Mavering broke into a conscious laugh, but full of delight, and with his handkerchief to his face had almost missed the greeting of some ladies who bowed to him. He had to turn round to acknowledge it, and he was saluting and returning salutations pretty well all along the line of their progress.
"I"m afraid you"ll think I"m everybody"s friend but my own, Miss Pasmer, but I a.s.sure you all this is purely accidental. I don"t know so many people, after all; only all that I do know seem to be here this morning."
"I don"t think it"s a thing to be sorry for," said the girl. "I wish we knew more people. It"s rather forlorn--"
"Oh, will you let me introduce some of the fellows to you? They"ll be so glad."
"If you"ll tell them how forlorn I said I was," said the girl, with a smile.
"Oh, no, no, no! I understand that. And I a.s.sure you that I didn"t suppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluous rea.s.surance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only there are some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you"ll allow me--"
"We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behind him.
"Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for another burst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication of youth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in the young faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between the different dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged with people coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, the prettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, at once sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of the Renaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old university town, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly and almost pathetically beautiful under the leaf.a.ge of her hovering elms and in, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youth that overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poets who have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of the humanities who has left her.
"Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to her daughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor"s, "did you ever see so many pretty costumes?"
"Never," said the girl, with equal intensity.
"Well, it makes you feel that you have got a country, after all," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, in a sort of apostrophe to her European self. "You see splendid dressing abroad, but it"s mostly upon old people who ought to be sick and ashamed of their pomps and vanities. But here it"s the young girls who dress; and how lovely they are! I thought they were charming in the Gymnasium, but I see you must get them out-of-doors to have the full effect. Mr. Mavering, are they always so prettily dressed on Cla.s.s Day?"
"Well, I"m beginning to feel as if it wouldn"t be exactly modest for me to say so, whatever I think. You"d better ask Mrs. Saintsbury; she pretends to know all about it."
"No, I"m bound to say they"re not," said the Professor"s wife candidly.
"Your daughter," she added, in a low tone for all to hear, "decides that question."
"I"m so glad you said that, Mrs. Saintsbury," said the young man. He looked at the girl; who blushed with a pleasure that seemed to thrill to the last fibre of her pretty costume.
She could not say anything, but her mother asked, with an effort at self-denial: "Do you think so really? It"s one of those London things.
They have so much taste there now," she added yielding to her own pride in the dress.
"Yes; I supposed it must be," said Mrs. Saintsbury, "We used to come in muslins and tremendous hoops--don"t you remember?"
"Did you look like your photographs?" asked young Mavering, over his shoulder.
"Yes; but we didn"t know it then," said the Professor"s wife.
"Neither did we," said the Professor. "We supposed that there had never been anything equal to those hoops and white muslins."
"Thank you, my dear," said his wife, tapping him between the shoulders with her fan. "Now don"t go any further."
"Do you mean about our first meeting here on Cla.s.s Day?" asked her husband.
"They"ll think so now," said Mrs. Saintsbury patiently, with a playful threat of consequences in her tone.
"When I first saw the present Mrs. Saintsbury," pursued the Professor--it was his joking way, of describing her, as if there had been several other Mrs. Saintsburys--"she was dancing on the green here."
"Ah, they don"t dance on the green any more, I hear," sighed Mrs.
Pasmer.
"No, they don"t," said the other lady; "and I think it"s just as well.
It was always a ridiculous affectation of simplicity."
"It must have been rather public," said young Mavering, in a low voice, to Miss Pasmer.
"It doesn"t seem as if it could ever have been in character quite," she answered.
"We"re a thoroughly indoors people," said the Professor. "And it seems as if we hadn"t really begun to get well as a race till we had come in out of the weather."
"How can you say that on a day like this?" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I didn"t suppose any one could be so unromantic."
"Don"t flatter him," cried his wife.
"Does he consider that a compliment?"
"Not personally," he answered: "But it"s the first duty of a Professor of Comparative Literature to be unromantic."
"I don"t understand," faltered Mrs. Pasmer.
"He will be happy to explain, at the greatest possible length," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "But you shan"t spoil our pleasure now, John."
They all laughed, and the Professor looked proud of the wit at his expense; the American husband is so, and the public att.i.tude of the American husband and wife toward each other is apt to be amiably satirical; their relation seems never to have lost its novelty, or to lack droll and surprising contrasts for them.
Besides these pa.s.sages with her husband, Mrs. Saintsbury kept up a full flow of talk with the elder Mavering, which Mrs. Pasmer did her best to overhear, for it related largely to his son, whom, it seemed, from the father"s expressions, the Saintsburys had been especially kind to.
"No, I a.s.sure you," Mrs. Pasmer heard her protest, "Mr. Saintsbury has, been very much interested in him. I hope he has not put any troublesome ideas into his head. Of course he"s very much interested in literature, from his point of view, and he"s glad to find any of the young men interested in it, and that"s apt to make him overdo matters a little."
"Dan wished me to talk with him, and I shall certainly be glad to do so," said the father, but in a tone which conveyed to Mrs. Pasmer the impression that though he was always open to conviction, his mind was made up on this point, whatever it was.
VI.
The party went to half a dozen spreads, some of which were on a scale of public grandeur approaching that of the Gymnasium, and others of a subdued elegance befitting the more private hospitalities in the students" rooms. Mrs. Pasmer was very much interested in these rooms, whose luxurious appointments testified to the advance of riches and of the taste to apply them since she used to visit students" rooms in far-off Cla.s.s Days. The deep window nooks and easy-chairs upholstered in the leather that seems sacred alike to the seats and the shelves of libraries; the aesthetic bookcases, low and topped with bric-a-brac; the etchings and prints on the walls, which the elder Mavering went up to look at with a mystifying air of understanding such things; the foils crossed over the chimney, and the mantel with its pipes, and its photographs of theatrical celebrities tilted about over it--spoke of conditions mostly foreign to Mrs. Pasmer"s memories of Harvard. The photographed celebrities seemed to be chosen chiefly for their beauty, and for as much of their beauty as possible, Mrs. Pasmer perceived, with an obscure misgiving of the sort which an older generation always likes to feel concerning the younger, but with a tolerance, too, which was personal to herself; it was to be considered that the ma.s.sive thought and honest amiability of Salvini"s face, and the deep and spiritualized power of Booth"s, varied the effect of these companies of posturing nymphs.
At many places she either met old friends with whom she clamoured over the wonder of their encounter there, or was made acquainted with new people by the Saintsburys. She kept a mother"s eye on her daughter, to whom young Mavering presented everybody within hail or reach, and whom she could see, whenever she looked at her, a radiant centre of admiration. She could hear her talk sometimes, and she said to herself that really Alice was coming out; she had never heard her say so many good things before; she did not know it was in her. She was very glad then that she had let her wear that dress; it was certainly distinguished, and the girl carried it off, to her mother"s amus.e.m.e.nt, with the air of a superb lady of the period from which it dated. She thought what a simple child Alice really was, all the time those other children, the Seniors, were stealing their glances of bold or timid worship at her, and doubtless thinking her a brilliant woman of the world. But there could be no mistake that she was a success.
Part of her triumph was of course due to Mrs. Saintsbury; whose chaperonage; Mrs. Pasmer could see, was everywhere of effect. But it was also largely due to the vigilant politeness of young Mavering, who seemed bent on making her have good time, and who let no chance slip him. Mrs. Pasmer felt his kindness truly; and she did not feel it the less because she knew that there was but one thing that could, at his frankly selfish age, make a young fellow wish to make a girl have a good time; except for that reason he must be bending the whole soul of egotistic youth to making some other girl have a good time. But all the same, it gave her pause when some one to whom she was introduced spoke to her of her friends the Maverings, as if they were friends of the oldest standing instead of acquaintances of very recent accident. She did not think of disclaiming the intimacy, but "Really I shall die of these Maverings," she said to herself, "unless I find out something about them pretty soon."
"I"m not going to take you to the Omicron spread, Mrs. Pasmer," said young Mavering, coming up to her with such an effect of sympathetic devotion that she had to ask herself, "Are they my friends, the Maverings?" "The Saintsburys have been there already, and it is a little too common." The tone of superiority gave Mrs. Pasmer courage. "They"re good fellows; and all that, but I want you to see the best. I suppose it will get back to giving the spreads all in the fellows" rooms again.
It"s a good deal pleasanter, don"t you think?"
"Oh yes, indeed," a.s.sented Mrs. Pasmer, though she had really been thinking the private spreads were not nearly so amusing as the large spread she had seen at the Gymnasium. She had also wondered where all Mr. Mavering"s relations and friends were, and the people who had social claims on him, that he could be giving up his Cla.s.s Day in this reckless fashion to strangers. Alice would account for a good deal, but she would not account for everything. Mrs. Pasmer would have been willing to take him from others, but if he were so anomalous as to have no one to be taken from, of course it lessened his value as a trophy. These things went in and out of her mind, with a final resolution to get a full explanation from Mrs. Saintsbury, while she stood and smiled her winning a.s.sent up into the young man"s handsome face.
Mrs. Saintsbury, caught sight of them, and as if suddenly reminded of a forgotten duty, rushed vividly upon him.
"Mr. Mavering, I shall not let you stay with us another minute. You must go to your room now and get ready. You ought to have a little rest."