the door, and they were to take me up in their carriage. I wonder how long they waited? You put everything else out of my head."
"Do you think I"ll keep it out?" she asked archly.
"Oh yes; there is nothing else but you now."
The eyes that she dropped, after a glance at him, glistened with tears.
A lump came into his throat. "Do you suppose," he asked huskily, "that we can ever misunderstand each other again?"
"Never. I see everything clearly now. We shall trust each other implicitly, and at the least thing that isn"t clear we can speak.
Promise me that you"ll speak."
"I will, Alice. But after this all will be clear. We shall deal with each other as we do with ourselves."
"Yes; that will be the way."
"And we mustn"t wait for question from each other. We shall know--we shall feel--when there"s any misgiving, and then the one that"s caused it will speak."
"Yes," she sighed emphatically. "How perfectly you say it? But that"s because you feel it, because you are good."
They walked on, treading the air in a transport of fondness for each other. Suddenly he stopped.
"Miss Pasmer, I feel it my duty to warn you that you"re letting me go home with you."
"Am I? How n.o.ble of you to tell me, Dan; for I know you don"t want to tell. Well, I might as well. But I sha"n"t let you come in. You won"t try, will you? Promise me you won"t try."
"I shall only want to come in the first door."
"What for?"
"What for? Oh, for half a second."
She turned away her face.
He went on. "This engagement has been such a very public affair, so far, that I think I"d like to see my fiancee alone for a moment."
"I don"t know what in the world you can have to say more."
He went into the first door with her, and then he went with her upstairs to the door of Mrs. Pasmer"s apartment. The pa.s.sages of the Cavendish were not well lighted; the little lane or alley that led down to this door from the stairs landing was very dim.
"So dark here!" murmured Alice, in a low voice, somewhat tremulous.
"But not too dark."
XXV.
She burst into the room where her mother sat looking over some housekeeping accounts. His kiss and his name were upon her lips; her soul was full of him.
"Mamma!" she panted.
Her mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of the vital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing the first autumn month"s provision bill with that of the last spring month, and trying to account for the difference.
The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother"s hands as she glanced from one to the other through her gla.s.ses, seemed suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl"s rapture burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a storm of tears.
"Alice!" cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to rescue women from the terror of any sudden shock. "What is the matter with you?--what do you mean?" She dropped both of the provision bills to the floor, and started toward her daughter.
"Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room." She tried to reach the door beyond her mother.
"Indeed you shall not!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I will not have you behaving so! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half out of my senses."
The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa, with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother began to relent at the sight of her pa.s.sion. As a woman and as a mother she knew her daughter, and she knew that this pa.s.sion, whatever it was, must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them.
She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and dropped a light shawl over the girl"s shoulders, so that she should not take cold.
Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering somewhere, and that this outburst was the r.e.t.a.r.ded effect of seeing him.
During the last six weeks she had a.s.sisted at many phases of feeling in regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter"s ordeal in an affair of the heart which she has favoured.
The storm pa.s.sed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting off the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found it hard to utter it.
"What is it, Alice?--what is it?" urged her mother.
"Nothing. I--Mr. Mavering--we met--I met him at the Museum, and--we"re engaged! It"s really so. It seems like raving, but it"s true. He came with me to the door; I wouldn"t let him come in. Don"t you believe it?
Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma? You know I couldn"t have lived without him."
She trembled on the verge of another outbreak.
Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, and returned quietly: "Glad, Alice! You know that I think he"s the sweetest and best fellow in the world."
"O mamma!"